"Non!' The comte d'Avaux made a doddering, flailing turn onto another canal. Something bulky and grim shouldered its way into a gap ahead of them. Eliza mistook it, at first, for an especially gloomy old brick church. But then she noticed up on the parapet light shining like barred teeth through crenellations, and many narrow embrasures, and realized it had been made for another purpose besides saving souls. The building had tall poky conical spires at the corners, and Gothic decorations along the fronts of the gables that thrust out into the cold air like clenched stone fists. 'The Ridderzaal,' she said, getting her bearings; for she had gotten quite lost following d'Avaux along the labyrinth of canals that were laced through the Hofgebied like capillaries through flesh. 'So we are on the Spij now, going north.' A short distance ahead of them, the Spij forked in twain, bracketing the Ridderzaal and other ancient buildings of the Counts of Holland between its branches.