Now this was one of those places that Jack's kind of person knew only as a void in the middle of the city, sealed off by gates through which an attentive loiterer could sometimes get a flash of sunlit green. By trying to penetrate it from all sides, Jack learnt that it was square, with great barn-doors at the four cardinal compass-points, and high grand buildings rising above each of these gates. Around its fringes were a number of hôtels , which in Paris meant private compounds of rich nobles. Twice a week, the gates were jammed solid with carts bringing hay and oats in, and manure out, and an astounding number of fine horses being burnished by grooms. Some horse-trading went on in surrounding streets, but Jack could plainly see that this was little more than a flea-market compared to whatever was going on in the Place Royale.