I think that no other Senate House is so shapely as this one, or so richly and showily decorated. Its plan is that of an opera-house. Up toward the straight side of it - the stage side - rise a couple of terraces of desks for the ministry, and the official clerks or secretaries - terraces thirty feet long, and each supporting about half a dozen desks with spaces between them. Above these is the President’s terrace, against the wall. Along it are distributed the proper accommodations for the presiding officer and his assistants. The wall is of richly coloured marble highly polished, its paneled sweep relieved by fluted columns and pilasters of distinguished grace and dignity, which glow softly and frostily in the electric light. Around the spacious half-circle of the floor bends the great two-storied curve of the boxes, its frontage elaborately ornamented and sumptuously gilded. On the floor of the House the 425 desks radiate fanwise from the President’s tribune.

STIRING TIMES IN AUSTRIA
by Mark Twain