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I drank it off, grew sentimental, and began telling a long story about something or other. Kisotchka listened as before, admiring me and my cleverness. And time passed. The sky was by now so dark that the outlines of the acacias and lime trees melted into one, the public was no longer walking up and down the avenues, the piano was silent and the only sound was the even murmur of the sea.

Wilkins. That last week the syringa came out at San Salvatore, and all the acacias flowered. No one had noticed how many acacias there were till one day the garden was full of a new scent, and there were the delicate trees, the lovely successors to the wistaria, hung all over among their trembling leaves with blossom.

When evening comes, bringing with it peace and rest to the industrious peasant, when the moon shall light her bright lamp in the star-spangled heavens, and shed her silvery rays across the plain, the hunter may lead forth the village belle, and foot it merrily on the mossy greensward, to the sound of the bagpipe and the rustic flute, by fountains which never cease their monotonous but soothing plaint, and under the long shadows of the ancient oaks and tall acacias.

The shadows of the acacias spread over the cobbled road, pitiful and weary. They too seemed hot. The sea, pale in the sunlight, lay heavy and immobile as one dead. Over the streets hung a white dust.

It was one labyrinth of acanthus shrubs, yellow mimosa, the snowy gelder-rose, jasmine and lilac, red roses and laburnums, overshadowed by tall palm-trees, acacias and balsam trees. Large bats hovered softly on their delicate wings over the whole, and sounds of mirth and song echoed from the river.

They were now in a grove of cytisus and acacias, from whose clustering blossoms fell a soft, almost sugary perfume. 'We are quite lost, she laughed. 'I don't know these trees at all. 'But the garden must come to an end somewhere, said Serge. 'When we get to the end, you will know where you are, won't you? 'No, she answered, waving her hands afar.

On the very top of the hill is a little old church surrounded by cypresses and acacias, and as the sun, about to vanish within the folds of the cloudy pall that is already drawn up to its flaming edge, darts burning rays upon the still motionless leaves, the cicadas again scratch out their note with the blind zeal of fiddlers who have made too merry at the marriage-feast.

Another day we rode to the village of St. Domingo, situated near the centre of the island. On a small plain which we crossed, a few stunted acacias were growing; their tops had been bent by the steady trade-wind, in a singular manner some of them even at right angles to their trunks.

"The water ran deep between its banks, which were covered with fine grass, soft cloudy acacias, and festoons of lilac convolvuli; while here and there, where the land had slipped above the rapids, bare places of red earth could be seen like that of Devonshire.

The country around the lake was well cultivated, for the Mormons are mostly farmers; while ranches and pens for domesticated animals, fields of wheat, corn, and other cereals, luxuriant prairies, hedges of wild rose, clumps of acacias and milk-wort, would have been seen six months later. Now the ground was covered with a thin powdering of snow.