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Entering an open doorway on the right of the court, the interpreter led the way up a flight of marble steps to the second storey of the house. A small gallery, such as one sees in public libraries in England, ran round the four sides of the building over the balustrade, of which one could look down on the leafy court with its ever singing jet d'eau.
At the end, on a terrace, rises the once elegant Casino, with hardly a whole pane of glass in its facade, reduced to its sallow stucco and degraded ornaments. The place has become the shabbiest farm-house, with muddy water in the old <i>pieces d'eau</i> and dunghills on the old parterres.
This merest idea is suggested by something which happened when The Clever Man instituted a search for his missing knife but I must introduce The Clever Man to my reader before describing that rather beguiling incident. He wins enough every night at banque to enable him to pay the less fortunate to perform his corvee d'eau for him.
The family consisted of an athlete who called himself Firejaws; his daughter Caillette, a tight-rope dancer, a clown called Mario, and a young acrobat, Fanfaro. Every day the troupe performed on the Place du Chateau d'Eau, and, besides this, people visited the house under the pretence of taking lessons from Fanfaro in parlor magic.
Thus Master No-book lay dozing for hours and days on rich embroidered cushions, never stirring from his place, but admiring the view of trees covered with the richest burnt almonds, grottoes of sugar-candy, a jet d'eau of champagne, a wide sea which tasted of sugar instead of salt, and a bright, clear pond, filled with gold fish that let themselves be caught whenever he pleased.
Here is a very large pond, or lake of water, kept up to a head by a strong batter d'eau, or dam, which the people tell us was made by the Romans; and that it is to this day part of the great Roman highway which leads from Winchester to Alton, and, as it is supposed, went on to London, though we nowhere see any remains of it, except between Winchester and Alton, and chiefly between this town and Alton.
On the one hand, we have a live aquatic plant, such as watercress, for instance, or ombrelle d'eau, having at its base a tufty bunch of fine white roots about as thick as a horsehair. In these soft tresses, the caddis worm, which observes a vegetarian diet, will find at one and the same time the wherewithal to build and eat.
There are two specimens in the Museum. SPOTTED CRAKE. Porzana maruetta, Leach. French, "Poule d'eau marouette."
So great had been the delay occasioned by all these untoward circumstances, that our afternoon's ride was but a short one, bringing us no farther than the shores of a beautiful sheet of water, now known as Crystal Lake. Its clear surface was covered with loons, and Poules d'Eau, a species of rail; with which, at certain seasons, this region abounds.
My "savoir faire," with all modesty be it spoken, has been long schooled in the art and practice of travelling; and while our less experienced fellow-travellers were deep in the novel mysteries of cotton stockings and petticoats, most ostentatiously displayed upon every table of the Bureau, we were comfortably seated in the handsome saloon of the Hotel du Nord, looking out upon a pretty grass plot, surrounded with orange trees, and displaying in the middle a jet d'eau about the size of a walking stick.
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