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More than that, it is most beautiful as well. You are, in effect, at the bottom of the ocean or rather, at the bottom of many oceans in one. No light comes to you except through the grottos about you grottos haunted by weird forms of the deep, from graceful to grotesque, from almost colorless to gaudy-hued. To your dilated pupils the light itself has the weird glow of unreality.
It was already late in the afternoon; the sun was about to sink below the horizon, its slanting rays illumined only the weathercocks on the top of the towers. Within the thickets and at the entrance of the grottos, night already reigned. Not the slightest sound was heard in this place.
Numerous caves or grottos, with contents of the same kind, are found in the two mountainous ridges which run nearly parallel with the Nile, from Cairo to Syene. Many of these tombs and mummies are two or three thousand years old, and some of them perhaps older. Among all the wonderful subterranean monuments of Egypt, the Catacombs of Thebes are the most extraordinary and magnificent.
In the seventeenth century grottos came to be added to the garden, though this is seemingly an Italian tradition of much earlier date. Among the notable grottos of this time were that of the Jardin des Pins at Fontainebleau, and that of the Chateau de Meudon, built by Philibert Delorme, of which Ronsard celebrated its beauties in verse.
We visited it in the course of the morning, and were civilly received and conducted over the establishment. However, there was nothing particular to see. The grottos we found to be of no interest whatever, being only a few feet deep, and containing neither sculptures nor inscriptions.
Its green base, eaten and worn by the seas, sparkled like emerald, and its innumerable caves and grottos, giving a variety of light and shade, made it seem a veritable fairy realm. The base, worn with many hollows, kept up a continuous roaring as the sea swept about it, and the crashing fragments, which fell ever and anon with loud resounding splash, added to the din.
Things that appear to be parts of the rocky or sandy bed of the grottos startle one by moving about, and thus discovering themselves as living creatures, simulating their environment for purposes of protection. Or perhaps what seems to be a giant snail suddenly unfurls wings from its seeming shell, and goes waving through the water, to the utter bewilderment of the beholder.
Luckily, I had forgotten nothing, and I was able to demonstrate my knowledge by pointing to the various parts of the machine with each glib reference I made. By-and-bye, we came to a place where a grotto was "much recommended"; but swallows, southward bound, do not stop in their flight for grottos.
Pan, the god of woods and fields, of flocks and shepherds, dwelt in grottos, wandered on the mountains and in valleys, and amused himself with the chase or in leading the dances of the nymphs. He was fond of music, and as we have seen, the inventor of the syrinx, or shepherd's pipe, which he himself played in a masterly manner.
But the little square in the Lower town was the chief object of his thoughts; he imagined how he could improve his house: he dreamed of a new front, new bedrooms, a salon, a billiard-room, a dining-room, and the kitchen garden out of which he would make an English pleasure-ground, with lawns, grottos, fountains, and statuary.
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