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He was dying; I had done my best, but his case was quite hopeless, and at Rosa's urgent entreaty I had at last left her alone by his bedside. I need not recount all the rush of incidents that had happened since the tragedy at the Villa des Hortensias on the previous evening.
A bouquet of Hortensias in diamonds glittered on her bosom, and her necklace and bracelets consisted of little diamond Hortensias. In this rich and tasteful attire, a present sent her by the Empress Josephine the day before, Hortense entered the parlor where the ladies and gentlemen of her court awaited her, brilliantly arrayed for the occasion.
Until at last" her voice sank, and she shook her head "there comes a season when he returns no more." They had strolled beyond the hortensias, into a shady avenue of elms. Round the trunk of one of these ran a circular bench. Susanna sat down. Anthony stood before her. "I trust, at any rate," she said, whimsically smiling, "that the moral of my little exhibition has not been lost upon you?"
She led him down a long wide pathway, bordered on each side by hortensias in full blossom, two swelling hedges of fire, where purple dissolved into blue and crimson, blue into a hundred green, mauve, and violet overtones and undertones of blue, and crimson into every palest, vaguest, most elusive, and every intensest red the broken sunbeam bleeds upon the spectrum.
Here you see the Italian pine, the stone pine, with its red bark and its majestic parasol; here a cedar two hundred years old, weeping willows, a Norway spruce, and a beech which overtops them all; and there, in front of the main tower, some very singular shrubs, a yew trimmed in a way that recalls some long-decayed garden of old France, and magnolias with hortensias at their feet.
The Villa des Hortensias, clearly labelled, was nearly at the far end of the funereal street. It was rather larger than its fellows, and comprised three stories, with a small garden in front and a vast grille with a big bell, such as Parisians love when they have passed the confines of the city, and have dispensed with the security of a concierge. The grille was ajar.
The bronze visage of the emperor seems to melt into a smile as these tremulous billows of melody go sweeping around his brow, and the Hortensias on the queen's grave raise dreamingly their heads of bloom, in which the dews of heaven, or the tears of the departed one, glisten like rarest gems, and seem to look forth lovingly and listen to this ditty, which now for France has won so holy a significance holy because it is the master-chant of a religion which all men and all nations should revere the "religion of our memories."
Her blond hair, that reached to her feet when unbound, was dressed in the ancient Greek style, and adorned with a wreath of flowers, not natural flowers, however, but consisting of Hortensias in diamonds. Her dress was of pink-crape embroidered with Hortensias in silver. The hem of her dress and its train was encircled with a garland of flowers composed of roses and violets.
"He might have added," said Oliver, "that plants and flowers flourish in the open air here, and attain to a size, and luxuriance which are rare in other parts of England. Why, I have seen myrtles, laurels, fuchsias, pomegranates, and hortensias forming hedges and growing on the windows and walls of many houses.
She flew up to the attic at a pace that took her breath away, and found the artist finishing the ornamentation of a box to be presented to the adored Hortense. The framework of the lid represented hydrangeas in French called Hortensias among which little Loves were playing.
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