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He was white all over white as the mountain-snow. As he galloped, his nostrils appeared open and red, his eyes stood prominently forth, his mane was tossed on both sides of his neck from his crest to his withers, and his long tail streamed horizontally behind him. His free, graceful movements like that of all his followers showed that no saddle had ever been laid across his back.

Awhile I listened to the lullaby of bees humming in the berceau, and watched, through the glass door and the tender, lightly-strewn spring foliage, Madame Beck and a gay party of friends, whom she had entertained that day at dinner after morning mass, walking in the centre-alley under orchard boughs dressed at this season in blossom, and wearing a colouring as pure and warm as mountain-snow at sun-rise.

The pages, at a sign from the Lady Margherita, had dipped their fronds of feather in the great vases of mountain-snow that stood between the columns, and waved them about the chamber; the queen followed their movements with a fleeting smile as this breath of coolness reached her, then fixed her eyes again, with a despairing look, upon the distant forest.

We went out of the shadow of the lemon-house on to the roof of the section below us. When we came to the brink of the roof I sat down. The padrone stood behind me, a shabby, shaky little figure on his roof in the sky, a little figure of dilapidation, dilapidated as the lemon-houses themselves. We were always level with the mountain-snow opposite.

At the foot of the garden was the river, a beautiful stream, fed by the mountain-snow, and rushing joyously over clear gravel beds, whose million-tinted pebbles dashed in the sunlight like so many opals. In some parts of Australia it is difficult to tell summer from winter; but up in this mountain-country each season had its own attractions.

A vague sweet fragrance was on the vesperal air; some subtle distillation of asters or jewel-weed or "mountain-snow," and the leafage of crimson sumac and purple sweet-gum and yellow hickory and the late ripening frost-grapes all in the culmination of autumnal perfection; more than one star gleamed whitely palpitant in a sky that was yet blue and roseate with a reminiscence of sunset; a restful sentiment, a brief truce stilled the guerilla's tempestuous pulse as he continued to stand beside his horse's head while the girl waited, seated on the saddle blanket.