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Listening to those different voices, those foreign accents, incisive or stammering, glancing at those varying types of countenance, some uncivilized, passionate, unrefined, others over-civilized, faded, of the type that haunts the boulevards, over-ripe as it were, and observing the same varieties in the corps of servants, where "flunkeys," taken the day before from some office, insolent fellows, with the heads of dentists or bath-attendants, bustled about among the motionless Ethiopians, who shone like black marble torch-holders, it was impossible to say exactly where you were; at all events, you would never have believed that you were on Place Vendôme, at the very heart and centre of the life of our modern Paris.
He left his trenches shouting, "Vive la France! En avant! Aux armes, mes citoyens! A bas le Boche!" "Attention! Are you ready? Fire!" commanded our General. Bing! bang! a veritable tornado of over-ripe tomatoes deluged the astonished oncomers, who hesitated an instant and then fell back.
I forgive him for being like an over-ripe Orleans plum, and for not saying a word, good or bad, the day we met him at Mr. Morrit's. At Dunkeld, alas! we bade adieu to the dear Highlands. I have not time now to tell you of Killiecrankie and Dundee's Stone. Arrived at Perth at nine o'clock: tea, with silver urn and silver candlesticks, and all luxurious: cold chicken, ham, and marmalade inclusive.
In the garden there were several plum trees, and from them there fell, onto the warm earth, over-ripe plums of the same variety as those drying on the ancient roofs. The old arbor was trellised with grape vines, and legions of flies and bees feasted upon the musky, fragrant grapes. The extreme end of the garden, for it was a very large one, was overgrown like an ordinary field with alfalfa.
The trees where I had sought shelter were old, and grew here and there, singly or in scattered groups: it was a pretty wilderness of mingled tree, shrub and flower. I was surprised to find here some very large and ancient-looking fig-trees, and numbers of wasps and flies were busy feeding on a few over-ripe figs on the higher branches.
Besides these things a great physical change took place; but before I speak of that, it will be best to relate what effects were produced upon animals and men. In the first years after the fields were left to themselves, the fallen and over-ripe corn crops became the resort of innumerable mice.
It was full from cover to cover of coloured photographs of women. There were dark girls, fair girls, auburn girls, every type of womanhood to be met with under Northern skies; they ranged from slim girls in their teens to over-ripe beauties, whose principal attraction was the redundance of their figures.
The shipment of a heavy cargo of bananas presents a very busy scene that is not soon forgotten, the thousands of bunches of fruit that are either piled up on the wharf or that are being unloaded from railway trucks, small steamers or sometimes Chinese junks, forming such a mass of fruit that one often wonders how it is possible to consume it all before it becomes over-ripe.
And you, leave ye the sweet fountain of Hyetis and Byblis, and ye that dwell in the steep home of golden Dione, ye Loves as rosy as red apples, strike me with your arrows, the desired, the beloved; strike, for that ill-starred one pities not my friend, my host! And yet assuredly the pear is over-ripe, and the maidens cry 'alas, alas, thy fair bloom fades away!
Or, maybe, the scene passes on a terrace overlooking a dark river. Behind the domes and minarets a yellow moon dreams like an odalisque, her hand on the circle of her breast; and through the torrid silence of the garden, through the odour of over-ripe fruit and the falling sound thereof, comes the melancholy warble of a fountain.
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