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Marble sculptures, much weather-stained, and generally broken-nosed, stood along these stately walks; there were many fountains gushing up into the sunshine; we likewise found a rich flower-garden, containing rare specimens of exotic flowers, and gigantic cactuses, and also an aviary, with vultures, doves, and singing birds.
Deep beds of earth inclosed in green cases line the sides, and an abundance of orange-trees, flowering shrubs, plants, and flowers, are placed in them. At the end of the terrace, the wall which bounds it has been painted in fresco, with a view of Italian scenery; and this wall forms the back of an aviary, with a fountain that plays in the centre.
It was a favourite custom of his majesty, who invariably rose betimes, to saunter in the park whilst the day was young and pass an hour or two in stroking the heads of his feathered favourites in the aviary, feeding the fowls in the pond with biscuits, and playing with the crowd of spaniels ever attending his walks.
The aviary had been converted into a drying-ground for their lingerie; they had suspended ropes from side to side, and thereon hung their week's wash amid all its "unavoidable destruction." Needless to say, the next day the Germans had the key. After they had taken all the best Chateau-Lafitte and all the rare wines Mr.
I opened the third door, and found a large aviary, paved with marble of several fine and uncommon colours. The trellis work was made of sandal wood and wood of aloes. It contained a vast number of nightingales, gold-finches, canary birds, larks, and other rare singing-birds, which I had never heard of; and the vessels that held their seed and water were of the most precious jasper or agate.
After courteously saluting the ladies present, Valerie subsided into a dull silence, from which she could not arouse herself; but her voice was not missed, since every visitor seemed anxious to talk rather than listen, and therefore kept up a chattering that would have carried off the palm in a contest with a village sewing-circle or aviary full of excited magpies.
As she passed the open door of the handsome dining-room, Kettle beckoned to her mysteriously. Mrs. Fortescue walked into the room and Kettle closed the door after her. "Miss Betty," whispered Kettle earnestly, "doan' you go into that there apiary," by which Kettle meant the aviary. "Miss Anita is in there with Mr.
Holmes, when I heard a shocking story of how he had turned a cat loose in an aviary, and I was so horrified at his brutal cruelty that I would have nothing more to do with him. She rummaged in a bureau, and presently she produced a photograph of a woman, shamefully defaced and mutilated with a knife. 'That is my own photograph, she said.
So Reuben fed the doves himself, and stroked their soft feathers, and washed out their little tin in which the water was put for them to drink; and he placed the food for them in its right corner, and he swept out the floor of the aviary, for he was small enough to stand upright within it, and he knew how to do it without frightening the birds.
The reader will recall his lovely poem, "My Aviary," which deals with the winged life of that pleasant prospect. I shared with him in the flock of wild-ducks which used to come into our neighbor waters in spring, when the ice broke up, and stayed as long as the smallest space of brine remained unfrozen in the fall.
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