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Updated: May 22, 2025
A second magnificent building, which, however, is more remarkable for magnitude than beauty of construction, lies near the sea-shore. It resembles an ordinary square house with several stories; and, as I was informed, was built as a country bathing-place of the emperor, but had not yet been made use of. This castle is called Oriander.
It is so hard for a man who has the magnificence of the fashionable clubs open to him day and night to beat into his brain the truth that in six months hence he may be lying in the debtors' prison at Baden; it is so difficult for a man who has had no greater care on his mind than to plan the courtesies of a Guards' Ball or of a yacht's summer-day banquet, to absolutely conceive the fact that in a year's time he will thank God if he have a few francs left to pay for a wretched dinner in a miserable estaminet in a foreign bathing-place.
The bathing-place was by a weir, where the green water plunged through the sluices, filling the stream with foam and sound; all about floated the exquisite reedy smell of warm river-water, bringing with it a sense of cool and unvisited places, hidden backwaters among green fields, where the willows leaned together, and the fish hung mute in the pools.
At 10 A.M. the band was playing in the three-story pagoda sort of tower at the bathing-place, and the three stories were crowded with female spectators. Below, under the bank, is a long array of bath-houses, and the shallow water was alive with floundering and screaming bathers.
It had always happened before that Miss Hoole found them and pointed them out to her; but this time she found a big one quite of herself, and there was a general scream of delight, "Lily has found a mushroom!" Then they reached the river, put the horses under the birch trees, and went to the bathing-place.
She passed in at the gate and went as usual to the kitchen door, while I stood drowsily contemplating the green expanse of growing crops in the valley before me. The day had grown as sleepy as myself. There were no noises except the hum of the unseen insects, and the distant rush of the water over the dams at our bathing-place. In a few minutes the old woman approached me again.
We passed through Vimereux, a small bathing-place four or five miles from Boulogne, and one or two other villages, then went through a wild desolate tract of sand-hills and plains and came upon the lighthouse, one of the most important of the coast a very powerful light that all inward-bound boats are delighted to see.
But once again he was disappointed. The trail led out through the grove to the rain- drenched pasture, where it disappeared, and, instead of one house, he saw three, half hidden in foliage and all facing in the opposite direction. They stood upon the crest of a hill fronting the road, and he realized that the pool might be the bathing-place for the inmates of one or all of them.
Indeed, my worthy Marie, overcome by my importunity, having selected what seemed to her a safe, and to me a very tame, bathing-place, in another and quieter part of the stream, I had every reason, from my experience of the difficulty of withstanding its powerful current there, to congratulate myself upon not having tried the experiment nearer to one of the "springs" of the lovely torrent, whose Indian name is the "Leaping Water."
When following some shy bird to its nest, or moving down toward the grove where are the brooklet and the birds' bathing-place, no matter how quietly one may approach, footsteps deadened by thick sand and no rustling garments to betray, the orchard oriole is sure to know it.
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