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Updated: May 20, 2025
Below the window the great masses of the chestnut-trees and the lofty crests of the poplars waved in the breeze like forest plumes, their peaks touched by the sun setting in a sky of tender blue, while the shadowy twilight crept over the park where, through the branches, patches of yellow light, like golden and copper vapors, still gave evidence of the god of day.
Forests of immensely old chestnut-trees surround Bocognano on every side, so that you step from the village streets into the shade of woods that seem to have remained untouched for centuries.
I did not weary of this landscape, and was sorry when the first villa appeared. Another and then another showed between the chestnut-trees in bloom; and there were often blue vases on the steps and sometimes lanterns in metalwork hung from wooden balconies.
Near the chestnut-trees they will fill little pocket-like depressions in the ground with chestnuts; in a grain-field they carry the grain under stones; under some cover beneath cherry-trees they collect great numbers of cherry-pits. Hence, when cold weather comes, instead of staying at home like the chipmunk, they gad about hither and thither looking up their supplies.
The whole of Lady Ingleby's house party was assembled there, forming a picturesque group under the white and scarlet chestnut-trees. Beyond, on the beautifully kept turf of the court, an exciting set was in progress.
Under the chestnut-trees of the Bois de Boulogne, through long summer days, the two friends, sick of the noisy world about them, yet yearning to become its benefactors, gladly escaping from it, yet busy with schemes for its regeneration and happiness, at once misanthropes and philanthropists, amused and solaced themselves by imagining a perfect and simple state of society, in which the lessons of emulation and selfish ambition were never to be taught; where, on the contrary, the young were to obey their parents, and to prefer father, mother, brother, sister, wife, and friend to themselves.
Such a pretty walk it was, too! through a thicket of birches, down a little hill-side into a hollow full of hoary chestnut-trees, across a bubbling, dancing brook, and you came out upon the tiniest orchard in the world, a one-storied house with a red porch, and a great sweet-brier bush thereby; while up the hill-side behind stretched a high picket fence, enclosing huge trees, part of the same brook I had crossed here dammed into a pond, and a chicken-house of pretentious height and aspect, one of those model institutions that are the ruin of gentlemen-farmers and the delight of women.
The country became more woody; the road passed various small lakes, almost overgrown with water-lilies and shaded by old trees; the old-fashioned, indented gable-ends of the hall now peeped forth. They drove through an avenue of wild chestnut-trees; the stone pavement here threatened to smash the carriage axles. On the right lay the forge, through the open door of which flew the sparks.
The tops of the chestnut-trees have a whitish appearance, they being, I suppose, in bloom. Red raspberries are just through the season. Language, human language, after all, is but little better than the croak and cackle of fowls and other utterances of brute nature, sometimes not so adequate. July 16th.
But all at once a cooing sound made him look up, and he saw that he was passing through the garden of the Tuileries. A number of wood-pigeons, bridling their necks, were strutting over a lawn near by. Florent leant for a moment against the tub of an orange-tree, and looked at the grass and the pigeons steeped in sunshine. Right ahead under the chestnut-trees all was black.
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