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We were anxious to behold in their native site, the beautiful plants which Bose and Bredemeyer had collected during their journey to the continent, and which adorn the conservatories of Schoenbrunn and Vienna. It would have been painful to have touched at Cumana, or at Guayra, without visiting the interior of a country so little frequented by naturalists.
The work was thus begun and continued while I was still abroad, and during the time when I was making my tour with General Tom Thumb through the United States and Cuba. Elegant and appropriate furniture was made expressly for every room in the house. I erected expensive water-works to supply the premises. The stables, conservatories and out-buildings were perfect in their kind.
The palms for this purpose are very large and beautiful, four series of them being kept in the conservatories for this special purpose, each series being used one winter and then allowed to rest for three winters before it is brought out again. Under these palms the supper-tables are placed, and from fifteen hundred to two thousand people sit at these as the guests of the Czar and Czarina.
And on that chilly day, all thaw and fog, the regal mansion in the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy near the Boulevard de la Madeleine bloomed with the rarest flowers, for flowers were the greatest passion of the Baroness, who transformed the lofty, sumptuous rooms, littered with marvels, into warm and odoriferous conservatories, whither the gloomy, livid light of Paris penetrated caressingly with infinite softness.
He found that she winced at the mention of her orchids and ferns, they recalled the thought of her aunt's love for them, and she had not been in the conservatories for months. John said a word or two on the cost of keeping them up, and the need of prudence, with a view to providing for Arthur's children. It was the right chord.
Presently a glimpse of green country or of distant hills may be caught between the wider spaces of the houses, and frequent settings down increase the space between the passengers; gradually conservatories appear and conversation strikes up; then come the exclusiveness of villas, some detached and others running out at last into real pure green fields studded with trees and picturesque pot-houses, before one of which latter a sudden wheel round and a jerk announces the journey done.
He visited the conservatories of the Avenue de Chatillon and of the Aunay valley, and returned exhausted, his purse empty, astonished at the strange forms of vegetation he had seen, thinking of nothing but the species he had acquired and continually haunted by memories of magnificent and fantastic plants. The flowers came several days later.
The grounds were laid out, planted, and adorned with all the beauty that taste, wealth, and skill could produce. Orchards and vineyards were set out. Conservatories and pineries were erected. The negroes' squalid log-huts were replaced with neat stone cottages, and the shabby wooden fences by substantial stone walls.
He then showed them the large gold medal sent him; in 1800, from Paris, by the two hundred and fifty musicians who, on Christmas evening in that year, had performed "The Creation," and thereby delighted all Paris. Then followed many other medals from musical societies and conservatories, and valuable diamond rings, snuff-boxes, and breastpins from kings and emperors.
It happened to be unusually bulky for a small business, and unusually important. The Honourable Mr. Eaton was about to make some important alterations in his house and grounds. New conservatories were to be built, and an elaborate system of hot-water warming apparatus was to be put up both for house and garden.
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