fellow-loungers

Updated: May 29, 2025

In addition to which, when the garden is in the Italian manner, with flowers rather remarkably omitted, as too flimsy and easy and cheap, and without lawns that are too smart, paths that are too often swept and shrubs that are too closely trimmed, though with a fanciful formalism giving style to its shabbiness, and here and there a dusky ilex-walk, and here and there a dried-up fountain, and everywhere a piece of mildewed sculpture staring at you from a green alcove, and just in the right place, above all, a grassy amphitheatre curtained behind with black cypresses and sloping downward in mossy marble steps when, I say, the place possesses these attractions, and you lounge there of a soft Sunday afternoon, the racier spectacle of the streets having made your fellow-loungers few and left you to the deep stillness and the shady vistas that lead you wonder where, left you to the insidious irresistible mixture of nature and art, nothing too much of either, only a supreme happy resultant, a divine <i>tertium quid</i>: under these conditions, it need scarce be said the revelation invoked descends upon you.

Henry James - Italian Hours

Longueville had begun to take his friend's dilemma very seriously indeed. The girl was certainly a curious study. The evening drew to a close and the crowd of Bernard's fellow-loungers dispersed.

Henry James - Confidence