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Along the terrace ran a path, by which Monsieur Auffray's study could be entered through a glass door; at the other end of the path was an arbor of grape vines and a fig-tree, beneath which stood a round table, a bench and some chairs, painted green. Pierrette's bedroom was above the study of her new guardian. Madame Lorrain slept in a cot beside her grandchild.
But there were breakers ahead. The next question asked if I was in favour of compulsory land purchase and small holdings. Of course I was not; but if I said so I knew I should rouse a dangerous storm, for the community were much bitten at the time with the "Vine and Fig-tree Fetish," as some one had happily described it.
We were at first without hopes of benefiting by our discovery; but as I was looking about, I observed a fig-tree with some ripe figs on it, which I at once collected; and on further search, Ned espied a herd of guinea-pigs nestling under the walls. To knock some of the little animals on the head, was the work of a minute.
In the stage beyond this the palm had been killed, and its dead carcass appeared between the big, winding vine-trunks; and later the palm had disappeared and the vines had united into a great fig-tree. Water stood in black pools at the foot of the murdered trees, and of the trees that had murdered them.
It is said by some, that they were exposed in a cradle, which, after floating for a time, was, by the water's retiring, left on dry ground; that a wolf, descending from the mountains to drink, ran, at the cry of the children, and fed them under a fig-tree, caressing and licking them as if they had been her own young, the infants hanging on to her as if she had been their mother, until Faus'tulus, the king's shepherd, struck with so surprising a sight, conveyed them home, and delivered them to his wife, Ac'ca Lauren'tia, to nurse, who brought them up as her own. 9.
He comes down in June, perhaps, and says something polite about the roses. "You ought to have seen them last year," says his host disparagingly, and the visitor represses with difficulty the retort, "You ought to have asked me down to see them last year." Or, perhaps, he comes down in August, and lingers for a moment beneath the fig-tree.
"At the master's command we put on our shoes, and our little band climbed the steep ascent that leads to the abbey. Midway, near a spreading fig-tree, we saw the cottage where Tiphaine Raguel, widow of Bertrand du Guesdin, lived in peril of the sea. "This dwelling is so small that it is a wonder that it was ever inhabited.
I thus passed hour after hour seated on a huge stone beneath a fig-tree, looking on that mingling of light and motion which we call the Sea. From time to time the sail of a fisherman's boat, or the smoke which hung like drapery above the pipe of a steamer, rose above the chord of the arc which formed the gulf, and afforded a relief to the monotony of the horizon.
Till the middle of the last century, the mountains round the valleys of Aragua were covered with forests. Great trees of the families of mimosa, ceiba, and the fig-tree, shaded and spread coolness along the banks of the lake.
In those lusty ages when the Kaisers lifted high the golden goblet of Aachen, and drank, elbow upward, the green-eyed wine of old romance, there lived, a bow-shot from the bones of the Eleven Thousand Virgins and the Three Holy Kings, a prosperous Rhinelander, by name Gottlieb Groschen, or, as it was sometimes ennobled, Gottlieb von Groschen; than whom no wealthier merchant bartered for the glory of his ancient mother- city, nor more honoured burgess swallowed impartially red juice and white under the shadow of his own fig-tree.
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