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Those tall houses with sash windows without curtains; those ugly monuments, all in mourning with the dust and grime and black and greasy dirt; those flower-sellers at the corners of all the streets, with faces sad as the rain and bedraggled feathers in their hats and lamentable clothing; the black mud of the streets; the low sky; the funereal mirth of drunken women hanging on to men just as drunken; the wild dancing of dishevelled children round the street organs, as numerous as the omnibuses all that caused twenty-five years ago an indefinite suffering to a Parisian.

The high marble rooms of the office were cool and stuffy at the same time, and the spring sunshine without, the soft breeze from the sea, the call of the flower-sellers in the street, and the lazy murmur of the town had, in these shaded, musty, and parchment-smelling halls, diffused an atmosphere of laziness which inspired the clerks in question with an overwhelming desire to do nothing.

The part appointed for the flower-sellers, who passed in general for no better than they should be, was called the "myrtle-market." Aristoph. Three wonderfully-lovely girls, in white dresses of some half-transparent material, with colored borders, were seated together on low stools, binding roses, violets and orange-blossoms into one long wreath.

And there were "Italian Flower-Sellers," damsels with careful hair, two figures together, one blonde, the other as brunette as lampblack, the blonde in pink satin and blue slippers leaning against a pillar and smiling over the golden coins for which she had exchanged her posies; the brunette seated at her feet, weeping upon an unsold bouquet.

Lady Martin had already gone, feeling, no doubt, that the weight of public opinion was against her; and as a rush of business just then overwhelmed the flower-sellers, Toni had no time to dwell upon the recent little scene. But Mrs. Anstey looked for Toni in vain when five o'clock came.

The flower-sellers besieged the hurried passers-by, as well as those who paused at the shop-windows, and, devout Catholic as Montfanon was, he tasted, in the face of the picturesque scene of a beautiful morning in his favorite city, the pleasure of crowning that impression of a bright moment by a dream of eternity.

No, that can not be; I mean to see the spring. And I have seen it, in truth, though cut and tied into bouquets, for my aimless steps led me to the Place St. Sulpice, where the flower-sellers were. There were flowers in plenty, but very few people; it was already late.

In the train of these three every lover of horses vanished from the scene, with a number of Hippias' friends, and of flower-sellers, door-keepers, and ticket-holders-in short, of all who expected to derive special pleasure or profit from the games.

The part appointed for the flower-sellers, who passed in general for no better than they should be, was called the "myrtle-market." Aristoph. Three wonderfully-lovely girls, in white dresses of some half-transparent material, with colored borders, were seated together on low stools, binding roses, violets and orange-blossoms into one long wreath.

Flower-sellers, vendors of confetti, hawkers of papers, letters-out of chairs and benches, itinerant minstrels, perambulating cigar-merchants, pedlars, beggars, errand-boys, and a hundred other obscure traders, pick up, heaven knows how! enough in Carnival time to tide them over the dead summer-season.