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Updated: June 27, 2025
I was glad to get away, and glad when we had walked through the grottoes where Eusebius wrote, and Jerome fasted, and Joseph prepared for the flight into Egypt, and the dozen other distinguished grottoes, and knew we were done. The Church of the Nativity is almost as well packed with exceeding holy places as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself.
Every fir and spruce and hemlock had gone to building fairy grottoes as the snow packed their lower branches, under which all sorts of wonders and beauties might be hidden, to say nothing of the wild things for whom Nature had been building innumerable tents of white and green as they slept. The silence was absolute, the forest's unconscious tribute to the Wonder Worker.
And the old monk raised the psalm, "Quare fremunt gentes," and his voice rose and fell through the flowery recesses and dripping grottoes of the old gorge, sad and earnest like the protest of the few and feeble of Christ's own against the rushing legions of the world.
And then, going on to the ancient works in marble and also to the grotesques in the grottoes under the ground, which pleased him through their novelty, he learned the methods of working in stucco, gaining his bread meanwhile by grievous labour, and enduring every hardship in order to become excellent in his profession.
As for the great salons, where the panels with paintings of famous subjects were fading in the autumn fogs, as for the ponds overrun with water-lilies, the grottoes, the stone bridges, he cared for them only because of the admiration of visitors, and because of such elements was composed that thing which so flattered his vanity as an ex-dealer in cattle a chateau!
The woods had become shrubberies, through which peeped the thatched roofs of rustic summerhouses, mazes, artificial waterfalls, grottoes, and ruins; all the dread handiwork of the rustic decorator burst, superabundant, upon our sight, with shy odors of beer and cooking.
This is why the walls stand there as richly ornamented as the sea and its helpmeet, the wind, have been able to effect. You'll find steep ravines that are deeply chiselled in the mountain's sides; and black crags that have become smooth and shiny under the constant lashing of the winds. There are solitary rock-columns that spring right up out of the water, and dark grottoes with narrow entrances.
"Ali," said he, in a voice that sounded strangely in Zuleika's ear, "is everything in readiness?" The faithful Nubian, scarcely less affected than his master, bowed affirmatively. "Then farewell, ye grottoes of Monte-Cristo!" cried the Count, excitedly. "Farewell forever!" He hastily mounted the stairway, almost dragging Zuleika with him. Ali remained below.
The garden was ornamented with artificial rocks, studded with flowering shrubs, with great taste. There were two or three grottoes, in one of which was a joss; and an arbour of lilacs and laburnums, in full bloom, gave a charming appearance to the whole. Thanking the Chinaman for his civility, we went away, much pleased with the mandarin's country retreat.
The latter contain no fewer than two hundred and twenty-six domes, seven rivers, eight cataracts, thirty two wells of unknown depth, and an immense lake which extends over six or seven leagues, the limit of which has never been reached by explorers. I know these Kentucky grottoes, having visited them, as many thousands of tourists have done.
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