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Updated: June 25, 2025
The camellias complain, the heliotropes murmur, all the tribe of tulips are in low spirits, for each family gathers in a perfect harvest of flowers every one remarks to the other "To-morrow is the fête Dieu, the feast of roses the favourite festival of the year."
The ground opens, and there springs up, on all sides, a veritable sea of vivid, variegated colour, scarlet, pink, and white geraniums; red, white and yellow roses; golden honeysuckle; bright-hued marigolds; purple pansies; pale forget-me-nots; wallflowers; sweet peas; many-tinted azaleas; showy hydrangeas; giant rhododendrons; foxgloves, buttercups, daisies, hollyhocks, and heliotropes; a floral host too varied to enumerate.
It is like an Aztec revel for its flowers: the great stairways, leading up and down between the rooms that glow with light and resound with the tones of flute and violin, are wound with shrubs where art conceals everything but the branch and blossom; doors are arched with palms and long banana leaves; flowers swing from lintel and window and bracket, stream from the pictures, crown the statues; sprays of dropping vines wreathe the chandeliers that shed the soft brilliance of wax-lights around them; mantels are covered with moss; tables are bedded with violets; tall vases overflow with roses and heliotropes, with cold camellias and burning geraniums; the orchestra is hidden with latticed bloom and bud; and yellow acacias and scarlet passion-flowers and a great white orchid with a honeyed breath encircle the fern-filled basin where a fountain plays.
A few delicate tea roses, some crimson blush roses, some pots of delicious purple heliotropes with spicy breath; two or three or four great double carnations; bunches of violets, sweetest of all; she wanted these! Then some azaleas, larger of course, to fill up the shelves and make a beautiful show of colour, as Norton desired.
We remember, among them, red and white roses, pansies, violets, heliotropes, sweet peas, gardenias, camelias, both calla and tiger lilies, honeysuckles, forget-me-nots, verbenas, pinks in a variety of colors, larkspur, jasmine, petunias, morning glories, tulips, scarlet geraniums, and others. Three military bands placed in central positions added spirit and interest to the suggestive occasion.
Standing with one foot on the terrace step, close to the marble vases where heliotropes swung their dainty lilac chalices against her shoulder, and the scarlet geraniums stared unabashed, Beryl's gaze wandered from the lovely park and ancient trees, to the unbroken facade of the gray old house; and as, in painful contrast she recalled the bare bleak garret room, where a beloved invalid held want and death at bay, a sudden mist clouded her vision, and almost audibly she murmured: "My poor mother!
She made huge bunches of them, which she pressed one by one against her breast. Then she sought the carnations, plucking them all, even to the buds; massing them together in big sheaves of white blossoms that suggested bowls of milk, and big sheaves of the red ones, that seemed like bowls of blood. Then, too, she sought the stocks, the patches of mirabilis, the heliotropes and the lilies.
They stood talking, not much, but in that wandering, obligatory way that precedes any undertaking. They were waiting for Arnold; he came in presently with a bunch of pale heliotropes. He always looked well and in character when dressed for some social event; it was as if he were made for this style of dress, not the style for him.
She had converted the over-skirt of her dress into an apron, now filled with bouquets from among the number showered upon her; and selecting one composed of pelargoniums and heliotropes, she placed it in the vase beneath her mother's picture, and laid the remainder in a circle around it. "Ah, mother! they praised your child; but your voice was missing. Would you too have been proud of me?
There we saw a luxuriant growth of subtropical vegetation, orange trees with leaves of dark, glossy green, date palms with bunches of unripe dates, palms with broad leaves, spreading pepper trees, and great ash trees whose roots protruded above the ground for unwary tourists to stumble over. The geraniums and heliotropes were of gigantic size, and many other flowering plants were unusually large.
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