Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
"Vive l'Empereur!" and waved his smoking candle. The Emperor was convulsed with laughter. I, who sat behind him, could see his shoulders shaking. The ball of the plebiscite was the most splendid thing I ever saw. The architects and decorators had outdone themselves. The gardens of the Tuileries beyond the fountain had been hedged in by orange-trees, and other large trees moved there in their tubs.
Like a young she-goat she would dash off with graceful, tripping bounds between the rows of orange-trees, and su señoria, the member from Alcira, would give chase with all his might, his nostrils quivering and his eyes ablaze. "Let's see if he can catch you!" the mother would call, with a laugh. "Run and let him try to catch you!"
Here without question is a most pleasant city, with acacia avenues and white houses and full-bosomed abundant orange-trees hanging their golden fruits. Thus happily bowered, merchants and bankers pursue their avocations, and shopkeepers display their wares in a pleasant array of modern shops.
There were little shady summer-houses where one could sit and dream, and watch the blue sky and the palms and the feathery pepper trees drooping with their coral berries, and the golden orange-trees and the wisteria and the great gorgeous splash of purple bougainvillea above the Moorish arches of the hotel.
These joyous promenaders advanced with cries, sports, endless jests, through the fields of maize and of alfalfa, through the groves of banana, whose fruits hung to the ground; they traversed those beautiful alamedas, planted with willows, and forests of citron, and orange-trees, whose intoxicating perfumes were mingled with the wild fragrance from the mountains.
could for the time sit still and be happy. The orange-trees yielded other things beside shadow, though perhaps nothing better than that. They were resplendent with fruit, and on my earlier visits were also in bloom. One did not need to climb the hill to learn the fact. For an out-of-door sweetness it would be hard, I think, to improve upon the scent of orange blossoms.
This double error became an irresistible reality, and by one of the incomprehensible transports of youth, he bounded from his hiding-place, and with two strides, at the risk of being seen, at the risk of alarming Valentine, at the risk of being discovered by some exclamation which might escape the young girl, he crossed the flower-garden, which by the light of the moon resembled a large white lake, and having passed the rows of orange-trees which extended in front of the house, he reached the step, ran quickly up and pushed the door, which opened without offering any resistance.
Before his closed eyes a dark veil would begin to unroll as if the moist, cellar-like gloom in which the Chamber is always plunged, had thickened suddenly, and against this curtain, like a cinema dream, rows of orange-trees would come into view, and a blue house with open windows; and pouring through the windows a stream of notes from a soft voice, ever so sweet, singing lieder and ballads as an accompaniment to the hard, sonorous paragraphs snapping from the Premier's teeth.
On the farther side of the orange-trees were the gardens, fenced in with low walls of rough stone, and the orchard planted with standard fruit-trees, and beyond these again the oxen and ostrich kraals, the latter full of long-necked birds.
There is a large garden in front, in which many English fruit-trees have been set, and grow fast amongst the plants of the tropics and the orange-trees of Southern Europe.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking