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"O evening sun of July, how, at this hour thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far out on the silent main; on balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high rouged Dames of the palace are even now dancing with double-jacketed Hussar-officers: and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hôtel de Ville."

I wish she wouldn't, for I really need it, but I must get all the wear I expect to have out of it in the next two days, for by the end of the week, if these attentions continue, that Charvet tie will belong to Bee. Last night, as soon as we arrived and had our dinner, we went to the Orangerie. This great park with myriads of walks is one of the most attractive things about Strasburg.

They waved from the Imperial Palace, the public library, the large and excellent military hospitals, the schoolhouses, hotels, and private residences. The Orangerie is thronged with convalescent wounded, and when hunger directed my steps to the extensive Park Restaurant I found it, too, converted into a hospital. Even the large concert room was crowded with cots.

"On Wednesday, May 31, we were despatched to Versailles to be examined at the orangerie. The orangerie is about seven hundred feet long and forty broad, including two wings at either end. It is flagged with stone, on which the dust accumulates in great quantities. According to my experience, it is bitterly cold at night, and very hot in the daytime.

Some of the madmen were dangerous, and made attempts to take the lives of their companions; others did nothing but shout and scream day and night. The second night we passed in the orangerie the Englishman and I thought we had secured a place where we might lie down and sleep in the side gallery; but at midnight we were attacked by one of the most dangerous of the madmen.

Entering Orangerie Bay, we anchored off the village of Daunai, from which the whole district takes its name. When here, our Chinese cook lost his knife, and, spotting the thief, determined to have it; but our captain prevented him from jumping into one of the canoes, and so avoided trouble. There were over one hundred canoes round the vessel, and altogether over four hundred men.

The fact that it costs something like ten thousand francs to "play" these fountains seems to be the chief memory which one retains of them in operation, unless it be the crowds which make the going and coming so uncomfortable. The Orangerie lies just below the terrace of the Parterre du Midi, and a thousand or more non-bearing orange trees are scattered about.

For by some whim of fate Madame Roland was executed on the very scaffold to which her envenomed writings had driven Marie Antoinette. A spectre that impresses as wearing rags under a gorgeous robe, lurks among the foliage of the quiet bosquet beyond the orangerie.

While we were talking Count Arco informed me that there were twenty six officers in the chateau itself and one hundred and twenty soldiers quartered round in the different pavilions, farm-houses, ateliers, and I think he said about fifty in the orangerie. Presently an orderly appeared and conducted me to my rooms, which had evidently been hurriedly evacuated, but they looked quite nice and clean.

But Bee only says that when she has asked me some stupid date that nobody ever knows or ever did know except in a history class. The next day after our evening at the Orangerie, at half after eleven, we went to the Cathedral to see the clock. It only performs all its functions at noon, and as there is always a crowd of tourists about it, we went early.