United States or Bermuda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Whenever I passed into the shade, immediately from too warm I became too cold. The sunshine was like hot air; the shade, like the touch of cold steel, sharp, hard, yet exhilarating. From the broad street of the quays, narrow, thread-like lanes pierced up between the edifices, calling themselves streets, yet so narrow, that a person in the middle could almost touch the houses on either hand.
Then of a sudden the low, ceaseless hum of ten thousand voices is exchanged for a loud cheer, and the bands begin to play, and the royal carriages, escorted by a running crowd, pass along the quays; and wherever the throng is thickest, you can tell that Victor Emmanuel is to be found, with Ricasoli by his side.
There is not time or opportunity for such a process at Porkopolis, and the first notification which the inhabitants receive of the massacre is the thousand barrels of pork on the quays, ready to be conveyed to the Atlantic cities, for exportation to the European markets.
The gay and animated quays of the city covered with foot-passengers, and with all the varied exhibitions of industrious occupation, which, from the warmth of the climate, are carried on in the open air; the long and splendid front of the Louvre and Thuilleries; the bold projection of the Palais des Arts, of the Hotel de la Monnaie, and other public buildings on the opposite side of the river; the beautiful perspective of the bridges, adorned by the magnificent colonnade which fronts the Palace of the Legislative Body; and the lofty picturesque buildings of the centre of Paris surrounding the more elevated towers of Notre Dame, form a scene, which, though less perfect, is more striking, and more characteristic, than the scene from the centre of the Place Louis Quinze, which has been just described.
The double windows of the big office overlooked the quays of Nikolaieff and the desk was beside them; so that the vice-consul had only to turn his head to see from his chair the wide river and its traffic, with the great grain-steamers, like foster-children thronging at the breast of Russia, waiting their turn for the elevators, and the gantries of the shipyards standing like an iron filigree against the pallor of the sky.
The cannon were placed at the entrance of the Faubourgs, at the palace of the Tuileries, on the quays and on the bridges, for the defence of the capital against the invasion of troops, which was expected every moment.
And when he had reached the quays again, he thought of going home to see whether his picture was really so very bad. But the mere idea made him tremble all over. His studio seemed a chamber of horrors, where he could no more continue to live, as if, indeed, he had left the corpse of some beloved being there.
A gorgeous procession set forth by the "Netherlandish Academy," another chamber of rhetoric, and filled with those emblematic impersonations so dear to the hearts of Netherlanders, had been sweeping through all the canals and along the splendid quays of the city. The Maid of Holland, twenty feet high, led the van, followed by the counterfeit presentment of each of her six sisters.
Only he ostentatiously said that it would be well to dismantle a few fortresses, spoke at length of the necessity of pavements and quays at Paris, and said in two words to Turenne that he might perhaps be sent to the army in Italy, to seek his baton as marechal from Prince Thomas.
"It is not I that would rob her of her porter!" Marianne thought, as she walked away from Rue La Fontaine. Evening was now darkening the gray streets. A faint bluish mist was rising over the river and spreading like breath over the quays.
Word Of The Day