The things we do!

Suppose then, in the quaint old garden of the Hotel de Florac, two young
people are walking up and down in an avenue of lime-trees, which are
still permitted to grow in that ancient place. In the centre of that
avenue is a fountain, surmounted by a Triton so grey and moss-eaten, that
though he holds his conch to his swelling lips, curling his tail in the
arid basin, his instrument has had a sinecure for at least fifty years;
and did not think fit even to play when the Bourbons, in whose time he
was erected, came back from their exile. At the end of the lime-tree
avenue is a broken-nosed damp Faun, with a marble panpipe, who pipes to
the spirit ditties which I believe never had any tune. The perron of the
hotel is at the other end of the avenue; a couple of Caesars on either
side of the door-window, from which the inhabitants of the hotel issue
into the garden--Caracalla frowning over his mouldy shoulder at Nerva, on
to whose clipped hair the roofs of the grey chateau have been dribbling
for ever so many long years.


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