huge winter garden full of tall, tropical trees,
sheltering clumps of rare flowers. Penetrating beneath this somber
greenery, through which the light streamed like a flood of silver, they
breathed the warm odor of damp earth, and an air heavy with perfumes. It
was a strange sensation, at once sweet, unwholesome, and pleasant, of a
nature that was artificial, soft, and enervating. They walked on carpets
exactly like moss, between two thick clumps of shrubs. All at once Du
Roy noticed on his left, under a wide dome of palms, a broad basin of
white marble, large enough to bathe in, and on the edge of which four
large Delft swans poured forth water through their open beaks. The
bottom of the basin was strewn with golden sand, and swimming about in
it were some enormous goldfish, quaint Chinese monsters, with projecting
eyes and scales edged with blue, mandarins of the waters, who recalled,
thus suspended above this gold-colored ground, the embroideries of the
Flowery Land. The journalist halted with beating heart. He said to
himself: "Here is luxury. These are the houses in which one ought to
live. Others have arrived at it. Why should not I?"

He thought of means of doing so; did not find them at once, and grew
irritated at his powerlessness. His companion, somewhat thoughtful, did
not speak. He looked at her in sidelong fashion, and again thought: "To
marry this little puppet would suffice."

But Susan all at once seemed to wake up. "Attention!" said she; and
pushing George through a group which barred their way, she made him turn
sharply to the right.

In the midst of a thicket of strange plants, which extended in the air
their quivering leaves, opening like hands with slender fingers, was
seen the motionless figure of a man standing on the sea. The effect was
surprising. The picture, the sides of which were hidden in the moving
foliage, seemed a black spot upon a fantastic and striking horizon. It
had to be carefully looked at in order to understand it. The frame cut
the center of the ship in which were the apostles, scarcely lit up by
the oblique rays from a lantern, the full light of which one of them,
seated on the bulwarks, was casting upon the approaching Savior. Jesus
was advancing with his foot upon a wave, which flattened itself
submissively and caressingly beneath the divine tread. All was dark
about him. Only the stars shone in the sky. The faces of the apostles,
in the vague light of the lantern, seemed