XV

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