ugh the Avenue Velasquez and entered the gilded and
monumental gate that serves as a sign and an entrance to that exquisite
jewel of a park, displaying in the heart of Paris its verdant and
artificial beauty, surrounded by a belt of princely mansions.

Along the wide walks, which unroll their massive and artistic curves
through grassy lawns, throngs of people, sitting on iron chairs, watch
the passers; while in the little paths, deep in shade and winding like
streams, groups of children crawl in the sand, run about, or jump the
rope under the indolent eyes of nurses or the anxious watchfulness
of mothers. Two enormous trees, rounded into domes, like monuments of
leaves, the gigantic horse-chestnuts, whose heavy verdure is lighted up
by red and white clusters, the showy sycamores, the graceful plane-trees
with their trunks designedly polished, set off in a charming perspective
the tall, undulating grass.

The weather was warm, the turtle-doves were cooing among the branches,
and flying to meet one another from the tree-tops, while the sparrows
bathed in the rainbow formed by the sunshine and the spray thrown over
the smooth turf. White statues on their pedestals seemed happy in the
midst of the green freshness. A little marble boy was drawing from his
foot an invisible thorn, as if he had just pricked himself in running
after the Diana fleeing toward the little lake, imprisoned by the woods
that screened the ruins of a temple.

Other statues, amorous and cold, embraced one another on the borders of
the groves, or dreamed there, holding one knee in the hand. A cascade
foamed and rolled over the pretty rocks; a tree, truncated like a
column, supported an ivy; a tombstone bore an inscription. The stone
shafts erected on the lawns hardly suggest better the Acropolis than
this elegant little park recalled wild forests. It is the charming
and artificial place where city people go to look at flowers grown in
hot-houses, and to admire, as one admires the spectacle of life at the
theater, that agreeable representation of the beauties of nature given
in the heart of Paris.

Olivier Bertin had come almost every day for years to this favorite spot
to look at the fair Parisians moving in their appropriate setting. "It
is a park made for toilettes," he would say; "Badly dressed people are
horrible in it." He would rove about there for hours, knowing all the
plants and all the habitual visitors.

He now strolled beside Annette alo