into two parts--the sea town lying on the shore; and the
upper town, joined to it by a forest of motionless palm-trees, with
upright stem and falling crown--like green rockets, springing into the
blue with their thousand feathers.

The insupportable heat, the overtired horses, forced the traveller to
stop for a couple of hours at one of those great hotels which line the
road, and bring every November into this little town, so marvellously
sheltered, the luxurious life and cosmopolitan animation of an
aristocratic wintering place. But at this time of year there was no one
in the sea town of Bordighera but fishermen, invisible at this hour. The
villas and hotels seemed dead, their blinds and shutters closed.
They took Paul through long, cool, and silent passages to a great
drawing-room facing north, which seemed to be part of the suites let
for the season, whose doors communicated with the other rooms. White
curtains, a carpet, the comfort demanded by the English even when
travelling, and outside the windows, which the hotel-keeper opened
wide to tempt the traveller to a longer stay, a splendid view of the
mountain. An astonishing quiet reigned in this great deserted inn, with
neither manager, nor cook, nor waiters--the whole staff coming only
in the winter--and given up for domestic needs to a local spoil-sauce,
expert at a _stoffato_, a _risotto_; also to two stablemen, who clothed
themselves at meal-time with the dress-coat and white tie of office.
Happily, de Gery was only going to remain there for an hour or two, to
rest his eyes from the overpowering light, his head from the dolorous
grip of the sun.

From the divan where he lay, the admirable landscape, diversified with
light and trembling leaves, seemed to descend to his window by stages
of different greens, where scattered villas shone white, and among
them that of Maurice Trott, the banker, recognisable by its capricious
architecture and the height of its palms.

The Levantine house, whose gardens came up to the windows of the hotel,
had sheltered for some months an artistic celebrity, the sculptor
Brehat, who was dying of consumption, and owed the prolonging of his
existence to this princely hospitality. The neighbourhood of this dying
celebrity--of which the hotel-keeper was proud, and which he would have
liked to charge in the bill--the name of Brehat, which de Gery had so
often heard pronounced with admiration in Felicia Ruys's studio, brought
back his th