h could be heard. It was Dom Balaguere,
of course, in the middle of his third low mass.

THE ORANGES

A FANTASY.

In Paris, oranges have the sorrowful look of windfalls gathered from
beneath the trees. At the time they get to you, in the dreary middle of
a rainy, cold winter, their brilliant skins, and their strong
perfume--or so they seem to your Parisian mediocre tastes--imbue them
with a foreign flavour, a hint of Bohemia. Throughout the foggy
afternoons, they line the pavements, squashed together in wheelbarrows,
lit by the low light of lanterns and wrapped in red paper. A thin,
repetitive shout of:

--Valencian oranges, two sous a piece!

accompanies them, often drowned by the sound of cavorting carriages and
boisterous buses.

For most Parisians, this fruit, gathered far away, and unremarkably
round, with just a clipping of greenery from the tree, reminds them of
sweets and desserts. The tissue they're wrapped in, and the parties at
which they make their appearance, add to this impression. Come January,
thousands of oranges are on the streets and their discarded skins are
in the muddy gutters everywhere, looking as though some giant Christmas
tree had shaken its branches of artificial fruit all over Paris.
There's just about nowhere free of oranges; they are in the carefully
arranged shop windows, sorted and prepared; outside prison and hospital
gates, among the packets of biscuits and the stacks of apples, and in
front of entrances to dances and Sunday street shows. Their exquisite
perfume mixes variously with the smell of gas, the noise of old
violins, and the dust in the gods at the theatre. It's easy to forget
that it takes orange trees to make oranges, for when the fruit arrives
from the Midi, by their thousands of boxfuls, the tree itself, pruned
and unrecognisable, is hidden in a warm greenhouse for the winter and
makes only a brief summer appearance in public gardens in Paris.

To really appreciate oranges, you have to see them in their natural
setting; in the Balearics, Sardinia, Corsica, and Algeria; in the sunny
blue skies of the warm Mediterranean. I can recall with great pleasure
a small orchard of orange trees, at the gates of Blidah, just such a
place where their true beauty could be seen! Amongst the dark, glossy,
lustred leaves, the fruits had the brilliance of stained glass windows
and perfumed the air all around with the same magnificent aura that
usually envelops gorgeous flowe