"
Nice is Tomi to this Ovid, but he makes the best of it, and sends to
the editor of the Moniteur letters much more diverting than the
"Tristia." To tell the truth, he never overcomes his amazement at
being out of Paris streets, and in a glade of the lower Alps he
loves to be reminded of his dear city of pleasure. Only under the
olives of Monaco, those solemn and ancient trees, he feels what
surely all men feel who walk at sunset through their shadow--the
memory of a mysterious twilight of agony in an olive garden.
"Et ceux-ci, les pales oliviers, n'est-ce pas de ces heures desolees
ou, comme torture supreme, le Sauveur acceptait en son ame
l'irreparable misere du doute, n'est-ce pas alors qu'il ont appris
de lui e courber le front sous le poids imperieux des souvenirs?"
The pages which M. De Banville consecrates to the Villa Sardou,
where Rachel died, may disenchant, perhaps, some readers of Mr.
Matthew Arnold's sonnet. The scene of Rachel's death has been
spoiled by "improvements" in too theatrical taste. All these notes,
however, were made many years ago; and visitors of the Riviera,
though they will find the little book charming where it speaks of
seas and hills, will learn that France has greatly changed the city
which she has annexed. As a practical man and a Parisian, De
Banville has printed (pp. 179-81) a recipe for the concoction of the
Marseilles dish, bouillabaisse, the mess that Thackeray's ballad
made so famous.
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