Page 224 - les-miserables

called the King’s Square to see a newly arrived plant from
India, whose name escapes our memory at this moment,
and which, at that epoch, was attracting all Paris to Saint-
Cloud. It was an odd and charming shrub with a long stem,
whose numerous branches, bristling and leafless and as fine
as threads, were covered with a million tiny white rosettes;
this gave the shrub the air of a head of hair studded with
flowers. There was always an admiring crowd about it.
After viewing the shrub, Tholomyes exclaimed, ‘I offer
you asses!’ and having agreed upon a price with the own-
er of the asses, they returned by way of Vanvres and Issy.
At Issy an incident occurred. The truly national park, at
that time owned by Bourguin the contractor, happened to
be wide open. They passed the gates, visited the manikin
anchorite in his grotto, tried the mysterious little effects of
the famous cabinet of mirrors, the wanton trap worthy of a
satyr become a millionaire or of Turcaret metamorphosed
into a Priapus. They had stoutly shaken the swing attached
to the two chestnut-trees celebrated by the Abbe de Bernis.
As he swung these beauties, one after the other, producing
folds in the fluttering skirts which Greuze would have found
to his taste, amid peals of laughter, the Toulousan Tholomy-
es, who was somewhat of a Spaniard, Toulouse being the
cousin of Tolosa, sang, to a melancholy chant, the old ballad
gallega, probably inspired by some lovely maid dashing in
full flight upon a rope between two trees:—

“Soy de Badajoz, “Badajoz is my home,
Amor me llama, And Love is my name;

224 Les Miserables