Page 227 - les-miserables

says Moliere.
This was the state which the shepherd idyl, begun at five
o’clock in the morning, had reached at half-past four in the
afternoon. The sun was setting; their appetites were satis-
fied.
The Champs-Elysees, filled with sunshine and with peo-
ple, were nothing but light and dust, the two things of which
glory is composed. The horses of Marly, those neighing mar-
bles, were prancing in a cloud of gold. Carriages were going
and coming. A squadron of magnificent body-guards, with
their clarions at their head, were descending the Avenue
de Neuilly; the white flag, showing faintly rosy in the set-
ting sun, floated over the dome of the Tuileries. The Place
de la Concorde, which had become the Place Louis XV. once
more, was choked with happy promenaders. Many wore the
silver fleur-de-lys suspended from the white-watered ribbon,
which had not yet wholly disappeared from button-holes in
the year 1817. Here and there choruses of little girls threw to
the winds, amid the passersby, who formed into circles and
applauded, the then celebrated Bourbon air, which was des-
tined to strike the Hundred Days with lightning, and which
had for its refrain:—

“Rendez-nous notre pere de Gand,
Rendez-nous notre pere.’
‘Give us back our father from Ghent,
Give us back our father.’

Groups of dwellers in the suburbs, in Sunday array, some-

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