OUR CITY GARDENS 



a-hum with bees. Yonder, where the house-fronts are richer 

 and more regular, would be a square of chestnut-trees, whose 

 opulent, heavy, thick, almost black tresses would droop to 

 a man's height. Further still, among those pillared man- 

 sions, would stand an open space crowded with plane-trees; 

 but I do not mean the plane-tree handled as we mishandle 

 it in our northern countries, where we know nothing of its 

 beauty. I mean the plane-tree of the towns and villages 

 of the South, where they pollard it when it reaches twelve or 

 fifteen feet in height. They thus obtain enormous, massive, 

 thickset trunks, splendidly scaled with gold and oxydized cop- 

 per, which, at one time, as in the Cours Mirabeau at Aixen- 

 Provence, dart forcibly towards the sky to create fairy-like 

 plumed naves in the blue and, at another, as in the Alices 

 d'Azemar at Draguignan, weave a low vault, magical and 

 cool as a submarine grotto, through which the sun can hardly 

 contrive to slip a stray crystal dart that breaks in dazzling 

 shivers on the flagstones. 



9 



Let us not forget the hornbeam, which is so docile, nor 

 its brother the elm, nor the beech: all three are ex- 



c 15 ] 



