Towards democracy

436 Towards Democracy

The band, beneath its awning, plays; carriages drive up, and automatic cars with dusty occupants arrive; the new- © comers alight and ascend the steps of the Casino; fashionable women are in evidence, some carrying long roulette-purses with chains ;

Girls walk about singly or in pairs—pale, with carefully set profiles, lips, hair, and with immense hats and choicecolored costumes, orange-red or primrose or lavender or dead-white ;

The knots, the groups, form and re-form; the waiters hurry to and fro; while in a corner with easel and palette an artist takes a sketch of the whole scene.

And still the sun nears its setting.

he air floats over, with the delicious scent of orange- ~

blossom and mimosa from the gardens; the shadows form in

blue folds on the distant mountains, the rocks overhead stand

sturdier, more and more bastion-like, as though an earth-shock might tumble them on the crowd ;

In the little harbour the wharfmen, with dusty sashes round their waists, are coaling a great white yacht, already haif lost in shadow ;

Along the shore in a green high-prowed boat some fishermen row and drop their seine net in the same old fashion of centuries ;

The peasant climbs his terraces of olive, the goatherd looks down from his high perch among the rocks, and hears the faint strains of the band and catches the glance of the

dresses.