Promontory

 

 

Golden dawn and shivering evening find our brig lying by opposite this

villa and its dependencies which form a promontory as extensive as Epirus

and the Peleponnesus, or as the large island of Japan, or as Arabia!

Fanes lighted up by the return of the _theoriai_; prodigious views of a

modern coast's defenses; dunes illustrated with flaming flowers and

bacchanalia; grand canals of Carthage and Embankments of a dubious

Venice; Etnas languidly erupting, and crevasses of flowers and of glacier

waters; washhouses surrounded by German poplars; strange parks with

slopes bowing down the heads of the Tree of Japan; and circular facades

of the "Grands" and the "Royals" of Scarborough and of Brooklyn; and

their railways flank, cut through, and overhang this hotel whose plan was

selected in the history of the most elegant and the most colossal

edifices of Italy, America, and Asia, and whose windows and terraces, at

the moment full of expensive illumination, drinks and breezes, are open

to the fancy of the travelers and the nobles who,-- during the day allow

all the tarantellas of the coast,-- and even the ritornels of the

illustrious valleys of art, to decorate most wonderfully the facades of

Promontory Palace.