Page:Des Grieux, The Prelude to Teleny.djvu/16

 menageries of cats and poodles instead of tigers and lions.

Now the yard is all but empty, for there is only a shabby round-about in it, and even that is enjoying its mid-day siesta, all covered up, to protect the fierce-looking, leopard-spotted-horses and the garish carriages from the scorching rays of the sun in its zenith.

The only living creatures seen in this little Sahara of dust and sand, are a young man—the owner of the merry-ho-round—and his mongrel dog. The youth—back-propped against the pyramidal mass of tattered canvas, with his bare legs stretched on a bit of matting—is whiling away his time in noonday dreams.

Visions of love-awaking females flit before his drooping eye-lids, showing him such sights as might have once been seen in some cytherean temple.

All the girls whom he evokes are young and of entrancing beauty, but, unlike himself,—for love delights in contraries—most of them are slender, frail, as fair as moon-breams, as pliable as willow-boughs, as lithe as