Read "The Rush for the Spoil" by Émile Zola online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
On the return home, the carriage could only move slowly along amidst the mass of vehicles winding round the lake of the Bois de Boulogne. At one moment, the block became such that the horses were even brought to a standstill.
The sun was setting in the faint grey October sky, streaked with slender clouds on the horizon. A last ray, which came from above the distant shrubbery of the cascade, streamed across the roadway, bathing the long line of now stationary carriages in a pale ruddy light. The golden glimmers, the bright flashes from the wheels, seemed to have become fixed to the straw-coloured fillets, whilst the dark blue panels of the carriage reflected portions of the surrounding landscape. And, higher up, full in the ruddy light which illumined them from behind, and which gave a sparkle to the brass buttons of their overcoats folded over the back of the box-seat, the coachman and the footman, dressed in a livery consisting of dull blue coats, putty-coloured breeches, and black and yellow-striped waistcoats, sat erect, grave and patient, like well-trained lackeys, whose temper is above being ruffled by a block of vehicles.