A Wedding Trip by Emilia Pardo Bazán

The _châlet_ hired at Vichy by the families of Miranda and Gonzalvo bore the poetic name of "Châlet of the Roses. " In justification of its name, along its open-work balusters had been trained the airy festoons of a wilderness of climbing roses, at the extremities of whose branches languidly drooped the last roses of the season. Roses of a pale yellow contrasted with flame-hued Bengal roses; and dwarf-roses, of a warm flesh-tint, looked like diminutive faces, curiously peeping in at the windows of the _châlet_. In the peristyle grew in graceful confusion roses of all sorts and colors.

Pink Malmaison roses lifted themselves proudly on their stems; tea-roses dropped their leaves languidly; roses of Alexandria, beautiful and stately, poured from their cups their intoxicating perfume; moss-roses smiled ironically, with their carmine lips half hidden by their luxuriant green mustaches; white roses rivaled the snow with their cold pure beauty, their modest primness like that of artificial flowers. And among her lovely sisters the exotic _viridiflora_ hid her sea-green buds, as if ashamed of the strange lizard-like hue of her flowers, of her ugliness as a monstrosity, interesting only to the botanist.