The Empress Josephine’s Orangerie

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7249, 31 August 1933, Page 2

The Empress Josephine’s Orangerie

It stands, a dainty piece of Empire plaster-work, in the middle of the park called after it, in Strassburg, built by Napoleon for the Empress Josephine as a shelter for her beloved orange trees. The niches by the side of each long window are now empty of orange tubs, and filled instead with wooden seats on which mothers and their children take shelter from sudden summer showers, say 3 an exchange. A ball rolls from one end of the long tessellated hall to the othor, and a grubby urchin, brought here to enjoy a summer outing in tho park from one of the poorer parts of tho city, tumbles after it across the Empress’s floor. A young girl with her arm tucked into a young man's, pauses in the doorway between the white stuccoed Pinal's of the portico, and looks in wistfully at the seats, for it is very hot and she has walked a long way already. Her companion, seeing the place full of women and children, pulls her on impatiently, and together they disappear from view toward the ornamental lake across which a swan moves slowly. From the open dooTway of tho Orangerio one can seo the bronze statue of the goose-girl, typifying Alsace, with

hor bird bcsido her, and hor head weighed down with its great winged head-dress, turned inquiringly towards the lake. No one in the Qrangorio is wearing such a costume to-day. Only sometimes, on market day, for instance, will an old woman bo seen, drifting open-mouthed about tho streets of the city, and wearing the enormous black, butterfly-winged head-dress of her province. Tho child has caught tho ball and is now tussling for it on the ground with anothor pugilistic infant. The mother a young, pale-faced woman, looks up from her knitting and calls out something, but no one takes any notice. Her gaze then travels over tho smoothshaved lawns, tho rose-bods, and tho terrace restaurant, where richer peoplo can sit at little tables listening to tho band and watching tho swans as they pass up and down on tho lake below. Such luxuries as feeding at a restauiant are not for her, nor for any of tho others who have sought shelter from the blazing sun in the Orangcrio this afternoon. In the package by her side arc two madeleines, those sponge-cakes beloved by middle-class France, and a small bottle of lemonade. If the rumpus going on over the ball becomes more heated sho will bring out the cakes and thus produce peace. Although tho band blares from its enclosure, and restaurants and cafes dot each shady corner of the Orangcrio Gardens, the only shelter free to those who have no money, open to every casual passer-by, is the little gardenhouse that once belonged to an Empress!