about five o'clock in
the afternoon
I could picture what was taking place in some of those golden-gray old cities I had known : The Gardens of the Luxembourg when the horse-chestnuts were coming out in bloom , and the Château de Madrid in the Bois at the luncheon hour , or the Pre Catalan on a Sunday with heavenly sole in lemon and melted butter and a still more heavenly waltz as you sat eating _ fraises des bois _ smothered in thick _ crême d'Isigny _ . Or the Piazzi di Spagna on Easter Sunday with the murmur of Rome in your ears and the cars and carriages flashing through the green-gold shadows of the Pincio . Or Hyde Park in May , with the sun sifting through the brave old trees and flashing on the helmets of the Life Guards as the King goes by in a scarlet uniform with the blue Order of the Garter on his breast , or Park Lane on a glorious light-and-shadow afternoon in June and a dip into the familiar old Americanized clangor at the Cecil ; or Chinkie 's place in Devonshire about a month earlier , sitting out on the terrace wrapped in steamer-rugs and waiting for the moon to come up and the first nightingale to sing . Of Fifth Avenue shining almost bone-white in the clear December sunlight and the salted nuts and orange-blossom cocktails at Sherry 's , or the Plaza tea-room at about five o'clock in the afternoon with the smell of Turkish tobacco and golden pekoe and hot-house violets and Houbigant 's _ Quelque-fleurs _ all tangled up together . Or the City of Wild Parsley in March with a wave of wild flowers breaking over the ruins of Selinunte and the tumbling pillars of the Temple of Olympian Zeus lying time-mellowed in the clear Sicilian sunlight ! They were all lovely enough , and still are , I suppose , but it 's a loveliness in some way involved with youth . So the memory of those far-off gaieties , which , after all , were so largely physical , no longer touch me with unrest .