The road on the left bank of the Tepl is wild and overhung at points with
wooded steeps, when it leaves the town; but on the right it is bordered
with shops and restaurants a great part of its length. In leafy nooks
between these, uphill walks begin their climb of the mountains, from the
foot of votive shrines set round with tablets commemorating in German,
French, Russian, Hebrew, Magyar and Czech, the cure of high-well-borns of
all those races and languages. Booths glittering with the lapidary's work
in the cheaper gems, or full of the ingenious figures of the toy-makers,
alternate with the shrines and the cafes on the way to the Posthof, and
with their shoulders against the overhanging cliff, spread for the
passing crowd a lure of Viennese jewelry in garnets, opals, amethysts,
and the like, and of such Bohemian playthings as carrot-eating rabbits,
worsted-working cats, dancing-bears, and peacocks that strut about the
feet of the passers and expand their iridescent tails in mimic pride.
Burnamy got his charges with difficulty by the shrines in which they felt
the far-reflected charm of the crucifixes of the white-hot Italian
highways of their early travel, and by the toyshops where they had a
mechanical, out-dated impulse to get something for the children, ending
in a pang for the fact that they were children no longer.
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