Pergola

By the little garden pergola open to the winds some fluttered peacocks were blotted nervelessly amid the dripping trees, their heads sunk back beneath their wings: while in the pergola itself, like a fallen storm-cloud, lolled a negress, her levelled, polecat eyes semi-veiled by the nebulous alchemy of the rainbow.

While both pergolas and arbors are most dramatic cloaked in climbing, flowing plants, only a pergola will stand naked as a piece of architecture.

The thick vegetation met overhead, interlacing into a natural pergola, and through this tunnel of verdure in a golden twilight flowed the green, pellucid river, beautiful in itself, but marvelous from the strange tints thrown by the vivid light from above filtered and tempered in its fall.

When I first saw the movie, Chocolat, my favorite element wasn't the plot or the character development or even the cinematography. It was the cloth-draped pergola under which a very special birthday dinner was served.