NEWS OF SPRING 



impertinence of the roses that climb up 

 to them to bear witness to life, they 

 stripped themselves for their winter 

 sleep. Sombre and grim and bare as the 

 dead, they await the Spring that bursts 

 forth around them; and, by a strange 

 and excessive reaction, they wait for it 

 longer than under the harsh, gloomy 

 sky of Paris, for it is said that in Paris 

 the buds are already beginning to shoot. 

 One catches glimpses of them here 

 and there amid the holiday throng 

 whose motionless dances enchant the 

 hills. They are not many and they 

 conceal themselves: they are gnarled 

 oaks, beeches, planes; and even the 

 vine, which one would have thought 

 better-m annered , more docile and well- 

 C 53 n 



