NEWS OF SPRING 



circle, from January to December, the innumerous and eager 

 violets, the riotous jonquils, the artless, wide-eyed narcissus, 

 the clustering mimosa, the mignonette, the pink laden with 

 precious spices, the compelling geranium, the aggressively- 

 virginal orange-flower, the lavender, the Spanish broom, the 

 too-potent tuberose and the cassie, which is a species of acacia 

 and bears a flower resembling an orange caterpillar. 



It is, at first, not a little incongruous to see those tall thick- 

 set, heavy rustics, whom harsh necessity turns every elsewhere 

 from the smiles of life, taking flowers thus seriously, handling 

 carefully those fragile ornaments of the earth, performing a 

 task fit for a princess or a bee and bending under a weight of 

 violets or jonquils. But the most striking impression is that of 

 certain evenings or mornings in the season of the roses or the 

 jasmine. It is as though the atmosphere of the earth had 

 suddenly changed, as though it had made way for that of an 

 infinitely happy planet, where perfumes are not, as here, fleet- 

 ing, vague and precarious, but stable, spacious, full, perma- 

 nent, generous, normal and inalienable. 



3 



Many writers, speaking of Grasse and its neighbourhood, 



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