PERFUMES 



have — at least, so I imagine — drawn a picture of that almost 

 fairy-like industry which occupies the whole of a hard-working 

 town, perched, like a sunlit hive, upon a mountain-side. They 

 must have sung of the glorious cartloads of roses shot upon the 

 threshold of the smoking factories, the great halls in which 

 the sorters literally wade through the flood of petals, the less 

 cumbersome, but more precious arrival of the violets, tube- 

 roses, acacia, jasmine, in great baskets which the peasant- 

 women carry proudly on their heads. They must have de- 

 scribed the different processes whereby the flowers, each ac- 

 cording to its character, are forced to yield to the crystal the 

 marvellous secrets of their hearts. We know that some of 

 them, the roses, for instance, are accommodating and willing 

 and surrender their aroma by simple methods. They are 

 heaped into huge boilers, tall as those of our locomotive-en- 

 gines, through which steam passes. Little by little, their es- 

 sential oil, more costly than molten pearls, oozes drop by 

 drop into a glass tube, no wider than a goosequill, at the bot- 

 tom of the still, which resembles a monster painfully giving 

 birth to a bead of amber. 



But the greater part of the flowers do not so easily allow 

 their souls to be imprisoned. I will not speak here of the in- 



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