NEWS OF SPRING 



steps. Where is it hiding? It should be here ; and how dares 

 this feast of roses and anemones, of soft air and dew, of bees 

 and birds proceed with such assurance during the most pitiless 

 months of Winter's reign? And what will Spring do, what 

 will Spring say, since all seems done, since all seems said? 

 Is it superfluous, then, and is there nothing that awaits its com- 

 ing? 



Search carefully: you shall find amid this life of un- 

 wearying youth the work of its hand, the perfume of its breath 

 which is younger than life. Thus, there are foreign trees 

 yonder, taciturn guests, like poor relations in ragged attire. 

 They come from very far, from the land of fog and frost and 

 wind. They are aliens, sullen and distrustful. They have 

 not yet learned the limpid speech, not adopted the delightful 

 customs of the South. They refused to believe the promise 

 of the sky and suspected the caresses of the sun, which, from 

 early dawn, covers them with a mantle of silkier and warmer 

 rays than that wherewith July loaded their shoulders in the 

 precarious summers of their native land. It made no differ- 

 ence: at the given hour, when snow was falling a thousand 

 miles away, their trunks shivered and, despite the bold aver- 

 ment of the grass and a hundred thousand flowers, despite 



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