NEWS OF SPRING 



around the grudging ancestors, is a whole world of plants that 

 know nothing of the future, but give themselves to it. They 

 live but for a season; they have no past and no traditions and 

 they know nothing, save that the hour is fair and that they must 

 enjoy it. While their elders, their masters and their gods, 

 waste their time in sulking, these burst into flower; they love 

 and they beget. They are the humble flowers of sweet soli- 

 tude : the daisy that covers the sward with its artless and me- 

 thodical neatness; the borage bluer than the bluest sky; the 

 scarlet or many-hued anemone; the maidenly primrose; the 

 branching mallow; the campanula, shaking bells which no 

 one hears ; the rosemary that looks like a little country serving- 

 maid; and the pungent thyme that thrusts its grey head be- 

 tween the broken stones. 



But, above all, this is the incomparable hour, the diapha- 

 nous and liquid hour of the wood-violet. Its verbal humility 

 becomes arrogant and almost intolerant. It no longer cowers 

 timidly among the leaves : it hustles the grass, overtops it, blots 

 it out, forces its colours upon it, fills it with its breath. Its un- 

 numbered smiles cover the terraces of vines, olive-trees, the 

 slopes of the ravines, the bend of the valleys with a net of sweet 

 and innocent gaiety; its perfume, fresh and pure as the souls 



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