NEWS OF SPRING 



tempts disappear; the half-dreams of the night lift like a fog 

 chased by the dawn; and the good rustic flowers begin their 

 unseen revels under the blue, all around the cities where man 

 knows them not No matter, they are there, making honey, 

 while their proud and barren sisters, who alone receive our 

 care, are still trembling in the hothouses. And they will be 

 there, just the same, in the flooded fields, in the sunken paths 

 and adorning the roads with their simplicity, when the first 

 snows shall have covered the countryside. No one sows them 

 and no one gathers them. They survive their renown and 

 man treads them under foot. Formerly, however, and not 

 long ago, they alone represented nature's gladness. Formerly, 

 however, a few hundred years ago, before their brilliant, 

 chilly kinswomen had come from the West Indies, from India, 

 from Japan, or before their own daughters, ungrateful and 

 unrecognizable, had usurped their place, they alone brought 

 gladness to sorrowing eyes, they alone brightened the cottage- 

 porch, the castle-terrace and followed the lovers' footsteps 

 in the woods. But those times are no more ; and they are de- 

 throned. They have retained of their past happiness only 

 the names which they received when they were loved. 



And those names show all that they were to man : all his 



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