NEWS OF SPRING 

 borders, ellipses, oblongs, quincunxes and lozenges, sur- 

 rounded by box hedges, red bricks, delft tiles, like precious 

 things contained in ordered receptacles similar to those which 

 we find in the discoloured engravings that illustrate the works 

 of the old Dutch poet, Jacob Cats, or of good Abbot Sanderus, 

 who, about the middle of the seventeenth century, drew and 

 described in his Flandria Illustrata all the country-seats of 

 Flanders and never failed to show his gratitude by topping 

 with a magnificent plume or bush of smoke the chimneys of 

 those great manor-houses where he considered the hospitality 

 generous and approved of the good cheer. And so the flowers 

 were drawn up in rows, some according to their kinds, others 

 according to their shapes and shades, while others, lastly, 

 mingled, according to the ever happy chances of the wind and 

 sun, the most hostile and murderous colours, in order to show 

 that nature acknowledges no dissonance and that all that lives 

 creates its own harmony. 



From its twelve rounded windows, with their glittering 

 panes, their muslin curtains, their broad green shutters, the 

 long, painted house, pink and gleaming as a shell, watched 

 them wake at dawn and throw off the brisk diamonds of the 

 dew and close at night under the blue darkness that falls from 



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