LILIES — ^THE CRIOCERIS. 49 



It would indeed be difficult to say how many governments 

 and revolutions there have been in France since that tuft 

 of lilies was planted in my garden, how many systems 

 have been lauded to the skies, and dragged through the 

 dirt. 



The lilies in the arms of France were not taken from the 

 hlies of our gardens: they bear no resemblance to them. 

 Some authors who have written volumes on this subject, say 

 that they are the yellow iris of the marshes; others, that the 

 fleurs de lis were originally bees; whUe, again, others conteni} 

 that they were lance heads. 



Nevertheless, the liliec> have not escaped the fate of other 

 political flowers, such as the violet, the imperial, and the 

 red pink; all have been, by turns, proscribed and recalled, 

 multiplied to excess or pitilessly rooted up, in the flower-beds 

 of the Tuileries, and generally placed under the watchful 

 care of the police, considered as suspicious, hostile to power, 

 and mixed up with several conspiracies. The parties and 

 the men who planted and proscribed them are long since 

 dead, and almost forgotten. And yet, every spring, these 

 poor flowers, returned to private life, continue to bloom 

 again in their proper seasons. 



One insect alone appears to have taken possession of the 

 lily, and established its abode in it. It is a little beetle, 

 whose form is of an elongated square, with black body and 

 claws, and hard elytra, or wings, of a brilliant scarlet. There 

 is no lily that is not an asylum for some of these. They are 

 called Crioceres. When you have hold of one, press it in youi- 

 hand, and you will hear a creaking noise, which you may at 

 first take for a cry, but which is nothing but the rubbing of 

 its lower rings against the sheaths of its wings. 



It did not always- wear this brilliant costume — this cos- 

 tume under which it scarcely eats, and that very daintily 

 — this costume under which it appears to have nothing to do 

 but to strut about and make love. It was at first a sort of flat 

 worm, with six feet, of a kind of yellow mixed with brown, 

 which dwelt likewise then upon the leaves of the lUy, but 

 which then led a very difierent life. It was then as greedy 

 and gluttonous as it is now abstemious and delicate. But 

 that was because it had two powerful reasons for eating. The 



E 



