22 A TOUK SOUND MY GABDEN. 



if I were to describe to you their birth, their loTes, their 

 combats, their metamorphoses — perhaps you would have 

 returned from your tour before I had proceeded a single step ; 

 but I am determined, in this journey, to stop only at things 

 which strike my eyes, without research, without labour, 

 without study. Let us quit the old wooden house then, and 

 follow at random this tortuous path. 



Here is the white julienne, with its long branches of 

 flowers; to enjoy its perfume, you must stoop down to it; it 

 is only in the evening that it exhales its sweets to a distance. 

 This was one of the favourite flowers of the unfortunate queen 

 Marie Antoinette. She was confined in the vilest chamber of 

 the prison of the Conciergerie. In the same apartment, 

 separated from her only by a screen, was a gendarme, who 

 quitted her neither night nor day. The queen's whole 

 wardrobe consisted of an old black gown and stockings, which 

 she took off to mend herself, remaining with her feet bare. 

 I am not sure that I should have loved Marie Antoinette, 

 but how is it possible to avoid admiring so much misery and 

 misfortune ! A woman, — ^her name is not sufficiently known 

 — a good and an excellent woman, discovered a blessing and 

 a luxury to bestow upon her whom it was forbidden to name 

 otherwise than as the widow Capet. Madame Richard, a 

 keeper of the prison, brought her every day bouquets of the 

 flowers she loved; pinks, juliennes, and tuberoses. She thus 

 exchanged perfumes for the putrid miasmas of the prison. 

 The poor queen had something to look at besides the humid 

 walls of her dungeon. Madame Richard was denounced, 

 arrested, and put into prison, but they did not dare to perse- 

 cute her further, and shortly they released her. At a later 

 period, Danton exclaimed in his dungeon : " Oh, if I could 

 but see a tree!" The julienne remains the flower of Marie 

 Antoinette. The great Cond6, when confined at Vincennes, 

 cultivated pinks. 



