"WHAT IS HAPPINESS? 69 



to you just now. Since this fancy seized the poor man's 

 brains, other flowers have had neither splendour nor perfume 

 for him. 



Happiness is not a blue rose, — it is the grass of the mea- 

 dows, the bindweed of the fields, the wild rose of the hedges, 

 a word, a song, a no matter what. 



It is not a diamond as large as the house : it is a mosaic of 

 little stones, each one of which often has no separate value 

 of itself. 



This large diamond, this blue rose, this great happiness, 

 this monolith, is a dream. Every happiness I can recal, I 

 neither pursued long, nor sought for ; they have shot up and 

 blossomed under my feet like the daisies on my grassplot. 



I have ever found my greatest happiness in a garden over 

 which I could have jumped — in a chamber in which I could 

 not take three paces. That chamber, I remember it still ; I 

 have but to shut my eyes to see it ; it appears to me that I 

 see it in my heart. It was furnished with chairs covered 

 with yellow Utrecht velvet, with a table near the chimney, 

 and an old piano between the two windows. One day she- 

 endeavoured to teach me to play with one finger, an air which 

 she sometimes sang, and which I passionately admired. Her 

 fether was seated in the chimney-corner reading his newspaper. 

 First, she played the air for me, then she bade me try. I 

 could not get over more than the first three notes; she played 

 it more slowly — ^but I succeeded no better. She laughed at 

 my want of skill. Then she took my hand to make me strike 

 the notes with my finger: it was the first time our hands had 

 met. I trembled: she ceased to laugh, and withdrew her 

 hand, and we remained both silent. The day was closing, and 

 mixed a profound meditation with our emotions. Our looks 

 met : it appeared to me that I became her, and that she be- 

 came me; that our blood mingled in our veins— our thoughts 

 in our souls. Two large tears fell from her eyes, and rolled 

 down her cheeks as two shining pearls of dew in the sweet 

 morning on a rose. Then her father, whom, with all the rest 

 of the world, we had forgotten, let the paper fall which he 

 could no longer see to read, and told his daughter to light 

 the lamp. "And you cannot see any more thaa I can," he 

 added, " for it is some time since I heard the piano." 



