COLOURS OF FLOWEES. 81 



what was the colour of this flower; I was not able to procure 

 two answers sufficiently alike to give me a definite notion of 

 them. Country people in general trouble themselves but 

 little with the poetical side of nature : idylls and eclogues are 

 felsehoods. I only remember two appreciations which I 

 heard made in the same day by two peasants : one concerned 

 a young elm which, planted among older ehns, had hastened 

 to attain their height, in order to enjoy its share of the air 

 and the sun. It had a stem straighter and more tapering 

 than that of a poplar; it waved its green luxuriant head at 

 the least wind. " What a misfortune it is," said one of my 

 -neighbours, "that you have not another tree like that 1" 

 " Why ? " " Because they would make such a superb ladder." i 

 As in the spring time I was looking at the blossoms of the 

 peach-trees, which began to show their rosy tips, another said 

 to me, — "You see the crop begins to promise."^ 



I once heard a gardener ask his master, who was one of 

 my friends, permission to sleep for the future in the stable. 

 " There is no possibility of sleeping in the chamber behind 

 the greenhouse, Sir," said he in support of his request; 

 "there are nightingales there, which do nothing but guggle 

 and keep up a noise all night." 



Whilst endeavouring to describe to you the colours of cer- 

 tain flowers or insects, I have remarked that I was likely to 

 make myself better understood by employing, to designate 

 these colours, certain names of precious stones. It is very 

 singular that most people are better acquainted with the 

 stones which inhabit the depths of the earth at a thousand 

 leagues from them, or the pearls and corals which must be 

 fetched from the bottom of the sea, than with the flies which 

 fly against our windows, or with the flowers which spring up 

 under our feet, which surround us on aU sides, and are before 

 our eyes from our earliest infancy; this is because vanity has 

 attached a singular value to precious stones, and has neglected 



(1) We doubt tlie accuracy of this remark, as a ladder is invariably made of a single 

 tree, the holes for the steps being first bored through the entire substance, and the 

 tree then sawn longitudinally. — En. 



(2) Both these instances are excelled by the old English story of the poetical 

 traveller pointing out to his friend the pretty lambs frolicking in a meadow. "Ay" 

 TCijoined the other, *' only think of a quarter of one of them, with asparagus and mint 

 saucej" 



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