DISENCHANTMENT. 101 



but flowers for me as well as for other people. I could make 

 nothing out of the whisperings of the winds in the tree-tops. 

 The honeysuckle only offered me the same odour which it 

 presented to every vulgar nose. From that time I have dis- 

 covered nothing marvellous in myself; my early years, like 

 prodigal mothers, ruined and disinherited my latter ones. 



But I became a spectator in life, and I looked about me. 



Then, by observing others, I found that I had blossomed 

 as the flowers blossom, that my soul had bloomed, and had 

 exhaled its perfume, which is love ; then my rich corolla had 

 withered and fallen off; that this was all to be so; that I had 

 finished my part, and had acted wisely in sitting down as 

 comfortably as I could, to look on and observe other men. 



From that I proceeded to the observation of nature, and 

 I again met with all the wonders of my beloved fairy tales ; 

 and I happened to recollect the grain of millet and the 

 famous piece of cloth; and I said to myself — "Well! what is 

 there so extraordinary in that?" 



In fact, here is a little grain much smaller than that of 

 the millet ; here is the seed of the Oenothera. Put it in the 

 earth; there will spring up from' it a tall and beautiful plant, 

 with leaves and flowers and a delicious odour, yielding five 

 or six hundred seeds, from which will come five or six hundred 

 plants. This single little grain contains infinite generations 

 of similar plants, with their leaves, their flowers, and their 

 perfumes. ■ 



You put it in the earth to-day : well ! all the men who 

 now cover the globe shall be dead, and there will still continue 

 to issue from it other flowers, and other seeds which will 

 engender other flowers. 



What has become of your false miracle, and your wretched 

 twenty ells of cloth 1 



Why do you put twenty ells of cloth in your grain of 

 millet? It contained much more than that; it contained 

 beautiful stalks with long pendent ears; it contained that 

 which might cover the earth in less than ten years. Who can 

 count the number of birds that might be fed from the pro- 

 duce of that millet seed? 



