153 A TOXm ROUND MY GABDEN. 



■weapon, inflict upon your heart anew tte pangs of the adieux 

 and the eternal separation. 



From that day, there is a portion of ourselves in the tomb; 

 from that day, we only give ourselves up to the world and its 

 distractions by escaping from ourselves, at the risk of being 

 at every instant reseized, and brought back to the cemetery. 

 In short, we have buried in their tomb all we once loved 

 with them ; flowers cultivated with them, airs sung together, 

 griefs endured together, pleasures enjoyed together, — all 

 things which recal the dead, and speak to you of them. 



I had in a solitary corner of my garden three hyacinths, 

 which my father had planted, and which death did not allow 

 him to see bloom. Every year, the period of their flowering 

 was for me a solemnity, a funereal and religious festival ; it 

 was a melancholy remembrance, which revived and reblos- 

 somed every year, and exhaled certain thoughts with its per- 

 fume. The roots are dead now, and nothing lives of this dear 

 association but in my own heart. 



But what a dear, yet sad, privilege man possesses above all 

 created beings, in being thus able, by memory and thought, 

 to follow those whom he has loved to the tomb, and there 

 shut himself up living with the dead ! What a melancholy 

 privilege ! And yet where is there one among us who would 

 lose it ? Who is he who would willingly forget all ? 



