KETRIBTJTION. 179 



cried a little ; but my brother whispered, " I say, Stephen, 

 did you see anything?" "Yes;. didn't you?" And that 

 which we had seen was, that on one of the stoves were two 

 of the finest hyacinths in. pots, which Madame Koncin had 

 contrived, by some means, to appropriate to herself. 



I soon forgot both the hyacinths and our offence, but 

 I could not help, yesterday, remembering both the one and 

 the other. My beautiful roses, that I had looked forward to 

 during ten months ! my own diamonds ! my dear flowers ! 

 I went every morning, from the day of their bloommg, to 

 salute them, the first thing on entering my garden; 1 ex- 

 amined them to see if anything had injured them, to see if 

 any insect were gnawing the buds- I gazed at them, I 

 breathed their perfume, and I felt myself rich and almost 

 insolent. And this confounded child inhumanly tore them 

 from their boughs, and stuck them in his garden, where they 

 died in a few hours ! And my pink ! a beautiful Flemish 

 pink, white with violet bands ; a pink which I had, only the 

 evening before, obstinately refused to a lady who requested it 

 of me ! Then, and not till then, was I aware of all the grief 

 I had caused our poor neighbour, the man of the hyacinths. 



It appeared to me that I underwent one of those ven- 

 geances that Dido announces to the peyjured ./Eneas; — 



" Exoriare aliquis nostris ex oasibus ultor." 



That child was not then born who now forces from me such 

 just reflections. 



In fact, it is our children who will repay us the pains and 

 anxieties that we have cost our parents. At the same time, 

 let us not require from them the tenderness we feel for them ; 

 it is not to us that they owe it or wiU pay it, it is to the 

 children they will themselves have, and of whom they wiU 

 complain unjustly, then, as we complain of them, and as our 

 fathers complained of us. 



" We only remember the respect and gratitude we owe to 

 our parents to require it of our children." 



