300 A TOUR ROUND MX GARDEN. 



mild rains and blasts of wind even, after whicli it will be 

 decked in beautifully shining leaves, among which will grow 

 fruit, first green, then red, which the birds will dispute with 

 me; then the leaves will become ruddy, and fall. 



If the tree have rose-coloured flowers, I know that it will 

 give me velvety peaches in the month of September ; I know 

 likewise that the leaves are bitter. 



But here is a plant which climbs up a trellis ; in summer, 

 it bears little star-shaped flowers of a violet colour, to which 

 succeed girandoles of fruit, which are at first of the colour of 

 the emeralds, and afterwards of that of coral ; I know that I 

 have nothing to look for from it beyond the pleasure afforded 

 to the eyes,— for the berries are poisonous. 



If I plant the bulb of a hyacinth, I know what colour and 

 what perfume I am to expect; in the same way, if I sow 

 seeds, they will give me the colours and the odours they 

 promise me. 



But with men it is very different. 



We find in books two or three types of characters, in which 

 romancers have delighted to assemble all perfections even the 

 most contradictory and the most exclusive of one another. 



If we could rely upon the first view of this, we should 

 only meet in life with people formed upon these two or three 

 types; all men are, without exception, modest, disinterested, 

 brave, generous, devoted, sensible, (fee. 



It is a comedy with very little variety, in which every one 

 wishes to play under the same mask. All these virtues are 

 blossoms — wait for the fruits ! the fruits ! 



It is just as if all the trees and plants in the spring time, 

 decked themselves with the rose-coloured blossoms of the 

 peach-tree, and afterwards, in autumn, bore the mortal cap- 

 sules of the thorn-apple, the fox-glove, or the henbane. 



Not that I wish any ill to these plants ; on the contrary, I 

 love them on account of their beauty; and besides, does not 

 medicine extract even from their poison medicaments of great 

 power and use ? 



I should not complain of them unless, after having 

 promised by the blossoms of the peach and the cherry to 

 yield me delicious fruits, they gave me afterwards their 

 berries and their capsules, and invited me to eat them. 



