The Young Queens 
all-powerful quartz submits to the humble 
and wily epidote, and allows this last to con- 
quer it; the struggle, terrible sometimes 
and sometimes magnificent, between the 
rock-crystal and iron; the regular, immacu- 
late expansion and uncompromising purity 
of one hyaline block, which rejects whatever 
is foul, and the sickly growth, the evident 
immorality of its brother, which admits cor- 
ruption, and writhes miserably in the void ; 
as we might quote also the strange pheno- 
mena of crystalline cicatrisation and rein- 
tegration mentioned by Claude Bernard, &c. 
But the mystery here becomes too foreign to 
us. Let us keep to our flowers, which are 
the last expression of a life that has yet 
some kinship with our own. We are not 
dealing now with animals or insects, to 
which we attribute a special intelligent will, 
thanks to which they survive. We believe, 
rightly or wrongly, that the flowers possess 
no such will; at least we cannot discover 
in them the slightest trace of the organs 
wherein will, intellect, and initiative of 
action are usually born, and reside. It 
follows, therefore, that all that acts in them 
233 
