312 SYLVA FLORIFERA. 



his gardener not to give a slip, nor so much 

 as a single flower, to any person. To this 

 command the gardener would have been 

 faithful, had not the god of love wounded 

 him by the sparkling eyes of a fair but por- 

 tionless peasant, whose want of a little dowry 

 and his poverty alone kept them from the 

 hymeneal altar. On the birth-day of his 

 mistress, the gardener presented her with a 

 nosegay ; and to render the bouquet more ac- 

 ceptable, he ornamented it with a branch of 

 jasmine. The Povera Figlia wishing to pre- 

 serve the bloom of this new flower, put it into 

 fresh earth ; and the branch remained green 

 all the year, and in the following spring it 

 grew, and was covered with flowers ; and it 

 flourished and multiplied so much under the 

 hand of the fair nymph's cultivation, that she 

 was able to amass a little fortune from the sale 

 of the precious gift which love had made her ; 

 when, with a sprig of jasmine in her breast, 

 she bestowed her hand and her wealth on the 

 happy gardener of her heart. And the Tuscan 

 girls, to this day> preserve . the remembrance 

 of this adventure, by invariably wearing a 

 nosegay of jasmine on their wedding-day ; 

 and they have a proverb, which says, that a 

 young girl, worthy of wearing this nosegay, 



