LOVES OF THE FLOWERS. 
349 
sions nor sexes, potassium alone suffices to give you the lie, potas- 
sium, which sets fire to water to unite itself with oxygen ! It has 
been written that L*eander crossed an arm of tbe sea every eve- 
ning to throw himself into those of his mistress, but it has never 
been said that he set the sea on fire ! 
And the flowers, oh my God ! to refuse sentiment to the flow- 
ers, the most sentimental, perhaps the most nervous of all crea- 
tures ! But where then have these people studied nature, whose 
only interpreters they declare themselves. I, who am a simple 
man, I have also lived much in the intimate society of nature, and 
she has said much to me by the voice of lilacs, of roses, and lu- 
cernes. Why, then, has she not told me the same as them, for 
here, within some volumes, is what I remember of her conversa- 
tions, and no one can suppose that I have the slightest interest to 
travesty her language. 
She said, ^^All plants are sensible beings, animated like men, 
with devouring passions, and which cannot bloom in their magnifi- 
cence except in a sphere which leaves to these passions their legit- 
imate development; or to speak more simply, a sphere which 
makes a destiny for them proportional to their attractions. Alas ! 
how many young plants you have seen die without suspecting that 
it was passion that killed them 1 Yes, passion, a violent inclination, 
contradicted by the barbarity of an inflexible guardian (trellice), a 
railing, the dark wall of a convent, a too shady environment. One 
was white and rose, and born to live in the fields, ignorant and hap- 
py ; it was etiolated, and faded out of being for want of air and 
sunshine in the court-yard to which it was transplanted. Anoth- 
er, now prematurely withering, brought at birth the germ of an 
hereditary contagion, and perished the expiatory victim of another’s 
fault. A third, separated from the other half of its life by hope- 
less distance, has long awaited a sweet message of love, but the 
messengers entrusted with the correspondence of flowers ; the 
breath of the spring, golden- winged insects, have passed with the 
fine days, without bringing the least remembrance from the be- 
loved stamen. Then the poor forsaken one has closed her co- 
rolla; her corolla, nest of love, by her prepared for tender myste- 
ries ; nuptial couch, which she had tissued with a wonderful sub- 
30 
