ra of the meadows: the meadow-sweet swayed by
the breezes, rocked by the murmur of the brook. Its perfumed crown is
adorned like the water-beetles, more iridescent than the throats of
humming-birds.

It is the beloved of the greensward, the bride of the grassy borders.

But it is in the deep recesses of old deserted parks that the plants
are most mysterious. There dwell those which we call _old
flowers_, such as the ground-lilac, the belladonna-amaryllis, the
crown-imperial. Elsewhere they would die. Here they persist, guarded
by the favor of the age-old trees, strange trees, the names of which
have disappeared. And these affected and distinguished blossoms raise
their swaying heads only when, murmuring across the liquadambars and
the maples, the wind moans like Chateaubriand.

* * * * *

The very mournfulness of the little town is pleasing to me; I love its
streets of dark shops, the worn thresholds, and the gardens. In the
fine season they seem to float against a background of blue mist which
is a confusion of hollyhocks, glycins, trellises; or again they seem
patchy as the skin of asses, with drying rags above the hedges
of battered boxwood. The tanner's brook drifts by with the pale
mother-of-pearl of the sky, and reflects sharply the rooftops amid the
slimy plants; the mountain torrent, which hollows the rocks, gleams,
twines and flows away.

The little place is charming when the grasshopper shrills in the
summer's elms and the autumn wind scours it, or when the rains streak
it. There is a little public garden that Bernardin de Saint Pierre
would have loved; in May the night there is dense, blue, and soft in
the chestnut-trees.

For years I have lived here, whence my grandfather and a great uncle
departed toward the flower-covered Antilles. They listened to the
roaring of the sea; robes of muslin glided upon the verandas, and they
died perhaps looking back with regret on these streets, these shops,
these thresholds, these gardens, this brook, and this mountain
torrent.

When I go to my little farm I say to myself that this is where they
once were. They brought their luncheon in a little basket, and one of
them carried a guitar. And young girls surely followed swiftly. Song
stirred among the damp hedgerows. An unutterable love frightened the
birds, the mulberries were green. They kept time as they walked. A
young girl's cry stirred the air, a big hat turned the corner of the