en
nature, left alone, is incapable of begetting such perverse and sickly
specimens. She furnishes the original substance, the germ and the
earth, the nourishing womb and the elements of the plant which man
then sets up, models, paints, and sculpts as he wills. Limited,
stubborn and formless though she be, nature has at last been subjected
and her master has succeeded in changing, through chemical reaction,
the earth's substances, in using combinations which had been long
matured, cross-fertilization processes long prepared, in making use of
slips and graftings, and man now forces differently colored flowers in
the same species, invests new tones for her, modifies to his will the
long-standing form of her plants, polishes the rough clods, puts an
end to the period of botch work, places his stamp on them, imposes on
them the mark of his own unique art."

"It cannot be gainsaid," he thought, resuming his reflections, "that
man in several years is able to effect a selection which slothful
nature can produce only after centuries. Decidedly the horticulturists
are the real artists nowadays."

He was a little tired and he felt stifled in this atmosphere of
crowded plants. The promenades he had taken during the last few days
had exhausted him. The transition had been too sudden from the tepid
atmosphere of his room to the out-of-doors, from the placid
tranquillity of a reclusive life to an active one. He left the
vestibule and stretched out on his bed to rest, but, absorbed by this
new fancy of his, his mind, even in his sleep, could not lessen its
tension and he was soon wandering among the gloomy insanities of a
nightmare.

He found himself in the center of a walk, in the heart of the wood;
twilight had fallen. He was strolling by the side of a woman whom he
had never seen before. She was emaciated and had flaxen hair, a
bulldog face, freckles on her cheeks, crooked teeth projecting under a
flat nose. She wore a nurse's white apron, a long neckerchief, torn in
strips on her bosom; half-shoes like those worn by Prussian soldiers
and a black bonnet adorned with frillings and trimmed with a rosette.

There was a foreign look about her, like that of a mountebank at a
fair.

He asked himself who the woman could be; he felt that she had long
been an intimate part of his life; vainly he sought her origin, her
name, her profession, her reason for being. No recollection of this
liaison, which was inexplicable and yet positive,