ything is powdered
over.

Nothing is so worthy of admiration as foliage washed by the rain and
wiped by the rays of sunlight; it is warm freshness. The gardens and
meadows, having water at their roots, and sun in their flowers, become
perfuming-pans of incense, and smoke with all their odors at
once. Everything smiles, sings and offers itself. One feels gently
intoxicated. The springtime is a provisional paradise, the sun helps man
to have patience.

There are beings who demand nothing further; mortals, who, having
the azure of heaven, say: "It is enough!" dreamers absorbed in the
wonderful, dipping into the idolatry of nature, indifferent to good and
evil, contemplators of cosmos and radiantly forgetful of man, who do not
understand how people can occupy themselves with the hunger of these,
and the thirst of those, with the nudity of the poor in winter, with the
lymphatic curvature of the little spinal column, with the pallet, the
attic, the dungeon, and the rags of shivering young girls, when they
can dream beneath the trees; peaceful and terrible spirits they, and
pitilessly satisfied. Strange to say, the infinite suffices them. That
great need of man, the finite, which admits of embrace, they ignore.
The finite which admits of progress and sublime toil, they do not
think about. The indefinite, which is born from the human and divine
combination of the infinite and the finite, escapes them. Provided that
they are face to face with immensity, they smile. Joy never, ecstasy
forever. Their life lies in surrendering their personality in
contemplation. The history of humanity is for them only a detailed
plan. All is not there; the true All remains without; what is the use
of busying oneself over that detail, man? Man suffers, that is quite
possible; but look at Aldebaran rising! The mother has no more milk, the
new-born babe is dying. I know nothing about that, but just look at this
wonderful rosette which a slice of wood-cells of the pine presents under
the microscope! Compare the most beautiful Mechlin lace to that if you
can! These thinkers forget to love. The zodiac thrives with them to such
a point that it prevents their seeing the weeping child. God eclipses
their souls. This is a family of minds which are, at once, great and
petty. Horace was one of them; so was Goethe. La Fontaine perhaps;
magnificent egoists of the infinite, tranquil spectators of sorrow, who
do not behold Nero if the weather be fair, for whom