the sun conceals the
funeral pile, who would look on at an execution by the guillotine in the
search for an effect of light, who hear neither the cry nor the sob, nor
the death rattle, nor the alarm peal, for whom everything is well, since
there is a month of May, who, so long as there are clouds of purple
and gold above their heads, declare themselves content, and who are
determined to be happy until the radiance of the stars and the songs of
the birds are exhausted.

These are dark radiances. They have no suspicion that they are to be
pitied. Certainly they are so. He who does not weep does not see. They
are to be admired and pitied, as one would both pity and admire a being
at once night and day, without eyes beneath his lashes but with a star
on his brow.

The indifference of these thinkers, is, according to some, a superior
philosophy. That may be; but in this superiority there is some
infirmity. One may be immortal and yet limp: witness Vulcan. One may
be more than man and less than man. There is incomplete immensity in
nature. Who knows whether the sun is not a blind man?

But then, what? In whom can we trust? Solem quis dicere falsum audeat?
Who shall dare to say that the sun is false? Thus certain geniuses,
themselves, certain Very-Lofty mortals, man-stars, may be mistaken? That
which is on high at the summit, at the crest, at the zenith, that which
sends down so much light on the earth, sees but little, sees badly, sees
not at all? Is not this a desperate state of things? No. But what is
there, then, above the sun? The god.

On the 6th of June, 1832, about eleven o'clock in the morning, the
Luxembourg, solitary and depopulated, was charming. The quincunxes and
flower-beds shed forth balm and dazzling beauty into the sunlight. The
branches, wild with the brilliant glow of midday, seemed endeavoring
to embrace. In the sycamores there was an uproar of linnets, sparrows
triumphed, woodpeckers climbed along the chestnut trees, administering
little pecks on the bark. The flower-beds accepted the legitimate
royalty of the lilies; the most august of perfumes is that which
emanates from whiteness. The peppery odor of the carnations was
perceptible. The old crows of Marie de Medici were amorous in the tall
trees. The sun gilded, empurpled, set fire to and lighted up the tulips,
which are nothing but all the varieties of flame made into flowers. All
around the banks of tulips the bees, the sparks of these flame-flowe