rs,
hummed. All was grace and gayety, even the impending rain; this relapse,
by which the lilies of the valley and the honeysuckles were destined to
profit, had nothing disturbing about it; the swallows indulged in the
charming threat of flying low. He who was there aspired to happiness;
life smelled good; all nature exhaled candor, help, assistance,
paternity, caress, dawn. The thoughts which fell from heaven were as
sweet as the tiny hand of a baby when one kisses it.

The statues under the trees, white and nude, had robes of shadow pierced
with light; these goddesses were all tattered with sunlight; rays hung
from them on all sides. Around the great fountain, the earth was already
dried up to the point of being burnt. There was sufficient breeze to
raise little insurrections of dust here and there. A few yellow leaves,
left over from the autumn, chased each other merrily, and seemed to be
playing tricks on each other.

This abundance of light had something indescribably reassuring about it.
Life, sap, heat, odors overflowed; one was conscious, beneath creation,
of the enormous size of the source; in all these breaths permeated with
love, in this interchange of reverberations and reflections, in this
marvellous expenditure of rays, in this infinite outpouring of liquid
gold, one felt the prodigality of the inexhaustible; and, behind this
splendor as behind a curtain of flame, one caught a glimpse of God, that
millionaire of stars.

Thanks to the sand, there was not a speck of mud; thanks to the rain,
there was not a grain of ashes. The clumps of blossoms had just been
bathed; every sort of velvet, satin, gold and varnish, which springs
from the earth in the form of flowers, was irreproachable. This
magnificence was cleanly. The grand silence of happy nature filled the
garden. A celestial silence that is compatible with a thousand sorts of
music, the cooing of nests, the buzzing of swarms, the flutterings of
the breeze. All the harmony of the season was complete in one gracious
whole; the entrances and exits of spring took place in proper order; the
lilacs ended; the jasmines began; some flowers were tardy, some insects
in advance of their time; the van-guard of the red June butterflies
fraternized with the rear-guard of the white butterflies of May. The
plantain trees were getting their new skins. The breeze hollowed out
undulations in the magnificent enormity of the chestnut-trees. It
was splendid. A veteran from