sunset reds athwart the leaves which gleam like the colored
windows of a chancel:--then, leaving these woods so cool and branchy,
behold a chalk-land lying fallow, where among the warm and cavernous
mosses adders glide to their lairs, or lift their proud slim heads. Cast
upon all these pictures torrents of sunlight like beneficent waters,
or the shadow of gray clouds drawn in lines like the wrinkles of an old
man's brow, or the cool tones of a sky faintly orange and streaked with
lines of a paler tint; then listen--you will hear indefinable harmonies
amid a silence which blends them all.

During the months of September and October I did not make a single
bouquet which cost me less than three hours search; so much did I
admire, with the real sympathy of a poet, these fugitive allegories of
human life, that vast theatre I was about to enter, the scenes of which
my memory must presently recall. Often do I now compare those splendid
scenes with memories of my soul thus expending itself on nature; again I
walk that valley with my sovereign, whose white robe brushed the coppice
and floated on the green sward, whose spirit rose, like a promised
fruit, from each calyx filled with amorous stamens.

No declaration of love, no vows of uncontrollable passion ever conveyed
more than these symphonies of flowers; my baffled desires impelled me to
efforts of expression through them like those of Beethoven through his
notes, to the same bitter reactions, to the same mighty bounds towards
heaven. In their presence Madame de Mortsauf was my Henriette. She
looked at them constantly; they fed her spirit, she gathered all the
thoughts I had given them, saying, as she raised her head from the
embroidery frame to receive my gift, "Ah, how beautiful!"

Natalie, you will understand this delightful intercourse through the
details of a bouquet, just as you would comprehend Saadi from a fragment
of his verse. Have you ever smelt in the fields in the month of May the
perfume that communicates to all created beings the intoxicating sense
of a new creation; the sense that makes you trail your hand in the water
from a boat, and loosen your hair to the breeze while your mind revives
with the springtide greenery of the trees? A little plant, a species of
vernal grass, is a powerful element in this veiled harmony; it cannot be
worn with impunity; take into your hand its shining blade, striped green
and white like a silken robe, and mysterious emotions wi