elicate enough to have traced those light relievos where the shadows
of ineffaceable profiles have been thrown upon and trusted to a stone
scarcely raised from its level plane. She was no stranger in the
supernatural world, she to whom Nature, as to a favored child, had
unloosed her girdle and unveiled all the caprices, the attractions,
the delights, which she can lend to beauty. She was not ignorant of the
lightest graces; she whose eye could embrace such vast proportions, had
stooped to study the glowing illuminations painted upon the wings of the
fragile butterfly. She had traced the symmetrical and marvellous network
which the fern extends as a canopy over the wood strawberry; she had
listened to the murmuring of streams through the long reeds and stems of
the water-grass, where the hissing of the "amorous viper" may be heard;
she had followed the wild leaps of the Will-with-a-wisp as it bounds
over the surface of the meadows and marshes; she had pictured to herself
the chimerical dwelling-places toward which it perfidiously attracts
the benighted traveller; she had listened to the concerts given by the
Cicada and their friends in the stubble of the fields; she had learned
the names of the inhabitants of the winged republics of the woods which
she could distinguish as well by their plumaged robes, as by their
jeering roulades or plaintive cries. She knew the secret tenderness of
the lily in the splendor of its tints; she had listened to the sighs of
Genevieve, [Footnote: ANDRE] the maiden enamored of flowers.

She was visited in her dreams by those "unknown friends" who came to
rejoin her "when she was seized with distress upon a desolate shore,"
brought by a "rapid stream... in large and full bark"... upon which she
mounted to leave the unknown shores, "the country of chimeras which make
real life appear like a dream half effaced to those, who enamored from
their infancy of large shells of pearl, mount them to land in those
isles where all are young and beautiful... where the men and women
are crowned with flowers, with their long locks floating upon their
shoulders... holding vases and harps of a strange form... having songs and
voices not of this world... all loving each other equally with a divine
love... where crystal fountains of perfumed waters play in basins of
silver... where blue roses bloom in vases of alabaster... where the
perspectives are all enchanted... where they walk with naked feet upon
the thick g