_The same to the same._
NOIRMOUTIERS,... _February_, 1845.
I certainly am not bored at Noirmoutiers. Besides, I have found an
interesting occupation, and I owe it to my Abbé. He really knows
everything, botany included. It reminds me of Rousseau's _Letters_ to
hear the Latin name for a nasty onion I laid on the chimney-piece for
want of a better place. "You know botany, then?" "Not very well," he
replied; "just enough to teach the country folk the herbs which might be
useful to them; just enough, I might say, to give a little interest to
my solitary walks." I thought at once that it would be very amusing to
gather pretty flowers in my walks, to dry them, and to arrange them in
order in "my old Plutarch tied up with ribbons." "Do teach me botany," I
said to him. He wished to wait until the spring, for there are no
flowers at this bad time of the year. "But you have some dried flowers,"
I said; "I saw them at your house." I meant to refer to his tenderly
preserved old bouquet. If you could have seen his face!... Poor wretched
man! I pretty quickly repented of my indiscreet allusion. To make him
forget it I hastened to tell him that one ought to have a collection of
dried plants. This is called a _herbarium_. He agreed at once, and the
very next day he brought me in a grey paper parcel several pretty
plants, each with its own label. The course of botany had begun, and I
made astonishing progress from the very first. But I had no idea botany
was so immoral, or of the difficulty of the first explanations, above
all from a priest. You know, my dear, plants marry just as we do, but
most of them have many husbands. One set is called phanerogams, if I
have remembered the barbarous name properly. It is Greek, and means to
marry openly at the townhall. Then there are the cryptogams--those who
marry secretly. The mushrooms that you eat marry in secret. All this is
very shocking, but he did not come out of it so badly--better than I
did, who had the silliness to shout with laughter, once or twice, at the
most delicate passages. But I have become cautious now and I do not put
any more questions.