I am the Marguerite, fair and tall I grew
In velvet meadows, 'mid the flowers a star.
They sought me for my beauty near and far;
My dawn, I thought, should be for ever new.
But now an all unwished-for gift I rue,
A fatal ray of knowledge shed to mar
My radiant star-crown grown oracular,
For I must speak and give an answer true.
An end of silence and of quiet days,
The Lover with two words my counsel prays;
And when my secret from my heart is reft,
When all my silver petals scattered lie,
I am the only flower neglected left,
Cast down and trodden under foot to die.
At the end, the poet looked up at his Aristarchus. Etienne Lousteau
was gazing at the trees in the Pepiniere.
"Well?" asked Lucien.
"Well, my dear fellow, go on! I am listening to you, am I not? That
fact in itself is as good as praise in Paris."
"Have you had enough?" Lucien asked.
"Go on," the other answered abruptly enough.
Lucien proceeded to read the following sonnet, but his heart was dead
within him; Lousteau's inscrutable composure froze his utterance. If
he had come a little further upon the road, he would have known that
between writer and writer silence or abrupt speech, under such
circumstances, is a betrayal of jealousy, and outspoken admiration
means a sense of relief over the discovery that the work is not above
the average after all.