They are interesting and incomprehensible. They are vaguely called the
"Weeds." They serve no purpose. Here and there, a few, in very old
villages, retain the spell of contested virtues. Here and there, one of
them, right at the bottom of the apothecary's or herbalist's jars, still
awaits the coming of the sick man faithful to the infusions of
tradition. But sceptic medicine will have none of them. No longer are
they gathered according to the olden rites; and the science of "Simples"
is dying out in the housewife's memory. A merciless war is waged upon
them. The husbandman fears them; the plough pursues them; the gardener
hates them and has armed himself against them with clashing weapons: the
spade and the rake, the hoe and the scraper, the weeding-hook, the
grubbing-axe. Along the high-roads, their last refuge, the passerby
crushes them, the waggon bruises them. In spite of all, they are there:
permanent, assured, abundant, peaceful; and not one but answers the
summons of the sun. They follow the seasons without swerving by an hour.
They take no account of man, who exhausts himself in conquering them,
and, so soon as he rests, they spring up in his footsteps. They live on,
audacious, immortal, untamable. They have peopled our flower-baskets
with extravagant and unnatural daughters; but they, the poor mothers,
have remained similar to what they were a hundred thousand years ago.
They have not added a fold to their petals, reordered a pistil, altered
a shade, invented a perfume. They keep the secret of a mysterious
mission. They are the indelible primitives. The soil is theirs since its
origin. They represent, in short, an essential smile, an invariable
thought, an obstinate desire of the Earth.
That is why it is well to question them. They have evidently something
to tell us. And, then, let us not forget that they were the first--with
the sunrises and sunsets, with the springs and autumns, with the song of
the birds, with the hair, the glance and the divine movements of
women--to teach our fathers that there are useless and beautiful things
upon this globe.