I
Every year, in November, at the season that follows on the hour of the
dead, the crowning and majestic hour of autumn, reverently I go to visit
the chrysanthemums in the places where chance offers them to my sight.
For the rest, it matters little where they are shown to me by the good
will of travel or of sojourn. They are, indeed, the most universal, the
most diverse of flowers; but their diversity and surprises are, so to
speak, concerted, like those of fashion, in I know not what arbitrary
Edens. At the same moment, even as with silks, laces, jewels and curls,
a mysterious voice gives the pass-word in time and space; and, docile as
the most beautiful women, simultaneously, in every country, in every
latitude, the flowers obey the sacred decree.
It is enough, then, to enter at random one of those crystal museums in
which their somewhat funereal riches are displayed under the harmonious
veil of the days of November. We at once grasp the dominant idea, the
obtrusive beauty, the unexpected effort of the year in this special
world, strange and privileged even in the midst of the strange and
privileged world of flowers. And we ask ourselves if this new idea is a
profound and really necessary idea on the part of the sun, the earth,
life, autumn, or man.