Now that the shapes have capitulated comes the question of conquering
the region of the proscribed colours, of the reserved shades, which the
autumn, as we can see, denies to the flowers that represent it.
Lavishly it bestows on them all the wealth of the twilight and the
night, all the riches of the harvest-time: it gives them all the
mud-brown work of the rain in the woods, all the silvery fashionings of
the mist in the plains, of the frost and the snow in the gardens. It
permits them, above all, to draw at will upon the inexhaustible
treasures of the dead leaves and the expiring forest. It allows them to
deck themselves with the golden sequins, the bronze medals, the silver
buckles, the copper spangles, the elfin plumes, the powdered amber, the
burnt topazes, the neglected pearls, the smoked amethysts, the calcined
garnets, all the dead but still dazzling jewellery which the North Wind
heaps up in the hollows of ravines and foot-paths; but it insists that
they shall remain faithful to their old masters and wear the livery of
the drab and weary months that give them birth. It does not permit them
to betray those masters and to don the princely, changing dresses of the
spring and the dawn; and, if, sometimes, it suffers a pink, this is only
on condition that it be borrowed from the cold lips, the pale brow of
the veiled and afflicted virgin praying on a tomb. It forbids most
strictly the tints of summer, of too youthful, ardent and serene a life,
of a health too joyous and expansive. In no case will it consent to
hilarious vermilions, impetuous scarlets, imperious and dazzling
purples. As for the blues, from the azure of the dawn to the indigo of
the sea and the deep lakes, from the periwinkle to the borage and the
corn-flower, they are banished on pain of death.