I have seen the manner in which Spring stores up sunshine, leaves and
flowers and makes ready, long beforehand, to invade the North. Here, on
the ever balmy shores of the Mediterranean--that motionless sea which
looks as though it were under glass--where, while the months are dark in
the rest of Europe, Spring has taken shelter from the wind and the snows
in a palace of peace and light and love, it is interesting to detect
its preparations for travelling in the fields of undying green. I can
see clearly that it is afraid, that it hesitates once more to face the
great frost-traps which February and March lay for it annually beyond
the mountains. It waits, it dallies, it tries its strength before
resuming the harsh and cruel way which the hypocrite winter seems to
yield to it. It stops, sets out again, revisits a thousand times, like a
child running round the garden of its holidays, the fragrant valleys,
the tender hills which the frost has never brushed with its wings. It
has nothing to do here, nothing to revive, since nothing has perished
and nothing suffered, since all the flowers of every season bathe here
in the blue air of an eternal summer. But it seeks pretexts, it lingers,
it loiters, it goes to and fro like an unoccupied gardener. It pushes
aside the branches, fondles with its breath the olive-tree that quivers
with a silver smile, polishes the glossy grass, rouses the corollas that
were not asleep, recalls the birds that had never fled, encourages the
bees that were workers without ceasing; and then, seeing, like God, that
all is well in the spotless Eden, it rests for a moment on the ledge of
a terrace which the orange-tree crowns with regular flowers and with
fruits of light, and, before leaving, casts a last look over its labour
of joy and entrusts it to the sun.