Nevertheless, thanks to some forgetfulness of nature, the most unusual
colour in the world of flowers and the most severely forbidden--the
colour which the corolla of the poisonous euphorbia is almost the only
one to wear in the city of the umbels, petals and calyces--green, the
colour exclusively reserved for the servile and nutrient leaves, has
penetrated within the jealously-guarded precincts. True, it has slipped
in only by favour of a lie, as a traitor, a spy, a livid deserter. It is
a forsworn yellow, steeped fearfully in the fugitive azure of the
moonbeam. It is still of the night and false, like the opal depths of
the sea; it reveals itself only in shifting patches at the tips of the
petals; it is vague and anxious, frail and elusive, but undeniable. It
has made its entrance, it exists, it asserts itself; it will be daily
more fixed and more determined; and, through the breach which it has
contrived, all the joys and all the splendours of the banished prism
will hurl themselves into their virgin domain, there to prepare
unaccustomed feasts for our eyes. This is a great tiding and a memorable
conquest in the land of flowers.
We must not think that it is puerile thus to interest one’s self in the
capricious forms, the unwritten shades of a humble, useless flower, nor
must we treat those who seek to make it more beautiful or more strange
as La Bruyère once treated the lover of the tulip or the plum. Do you
remember the charming page?
* * * * *
“The lover of flowers has a garden in the suburbs, where he spends all
his time from sunrise to sunset. You see him standing there and would
think that he had taken root in the midst of his tulips before his
‘Solitaire;’ he opens his eyes wide, rubs his hands, stoops down and
looks closer at it; it never before seemed to him so handsome; he is in
an ecstasy of joy, and leaves it to go to the ‘Orient,’ then to the
‘Widow,’ from thence to the ‘Cloth of Gold,’ on to the ‘Agatha,’ and at
last returns to the ‘Solitaire,’ where he remains, is tired out, sits
down, and forgets his dinner; he looks at the tulip and admires its
shade, shape, colour, sheen and edges, its beautiful form and calyc; but
God and nature are not in his thoughts, for they do not go beyond the
bulb of his tulip, which he would not sell for a thousand crowns, though
he will give it to you for nothing when tulips are no longer in fashion
and carnations are all the rage. This rational being, who has a soul and
professes some religion, comes home tired and half starved, but very
pleased with his day’s work: he has seen some tulips.
“Talk to another of the healthy look of the crops, of a plentiful
harvest, of a good vintage, and you will find that he cares only for
fruit and understands not a single word that you say; then turn to figs
and melons; tell him that this year the pear-trees are so heavily laden
with fruit that the branches almost break, that there is abundance of
peaches, and you address him in a language which he completely ignores,
and he will not answer you, for his sole hobby is plum-trees. Do not
even speak to him of your plum-trees, for he is fond of only a certain
kind, and laughs and sneers at the mention of any others; he takes you
to his tree and cautiously gathers this exquisite plum, divides it,
gives you one half, keeps the other himself and exclaims, ‘How
delicious! Do you like it? Is it not heavenly? You cannot find its equal
anywhere;’ and then his nostrils dilate, and he can hardly contain his
joy and pride under an appearance of modesty. What a wonderful person,
never enough praised and admired, whose name will be handed down to
future ages! Let me look at his mien and shape, while he is still in the
land of the living, that I may study the features and the countenance of
a man who, alone among mortals, is the happy possessor of such a plum.”
* * * * *
Well, La Bruyère is wrong. We readily forgive him his mistake, for the
sake of the marvellous window, which he, alone among the authors of his
time, opens upon the unexpected gardens of the seventeenth century. The
fact none the less remains that it is to his somewhat bigoted florist,
to his somewhat frenzied horticulturist, that we owe our exquisite
flower-beds, our more varied, more abundant, more luscious vegetables,
our even more delicious fruits. Contemplate, for instance, around the
chrysanthemums, the marvels that ripen nowadays in the meanest gardens,
among the long branches wisely subdued by the patient and generous
espaliers. Less than a century ago they were unknown; and we owe them to
the trifling and innumerable exertions of a legion of small seekers, all
more or less narrow, all more or less ridiculous.
It is thus that man acquires nearly all his riches. There is nothing
that is puerile in nature; and he who becomes impassioned of a flower, a
blade of grass, a butterfly’s wing, a nest, a shell, wraps his passion
around a small thing that always contains a great truth. To succeed in
modifying the appearance of a flower is insignificant in itself, if you
will; but reflect upon it for however short a while, and it becomes
gigantic. Do we not violate, or deviate, profound, perhaps essential
and, in any case, time-honoured laws? Do we not exceed too easily
accepted limits? Do we not directly intrude our ephemeral will on that
of the eternal forces? Do we not give the idea of a singular power, a
power almost supernatural, since it inverts a natural order of things?
And, although it is prudent to guard against over-ambitious dreams, does
not this allow us to hope that we may perhaps learn to elude or to
transgress other laws no less time-honoured, nearer to ourselves and
important in a very different manner? For, in short, all things touch,
all things go hand to hand; all things obey the same invisible
principles, the identical exigencies; all things share in the same
spirit, in the same substance, in the terrifying and wonderful problem;
and the most modest victory gained in the matter of a flower may one
day disclose to us an infinity of the untold....
V
Because of these things I love the chrysanthemum; because of these
things I follow its evolution with a brother’s interest. It is, among
familiar plants, the most submissive, the most docile, the most
tractable and the most attentive plant of all that we meet on life’s
long way. It bears flowers impregnated through and through with the
thought and will of man: flowers already human, so to speak. And, if the
vegetable world is some day to reveal to us one of the words that we are
awaiting, perhaps it will be through this flower of the tombs that we
shall learn the first secret of existence, even
as, in another kingdom, it is probably
through the dog, the almost thinking
guardian of our homes, that we
shall discover the mystery
of animal life.