No declaration of love, no vows of uncontrollable passion ever conveyed more than these symphonies of flowers; my baffled desires impelled me to efforts of expression through them like those of Beethoven through his notes, to the same bitter reactions, to the same mighty bounds towards heaven. In their presence Madame de Mortsauf was my Henriette. She looked at them constantly; they fed her spirit, she gathered all the thoughts I had given them, saying, as she raised her head from the embroidery frame to receive my gift, "Ah, how beautiful!"Natalie, you will understand this delightful intercourse through the details of a bouquet, just as you would comprehend Saadi from a fragment of his verse. Have you ever smelt in the fields in the month of May the perfume that communicates to all created beings the intoxicating sense of a new creation; the sense that makes you trail your hand in the water from a boat, and loosen your hair to the breeze while your mind revives with the springtide greenery of the trees? Alittle plant, a species of vernal grass, is a powerful element in this veiled harmony; it cannot be worn with impunity; take into your hand its shining blade, striped green and white like a silken robe, and mysterious emotions will stir the rosebuds your modesty keeps hidden in the depths of your heart. Round the neck of a porcelain vase imagine a broad margin of the gray-white tufts peculiar to the sedum of the vineyards of Touraine, vague image of submissive forms; from this foundation come tendrils of the bind-weed with its silver bells, sprays of pink rest-barrow mingled with a few young shoots of oak-leaves, lustrous and magnificently colored; these creep forth prostrate, humble as the weeping-willow, timid and supplicating as prayer. Above, see those delicate threads of the purple amoret, with its flood of anthers that are nearly yellow; the snowy pyramids of the meadow-sweet, the green tresses of the wild oats, the slender plumes of the agrostis, which we call wind-ear; roseate hopes, decking love's earliest dream and standing forth against the gray surroundings. But higher still, remark the Bengal roses, sparsely scattered among the laces of the daucus, the plumes of the linaria, the marabouts of the meadow-queen; see the umbels of the myrrh, the spun glass of the clematis in seed, the dainty petals of the cross-wort, white as milk, the corymbs of the yarrow, the spreading stems of the fumitory with their black and rosy blossoms, the tendrils of the grape, the twisted shoots of the honeysuckle; in short, all the innocent creatures have that is most tangled, wayward, wild,--flames and triple darts, leaves lanceolated or jagged, stalks convoluted like passionate desires writhing in the soul. From the bosom of this torrent of love rises the scarlet poppy, its tassels about to open, spreading its flaming flakes above the starry jessamine, dominating the rain of pollen--that soft mist fluttering in the air and reflecting the light in its myriad particles. What woman intoxicated with the odor of the vernal grasses would fail to understand this wealth of offered thoughts, these ardent desires of a love demanding the happiness refused in a hundred struggles which passion still renews, continuous, unwearying, eternal!
Put this speech of the flowers in the light of a window to show its crisp details, its delicate contrasts, its arabesques of color, and allow the sovereign lady to see a tear upon some petal more expanded than the rest. What do we give to God? perfumes, light, and song, the purest expression of our nature. Well, these offerings to God, are they not likewise offered to love in this poem of luminous flowers murmuring their sadness to the heart, cherishing its hidden transports, its unuttered hopes, its illusions which gleam and fall to fragments like the gossamer of a summer's night?
Such neutral pleasures help to soothe a nature irritated by long contemplation of the person beloved. They were to me, I dare not say to her, like those fissures in a dam through which the water finds a vent and avoids disaster. Abstinence brings deadly exhaustion, which a few crumbs falling from heaven like manna in the desert, suffices to relieve. Sometimes I found my Henriette standing before these bouquets with pendant arms, lost in agitated reverie, thoughts swelling her bosom, illumining her brow as they surged in waves and sank again, leaving lassitude and languor behind them. Never again have I made a bouquet for any one. When she and I had created this language and formed it to our uses, a satisfaction filled our souls like that of a slave who escapes his masters.
During the rest of this month as I came from the meadows through the gardens I often saw her face at the window, and when I reached the salon she was ready at her embroidery frame. If I did not arrive at the hour expected (though never appointed), I saw a white form wandering on the terrace, and when I joined her she would say, "I came to meet you; I must show a few attentions to my youngest child."The miserable games of backgammon had come to end. The count's late purchases took all his time in going hither and thither about the property, surveying, examining, and marking the boundaries of his new possessions. He had orders to give, rural works to overlook which needed a master's eye,--all of them planned and decided on by his wife and himself. We often went to meet him, the countess and I, with the children, who amused themselves on the way by running after insects, stag-beetles, darning-needles, they too making their bouquets, or to speak more truly, their bundles of flowers. To walk beside the woman we love, to take her on our arm, to guide her steps,--these are illimitable joys that suffice a lifetime. Confidence is then complete.
