transformed into a bed of flowers my strange night-fancies gave place to
recollections at once sweet and sad. I thought of my last excursion to
Fontenay-aux-Roses, with the loved one, the good fairy of my twentieth
year. Springtime was budding into birth, the tender foliage gleamed
in the pale April sunshine. The little pathway skirting the hill was
bordered by large fields of violets. As one passed along, a strong
perfume seemed to penetrate one and make one languid. _She_ was leaning
on my arm, faint with love from the sweet odour of the flowers. A
whiteness hovered over the country-side, little insects buzzed in the
sunshine, deep silence fell from the heavens, and so low was the sound
of our kisses that not a bird in all the hedges showed sign of fear.
At a turn of the path we perceived some old bent women, who with dry,
withered hands were hurriedly gathering violets and throwing them into
large baskets. She who was with me glanced longingly at the flowers, and
I called one of the women. "You want some violets?" said she. "How much?
A pound?"

God of Heaven! She sold her flowers by the pound! We fled in deep
distress. It seemed as though the country-side had been transformed into
a huge grocer's shop. . . . Then we ascended to the woods of Verrieres,
and there, in the grass, under the soft, fresh foliage, we found some
tiny violets which seemed to be dreadfully afraid, and contrived to
hide themselves with all sorts of artful ruses. During two long hours
I scoured the grass and peered into every nook, and as soon as ever I
found a fresh violet I carried it to her. She bought it of me, and
the price that I exacted was a kiss. . . . And I thought of all those
things, of all that happiness, amidst the hubbub of the markets of
Paris, before those poor dead flowers whose graveyard the footway had
become. I remembered my good fairy, who is now dead and gone, and the
little bouquet of dry violets which I still preserve in a drawer. When I