But, to be sure, you would only have thought the wind was blowing
about the rose, so you would have seen nothing really of the
drollery of it all, which was not droll at all to Rosa Damascena,
for a wound in one's vanity is as long healing as a wound from a
conical bullet in one's body. The blackbird had not gone near her
after that, nor any of his relations and friends, and she had had
a great many shooting and flying pains for months together, in
consequence of aphides' eggs having been laid inside her stem--
eggs of which the birds would have eased her long before if they
had not been driven away by her haughty rage.

However, she had been almost glad to have some ailment. She had
called it aneurism, and believed it made her look refined and
interesting. If it would only have made her pale! But it had not
done that: she had remained of the richest rose color.

When the winter had passed and the summer had come round again,
the grafting had done its work: she was really a Rosa Indica, and
timidly put forth the first blossom in her new estate. It was a
small, rather puny yellowish thing, not to be compared to her own
natural red clusters, but she thought it far finer.

Scarcely had it been put forth by her than the gardener whipped it
off with his knife, and bore it away in proof of his success in
such transmogrifications.

She had never felt the knife before, when she had been only Rosa
Damascena: it hurt her very much, and her heart bled.