第68章

Ye powers of darkness! ye phantoms of the night! if while lingering within my home after the crowing of the cock, you saw me stealing about on tiptoe in the City of Books, you certainly never cried out, as Madame Trepof did at Naples, "That old man has a good-natured round back!" I entered the library; Hannibal, with his tail perpendicularly erected, came to rub himself against my legs and purr.I seized a volume from its shelf, some venerable Gothic text or some noble poet of the Renaissance--the jewel, the treasure which I had been dreaming about all night, I seized it and slipped it away into the very bottom of the closet which I had reserved for those books I intended to retain, and which soon became full almost to bursting.It is horrible to relate: I was stealing from the dowry of Jeanne! And when the crime had been consummated I set myself again sturdily to the task of cataloguing, until Jeanne came to consult me in regard to something about a dress or a trousseau.Icould not possibly understand just what she was talking about, through my total ignorance of the current vocabulary of dress-making and linen-drapery.Ah! if a bride of the fourteenth century had come to talk to me about the apparel of her epoch, then, indeed, Ishould have been able to understand her language! But Jeanne does not belong to my time, and I have to send her to Madame de Gabry, who on this important occasion will take the place of her mother.

...Night has come! Leaning from the window, we gaze at the vast sombre stretch of the city below us, pierced with multitudinous points of light.Jeanne presses her hand to her forehead as she leans upon the window-bar, and seems a little sad.And I say to myself as Iwatch her: All changes even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves:

we must die to one life before we can enter into another!

And as if answering my thought, the young girl murmurs to me, "My guardian, I am so happy; and still I feel as if I wanted to cry!"The Last Page August 21, 1869.

Page eighty-seven....Only twenty lines more and I shall have finished my book about insects and flowers.Page eighty-seventh and last...."As we have already seen, the visits of insects are of the utmost importance to plants; since their duty is to carry to the pistils the pollen of the stamens.It seems also that the flower itself is arranged and made attractive for the purpose of inviting this nuptial visit.I think I have been able to show that the nectary of the plant distils a sugary liquid which attracts the insects and obliges it to aid unconsciously in the work of direct or cross fertilisation.The last method of fertilisation is the more common.I have shown that flowers are coloured and perfumed so as to attract insects, and interiorly so constructed as to offer those visitors such a mode of access that they cannot penetrate into the corolla without depositing upon the stigma the pollen with which they have been covered.My most venerated master Sprengel observes in regard to that fine down which lines the corolla of the wood-geranium: 'The wise Author of Nature has never created a single useless hair!' I say in my turn: If that Lily of the Valley whereof the Gospel makes mention is more richly clad than King Solomon in all his glory, its mantle of purple is a wedding-garment, and that rich apparel is necessary to the perpetuation of the species.""Brolles, August 21, 1869."