"Ah, sir, you will teach all to love it; already has your _Etudes de la Nature_ made it popular throughout Europe. I myself had formed a floral dial at a villa at Florence where my regiment was quartered; every hour of the night and of the day was marked by the opening of different flowers. I am passionately fond of them, and can well understand the Dutchman lavishing a fortune upon a tulip, and spending a life in giving it some new variety of tint." "What a simple-minded family!" thought Bernardin. "One brother worships the starry splendor of the heavens, and the other luxuriates in flowers, and spends his idle garrison hours in watching them as they bud forth at every hour of the day; and these two young men are soldiers! War has not hardened their hearts, nor conquest made them despise simple pleasures." And now, Saint Pierre, leaning on his new friend, proceeded to show him his flowers, "which," he said, "though not like the lovely products of the fertile Italy you have conquered, yet, as my own planting are not without their fragrance for the old man;" and as they walked along, he repeated to himself rather than to his companion, "Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari" And in as low a voice, the officer went on--"Yes! happy the wise man who penetrates the arcana of nature, and who tramples under foot the world's prejudices." And as he stooped to pluck a daisy, he added, "who the calm votary of the silvan deities beholds with unenvious eye the consular pomp and the glittering diadem. Ah, sir! you, too, like Virgil--do you know he is my poet of all poets?" And before they had gone the round of the garden, the sage and the soldier had repeated almost the whole of the second book of the Georgics; and now, having begged and obtained a flower as a memento of his visit, the officer took his leave, with the promise of soon returning and bringing with him his brother. "If all republicans," said Bernardin, "were like these two brothers, the republic would be heaven, and I need not so long to die."