Though somewhat startled by so formidable an array of learning, the Count was not discouraged; and, by way of preparation for the worst, opened the thinnest volume of the collection, and began to examine the index in search of the most euphonous titles afforded by botanic nomenclature. He longed to appropriate to his purpose some of the softer saints of the floral calendar; such as Alcea, Alisma, Andryala, Bromelia, Celosia, Coronilla, Euphrasia, Helvelia, Passiflora, Primula, Santolina, or some other equally soft to the lip and harmonious to the ear. And, now, for the first time, he began to tremble, lest his pretty favourite should inherit some quaint or harsh patronymic. A masculine or neuter termination would put to flight all his poetical vagaries concerning his gentle friend. What, for instance, would become of his ethereal Picciola, if her earthly prototype were to be saluted as _Rumex obtusifolius_, _Satyrium_, _Hyoscyamus_, _Gossypium_, _Cynoglossum_, _Cucubalus_, _Cenchrus_, _Buxus_; or, worse still, and in more vulgar phrase, as Old Man, Dogtooth, Houndstongue, Cuckoo-flower, Devil-in-a-bush, Hen and Chickens, or Spiderwort! How should he support such a disenchantment of his imagination! No! better not to risk the vexation of such an ordeal. Yet, in spite of himself, he found it impossible to resist the temptation of opening every successive volume—led on from page to page by the development of the mighty mysteries of nature, but irritated by the love of system prevailing among the learned, by whom so charming a science has been rendered the harshest, most technical, and most perplexed, of all the branches of natural history. [Illustration] For a whole week he devoted himself to the analysis of his flower, with a view to classification, but without success. In the chaos of so many strange words, varying from system to system—bewildered by the vast and ponderous synonymy, which, like the net of Vulcan, overspreads the beauties of botany, overpowering them by its weight, he soon gave up the attempt; having consulted each author in succession, for a clew, wandering from classes to orders, from orders to tribes, from tribes to families, from families to species, from species to individuals; and losing all patience with the blind guides, ever at variance among themselves with respect to the purpose and denomination of the parts of organization in vegetable life. At the close of his investigations, the poor little flower, the last upon the tree, examined petal by petal, and to the very depth of her calyx, suddenly fell off one day into the hand of the operator, bearing with it Charney’s hopes of inquiry into the progress of the seed, the reproduction of his favourite, the maternity of the lovely Picciola! “She shall have no other title than PICCIOLA!” cried Charney. “Picciola, the flower of the captive. What do I want to know more of her name or nature? To what purpose this idle thirst after human knowledge?”