Ah, dear friends, we must love you if we would have you speak to us! We must watch you or you fall from the vase, despairing, your leaves withered. The flowers and the vase harmonize by contrast. In this bouquet there are some with flexible stems which seem to leap up gracefully. The flower, surrounded by its frail, straight leaves, is as if suspended from the ledge of a wrought-iron balcony. Ah, the adorable heart of Adonis is incased within these flowers! The hyacinth is like a balustrade placed upside down. A bed of hyacinths resembles a mass of balusters. Thus that great invention of the Renaissance, the balustrade, allows us to gain through it a glimpse of nature. This ray of art, the flower, this delicate inspiration, unknowingly requires the intelligence of man to develop its possibilities. Superb is this little rose-like flower among its spreading leaves. It is like an assumption. The double narcissus is a bird's-nest viewed from above. Strange flowers, like so many throats! What a frail marvel they are! These three little narcissi group themselves like a cluster of electric lights. The dignity of nature impresses us on every hand. It is greatly apparent in flowers; and yet so small are they that some look on them merely as the decoration at a banquet. I will cast a narcissus in bronze; it shall serve as my seal. A maiden on a lake, that is the narcissus. Little red marguerite, not yet open, sister to the strawberry, huddled in the shade which caresses you. The full-blown marguerite seems to play at _pigeon-vole_. It has rained for four hours; this is the hour when flowers quench their thirst. A marguerite in profile, a serpent's head with open jaws, stretching out its tongues! Petals, white, like a little collar. Seen in full face, its yellow-tinted heart is a little sun; its long petals are like fingers playing the piano. These white flowers are gulls with wings outstretched. They fly one after the other; this one, in adoration, has its petals thrown backward, like wings. Whoever understands life loves flowers and their innocent caresses. These marguerites seem to retreat like a spider that finds itself discovered in the road. Their buds stretch out their serpent-heads at the end of long stems, divided by intercepting leaves and entangling knots. Does not love travel in a similar path rather than straight as an arrow? There is so much regularity in these dark-green leaves, extending at fixed intervals to right and left, and in the eternal dryness of the bouquet, that it calls to mind a Persian miniature. No man has a heart pure enough to interpret the freshness of flowers. We cannot give expression to this freshness; it is beyond us. When it sheds its petals, the flower seems to disrobe and go to sleep on the earth. This is its last act of grace, showing its submission to God. What spirit possesses these flowers that die in silence! We should listen to them and give thanks.