This red and black ranunculus proclaims the carnival; it is the carnival itself. The carnival is the very emblem of flowers. Like them it, also, wears masks and costumes. It wears their colors, bright yellow, red--an imitation of the flowers of the sun. Delightful carnival! Delightful interpretation of flowers! For a long time in my youth I undervalued them. I am happy now to see them under another aspect, as the splendor of Rome and the lavish intelligence of a bygone time. Some one gave me tulips. They fascinate me variously. How great an artist is chance, knowing the last secret by which to win us! These yellow tulips, dipped in blood! What a treat to see true colors--reds, blues, greens, the art of stained glass! One is quite taken aback before these flowers, in which nature has expressed more than one can comprehend. It imparts that great mystery which is beyond us and signifies the presence of God. How magnificent the flower becomes as its youth passes! Even the flowers have their setting sun. My bouquet is always the same, yet I never cease to look at it. A whirlwind, a very cyclone, this tulip has perished in the storm. Like the wife of Lot, it is possessed of fear. This one is open, all aflame like a burning bush. That one, all disheveled, comes toward me. Full of ardor, it springs up, its petals strong and expanding, like a mouth curling forward. The violence of passion in flowers is pronounced. Ah, the softness of love is found only in women! Great artists, curb your curiosity, neglect the pleasures which offer themselves to you, so that you may better understand the secrets of God. III PORTRAITS OF WOMEN Rodin's busts of women are perhaps the most charming part of his work. But to say this is almost a sacrilege, an affront to the grace of the small groups that, in this giant's work, swarm about the superior figures. But we need not search too far into this or yield to the pedantic mania for classifying to death. Let us rather look at them without transforming the joy of admiration into the labor of cataloguing, and give ourselves up wholly to the pleasure of seeing and understanding. Yes, these portraits of women are the graceful aspect of this work of power. They are the achievements of a force which knows its own strength, and here relaxes in caresses. If some among them disturb the spirit, most of them shed upon us a calm enjoyment, the delightful security that one breathes among all-powerful beings that wish to be gracious. They allay the sense of unrest aroused in us by those dramas in marble and bronze which a powerful intellect has conceived--that mind from which sprang "The Burghers of Calais," the two monuments to Victor Hugo, "The Tower of Labor," that imagination, glowing like a forge, which produced "The Gate of Hell," the Sarmiento monument, the statue of Balzac.