canary in the wicked art with which she resists the impatient ardors of her companion; and the thousand travesties with which in the feminine world a "yes" is concealed under a "no" are but pallid imitations of the refined coquetry, the simulated flights, the amorous bitings and the hundred thousand cajoleries of the world of animals. As to the esthetic elements which nature has lavished upon the loves of living beings, they are such and so many that the richest palette would be insufficient to depict them or the poet's words to describe them. Here are two pictures from my meager collection. I I am in the garden, lying down upon a wall so low that I can voluptuously scent the soft aroma of the earth damped by a storm; I have no rugs under my body or pillows under my head; a slate, furrowed and shining, is my bed. With one hand extended above the wall, I am nipping the petals of a lemon flower, while with the other I am frightening the ants which hustle about in the sandy path. All at once, two little shadows, two brown sprites, pass before my eyes and alight, facing me, in the middle of the path. They are two children of heaven, all wings and all beauty; the organs of terrestrial life are reduced to a thread, but a thread that sucks the nectar from the flowers, and four gigantic wings to conquer the skies. Their hours are numbered; they must love and die, and nature made them warm and swift for intense love: organs of sense greater than the venter, organs of beauty greater than the entrails. They are butterflies, but I know not their names, and I feel disappointed. I look around in vain for an entomologist to name them for me: man does not feel that he possesses a creature unless he has sprinkled it with the ink of his dictionaries. They will die, as far as I am concerned, nameless; and in vain will they knock at the gates of paradise, to enter the place where dear and beloved things are remembered. Can you imagine ever having loved a woman whose name you know not? As in religion, so it is in love: baptism is the first and holiest of sacraments.