“I heard you a few moments ago,” went on Jean pleasantly, “and I supposed you were talking to a crowd of charming shadows.” “About a hundred and fifty,” said his uncle. “It is a goodly number.” “What is it compared with the incessantly increasing number of the various kinds of roses? There are several thousands of them. And one forgets all those that our grandfathers cultivated, of which one can find only in old books and among some rare specimens in old gardens. In our day too, Jean, new roses make their appearance every year from the hands of their clever growers. Look on the ground and you will see represented by choice specimens the roses of Bengal and China, the Miss Lawrence varieties, the many-flowered roses, whose trails are suited to borders and baskets, the roses of Provence, the moss-rose, the tea rose, the noisette, in whose delicate coloring the note of yellow is predominant. Cold-hating plants these Tea and Noisette roses! We have to protect them against the severities of winter, but they reward us for our trouble by flowering abundantly.” Once started on his hobby, like a dog running round a cornfield, he rushed about, sniffing the air, gesticulating and heedlessly threatening all the knick-knacks of the drawing-room with sudden ruin. All at once he walked up to a little desk, opened a drawer and drew out a volume, which he brandished in the air as he came back toward his nephew. “Lecoq’s ‘Cultivation of Vegetables,’” he murmured. “A weighty work, admirable, inimitable!” He turned over the pages, and smiling happily began to read this passage in a loud voice: “Whatever the size of a bed, however small may be the corner of ground at an amateur’s disposal, whatever useful knowledge he may gain, whatever curious experiments he may make, and whatever joy he may attain when by artificial cultivation he succeeds in enriching his garden, his friends, even his country, with some new creation which owes its existence to his care and intelligence.” He looked at his nephew over his book, and then finished the quotation: “Everyone may act in his own sphere, in his own corner, may be silent if he is not successful (which is rare), and may justly boast if something remarkable comes to crown his efforts.” As if he had equalled Napoleon or Cæsar in the gratification of his ambition, M. Loigny murmured sadly as he closed the learned work: “Yes, I have dreamed of emulating the rose-grower Gonod or Louis Scipio Cochet. I, too, have created a rose! She is lying there with all the rest. I wanted to call her the ‘Souvenir of Loigny the Rosarist’ so that by means of her sweet scent and delicate coloring my name might be transmitted through the ages to all garden-lovers. I, even I, have aspired to glory.” “That is splendid. Show her to me,” said Jean. “Then let us have dinner, for I am dying of hunger.” “Now that is what I call sense,” muttered Fanchette. The hands of the clock stood at nine.