“Go to your stove, my girl,” the old man ordered with dignity. He was already on all fours on the floor, looking for his masterpiece in the heap of roses. Without getting up he handed a magnificent flower to his nephew. “She will not bear my name--but yours. This very evening I have christened her Paule Berlier.” “She is beautiful,” said Jean. But he was thinking of his fiancée. Then he added: “I thank you, Uncle, for your poetic homage.” The old man was still on his knees. He stretched out his two hands with an expansive gesture and softly repeated, “Here are all my roses!” “But why this massacre?” Jean asked for the second time. “I am sure you must have decapitated all your plants.” “All, Jean, without exception.” “Why this slaughter? Won’t you tell me?” M. Loigny was contemplating the mass of cut flowers with the radiant smile of a Christian virgin led to martyrdom. He got up with difficulty and answered: “Here are all my roses. They are for you.” “For _me_?” asked Jean, surprised. “For you, so that you may give them to your fiancée.” “You have despoiled your garden for my fiancée? Oh, how kind you are!” said Jean. As he embraced his uncle, he noticed that the old man’s eyes were full of tears. “But why? They are your flowers. You should not have sacrificed them for me.” With an affection that Jean had never known in him, M. Loigny put his hand on the young man’s shoulder and said gently to him: “Yes, Jean, it was necessary. I am not crying for my roses, but for myself. They are not, they should never have been anything but a diversion instead of occupying all my time. Can you forgive me, Jean?” “Forgive you?” “Yes, I had positively forgotten life. I was afraid of its sorrows and troubles, and I took refuge in my garden. Many people commit the same cowardice, in another way. They are wrong, like me. Just now on the road, at the sight of your astonished face, I suddenly understood the harm I had done. For the sake of a rose, for a wicked autumn-flowering China rose, dark red turning to purple, I had lost sight of your happiness, your love, and my own duty. But all my flowers are there. When I came in I fell upon my rose bushes with this weapon.” He still had the pruning shears in his left hand, instrument of his atoning sacrifice. Jean tried to interpose. “But you loved flowers....”