Of April in Caracas, he is enthusiastic: “It is a spectacle worthy of admiration, when the acacias flower, and trees wear crowns of purple and robes of flame!” Sometimes Rodriguez warns against the dangers of democracies in words which remind us of León Daudet or De Tocqueville. There is no national soul, he says. And nothing is done to develop it. In Venezuela there are three ethnic unities which are hostile to any united progress. He has written glowingly of the days of tropic summer. Again I translate from memory: “The cicadas sang. From every tree, every bush, rang their shrill announcement of summer. Near and far, every spot of green, every twig, leaf, was a strident trill, inescapable, like the high, glorious notes of crystal chords vibrating with frenzy until they snap. From the scanty vegetation on the edge of gorges, which, toward the north, divide capriciously the city ... swelled monotonous, sharp song.... From all points of the compass it came. And in Caracas, from every _patio_, surged the deafening song of the penetrating choir.” Albert, idle in his studio, thought it was the tortured cry of a land sick with fever, praying the implacable blue for rain. The land was burned. This heat of fever quivered everywhere like a thirst. The fever leaped with violent color-cry to top boughs of the _búcares_. It leaped in blinding bloom to tall _tolu-trees_, to the acacias, which were breaking with blossoms. Nowhere in the city nor the forests could one see trees that were not covered with flowers, purple, red, and the hues of flame. From his window he confronted _tolu-trees_ completely enveloped like armor in purple petals. Both Loti and Barrés suffered from a consuming fear of death, says Daudet. They were constantly preoccupied with the thought that some-time life for them would be no more. Loti fought the fear with change of place, traveling; Barrés, with political affairs. Both were fêted and flattered while they suffered continual boredom. That accomplished Portuguese, Fidelino de Figueiredo, declares that it was boredom which caused the death of Louis Cotter, historian, who wrote _Splendor and Decay of the House of Austria_. He died of mental weariness because he could not adapt himself to the mediocrity of a provincial town, its petty quarrels, its local injustice, its horror and hatred of any kind of superiority. The brilliant Portuguese goes on to say that it was this attitude of mind which caused the French Revolution, and which is now beginning to afflict the minds of men again, with close of a period of time. People sense dumbly that the treasures of emotion, treasures stored by rich soul life (being rapidly destroyed) can never be reassembled. The result means death of culture. Marie Henrietta once wrote that _to live_ does not mean to be upon the Earth either a brief time or a long time, but to be able _to feel_, to register a great range of sensations.