spring.  What! live there cut off from the world which was created for me, tread an artificial earth of stone or asphalt, live with a horizon of chimneys, see only the sky chopped into irregular strips by roofs smirched with smoke, and allow this exquisite spring to fleet by without drinking in her bountiful delight, without renewing in her youthfulness our youth, always a little staled and overcast by winter!  No, that can not be; I mean to see the spring.

And I have seen it, in truth, though cut and tied into bouquets, for my aimless steps led me to the Place St. Sulpice, where the flower-sellers were.  There were flowers in plenty, but very few people; it was already late.  None the less did I enjoy the sight of all the plants arranged by height and kind, from the double hyacinths, dear to hall-porters, to the first carnations, scarcely in bud, whose pink or white tips just peeped from their green sheaths; then the bouquets, bundles of the same kinds and same shades of flowers wrapped up in paper:  lilies-of-the-valley, lilacs, forget-me-nots, mignonette, which being grown under glass has guarded its honey from the bees to scent the air here.  Everyone had a look of welcome for those exiles.  The girls smiled at them without knowing the reason why.  The cabdrivers in line along the sidewalk seemed to enjoy their neighborhood.  I heard one of them, with a face like a halfripened strawberry, red, with a white nose, say to a comrade, “Hallo, Francis! that smells good, doesn’t it!”

I was walking along slowly, looking into every stall, and when I came to the end I turned right about face.

Great Heavens!  Not ten feet off!  M. Flamaran, M. Charnot, and Mademoiselle Jeanne!

They had stopped before one of the stalls that I had just left.  M. Flamaran was carrying under his arm a pot of cineraria, which made his stomach a perfect bower.  M. Charnot was stooping, examining a superb pink carnation.  Jeanne was hovering undecided between twenty bunches of flowers, bending her pretty head in its spring hat over each in turn.

“Which, father?”

“Whichever you like; but make up your mind soon; Flamaran is waiting.”

A moment more, and the elective affinities carried the day.

“This bunch of mignonette,” she said.

I would have wagered on it.  She was sure to choose the mignonette—­a fair, well-bred, graceful plant like herself.  Others choose their camellias and their hyacinths; Jeanne must have something more refined.

She put down her money, caught up the bunch, looked at it for a moment, and held it close to her breast as a mother might hold her child, while all its golden locks drooped over her arm.  Then off she ran after her father, who had only changed one carnation for another.  They went on toward St. Sulpice—­M.  Flamaran on the right, M. Charnot in the middle, Jeanne on the left.  She brushed past without seeing me.  I followed them at a distance.  All three were