t as an alga or an emerald, I
have covered the roots of these first daisies of January. They and the
rare periwinkles and the furze are the only flowers of this season.
It is too much love doubtless which fills them. They must be born in
spite of the ice. The white little bands of their flower-heads are
tinged with violet at the ends, and surround the flowers which are
greenish yellow like the under side of an old mushroom. The muddy
roots feel the plowed fields. I have been so cruel as to pluck these
flowers and now they are wretched; they are as wounded as animals
could be; and see how, slowly as if they were moved by a terrible
fear, the petals of the flowers curve in to cover and protect the
sheathes of the minute corollas that I can no longer see. Tenderly I
try to raise these petals, but they resist me and I only succeed in
murdering the plant. Fool! Why could I not let these flowers live
on the edge of their ditch? There they would have felt the fresh
shrivelling of drinking in the sun, a bird would have touched them
lightly, the proboscis of the mosquitoes would have sucked up their
pollen, and they would have died gently by the side of their friends.

* * * * *

The stars of winter are beautiful when they are dusted on the
slate-colored sky, and when in the hazy blue depth they light up the
shreds of clouds. I passed through the little town at six o'clock,
when the candles behind the window-panes make square shadows move
within the shops and shine upon the reddish mud of the pavements.
A dog trots by sniffing under the doorways. A wagon whose oxen have
slipped makes a grating noise. A lantern flickers, a voice is heard.
The angles of the roofs are clear-cut. The rest is consumed by the
darkness. Here and there, still, at great distances, a window of smoky
rose, and I am at the top of the slope.

At the left an enormous star trembles. It seems to breathe and its
rays alternately elongate and withdraw again. Its white fire appears
to flow. I look upon the constellations, behind which there are other
spaces of constellations, which hide still more constellations, until
the glance is lost in luminous embers like those of a hearth.

I am in no wise troubled by these stars. I do not see in them worlds
infinitely great or small according to the one with which we compare
them. They are in my thoughts, such as I see them: the largest like
hummingbirds the smallest like wasps. The space