st meeting that a sweetheart has granted me, I have brought
a spray of gladiolus whose throats have the rosy hue of an apricot.
We placed them on the window during the night when I forgot them to
remember only my love. To-day I would forget my loved one, to recall
only the gladiolus.

My memory is therefore, if I may so express it, vegetal. Trees as well
as flowers and fruits symbolize for me beings and emotions. Plants
as well as animals and stones filled my childhood with a mysterious
_charm_. When I was four years old I remained rapt in contemplation
of the broken stones of the mountain, lying in heaps along the roads.
When struck they gave forth fire in the twilight. When rubbed against
one another they felt the burning heat. I gathered pieces of marble
from among them which seemed heavy with a water they had concealed
within themselves. The mica of the granite held my curiosity in a way
which nothing could satisfy. I felt that there was something that no
one could tell me--the life of the stones.

At the same age I was scolded because I carried away the artificial
beetles from a hat of my mother. I had the passion of collecting
animals, I felt toward them so great a love that I wept if I thought
them unhappy. And I still endure a deep anguish when I remember the
little nightingales which some one gave me and which pined away in the
dining-room. Still at the same age, in order to make me go to sleep,
they had to place not far from me a bottle containing a tree-frog.
I knew that here was a faithful friend who would protect me against
robbers. The first time that I saw a stag-beetle, I was so overcome
by the beauty of its horns that the longing to possess one became an
actual torment.

The passion for plants did not develop until later, about the age of
nine years, and I did not really begin to understand their life until
about the age of fifteen. I remember the circumstances under which it
happened. It was in summer, one Thursday, on a scorching afternoon.
I was passing through the botanical garden of a great city with my
mother. A white sun, dense blue shadows, and perfumes so heavy that
one could almost feel them cling, made of this half desert spot a
kingdom whose portal I crossed at last.

In the tepid and reddish-brown water of the ponds plants vegetated;
some were leathery and gray, and others long, soft, and transparent.
But from the very heart of these poor and sad algae there rose into
the very blue of