smooth and very fine, was parted in the
middle of his head into two bandeaus which curled at their extremity.
His pale and hollow cheeks, his pure brow, lined with a few furrows,
expressed a condition of suffering which was painful to witness. His
mouth, always gracious, and adorned with very white teeth, wore the sort
of fixed smile which we often see on the lips of the dying. His hands,
white as those of a woman, were remarkably handsome. The habit of
meditation had taught him to droop his head like a fragile flower, and
the attitude was in keeping with his person; it was like the last grace
that a great artist touches into a portrait to bring out its latent
thought. Etienne's head was that of a delicate girl placed upon the
weakly and deformed body of a man.

Poesy, the rich meditations of which make us roam like botanists through
the vast fields of thought, the fruitful comparison of human ideas, the
enthusiasm given by a clear conception of works of genius, came to be
the inexhaustible and tranquil joys of the young man's solitary and
dreamy life. Flowers, ravishing creatures whose destiny resembled his
own, were his loves. Happy to see in her son the innocent passions which
took the place of the rough contact with social life which he never
could have borne, the duchess encouraged Etienne's tastes; she brought
him Spanish "romanceros," Italian "motets," books, sonnets, poems. The
library of Cardinal d'Herouville came into Etienne's possession, the
use of which filled his life. These readings, which his fragile health
forbade him to continue for many hours at a time, and his rambles among
the rocks of his domain, were interspersed with naive meditations which
kept him motionless for hours together before his smiling flowers--those
sweet companions!--or crouching in a niche of the rocks before some
species of algae, a moss, a seaweed, studying their mysteries; seeking
perhaps a rhythm in their fragrant depths, like a bee its honey. He
often admired, without purpose, and without explaining his pleasure to
himself, the slender lines on the petals of dark flowers, the delicacy
of their rich tunics of gold or purple, green or azure, the fringes, so
profusely beautiful, of their calyxes or leaves, their ivory or velvet
textures. Later, a thinker as well as a poet, he would detect the reason
of these innumerable differences in a single nature, by discovering the
indication of unknown faculties; for from day to day he made