t his hand
quickly along the moss as if he were trying to catch a fly, and ran off
to his mother triumphant, delighted, beside himself, with an innocent
gray lizard on the tips of his fingers.

"I've got him! I've got him! He was basking in the sun and I charmed
him!"

"Basking in the sun!" This was a revelation to me. I flung up the
window. Yes, it was true. Warmth and light lay everywhere: on the roofs
still glistening with last night's showers; across the sky, whose gay
blue proclaimed that winter was done. I looked downward and saw what
I had not seen before: the willow bursting into bud; the hepatica in
flower at the foot of the camellias, which had ceased to bloom; the
pear-trees in the Carmelites' garden flushing red as the sap rose within
them; and upon the dead trunk of a fig-tree was a blackbird, escaped
from the Luxembourg, who, on tiptoe, with throat outstretched, drunk
with delight, answered some far-off call that the wind brought to him,
singing, as if in woodland depths, the rapturous song of the year's new
birth. Then, oh! then, I could contain myself no longer. I ran down the
stairs four at a time, cursing Paris and the Junian Latins who had been
cheating me of the 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 reaso