said the rose-tree. "May I ask
when it will appear?"

"I take my time," said the snail. "You're always in such a
hurry. That does not excite expectation."

The following year the snail lay in almost the same spot, in the
sunshine under the rose-tree, which was again budding and bearing
roses as fresh and beautiful as ever. The snail crept half out of
his shell, stretched out his horns, and drew them in again.

"Everything is just as it was last year! No progress at all; the
rose-tree sticks to its roses and gets no farther."

The summer and the autumn passed; the rose-tree bore roses and
buds till the snow fell and the weather became raw and wet; then it
bent down its head, and the snail crept into the ground.

A new year began; the roses made their appearance, and the snail
made his too.

"You are an old rose-tree now," said the snail. "You must make
haste and die. You have given the world all that you had in you;
whether it was of much importance is a question that I have not had
time to think about. But this much is clear and plain, that you have
not done the least for your inner development, or you would have
produced something else. Have you anything to say in defence? You will
now soon be nothing but a stick. Do you understand what I say?"

"You frighten me," said the rose--tree. "I have never thought of
that."

"No, you have never taken the trouble to think at all. Have you
ever given yourself an account why you bloomed, and how your
blooming comes about--why just in that way and in no other?"

"No," said the rose-tree. "I bloom in gladness, because I cannot
do otherwise. The sun shone and warmed me, and the air refreshed me; I
drank the clear dew and the invigorating rain. I breathed and I lived!
Out of the earth there arose a power within me, whilst from above I
also received strength; I felt an ever-renewed and ever-increasing
happiness, and therefore I was obliged to go on blooming. That was
my life; I could not do otherwise."

"You have led a very easy life," remarked the snail.

"Certainly. Everything was given me," said the rose-tree. "But
still more was given to you. Yours is one of those deep-thinking
natures, one of those highly gifted minds that astonishes the world."

"I have not the slightest intention of doing so," said the
snail. "The world is nothing to me. What have I to do with the
world? I have enough to do with myself, and enough in myself."

"But must we not all here on eart