t the flowers.

First she hastened to the thicket-like rosary. There, in the last
flickering of the gloaming, she searched the beds and gathered all the
roses that hung languishing at the approach of winter. She plucked them
from down below, quite heedless of their thorns; she plucked them in
front of her, with both hands; she plucked them from above, rising upon
tip-toes and pulling down the boughs. So eager was she, so desperate
was her haste, that she even broke the branches, she, who had ever shown
herself tender to the tiniest blades of grass. Soon her arms were full
of roses, she tottered beneath her burden of flowers. And having quite
stripped the rose trees, carrying away even the fallen petals, she
turned her steps to the pavilion; and when she had let her load of
blossoms slip upon the floor of the room with the blue ceiling, she
again went down to the garden.

This time she sought the violets. She made huge bunches of them,
which she pressed one by one against her breast. Then she sought the
carnations, plucking them all, even to the buds; massing them together
in big sheaves of white blossoms that suggested bowls of milk, and big
sheaves of the red ones, that seemed like bowls of blood. Then, too,
she sought the stocks, the patches of mirabilis, the heliotropes and
the lilies. She tore the last blossoming stocks off by the handful,
pitilessly crumpling their satin ruches; she devastated the beds of
mirabilis, whose flowers were scarcely opening to the evening air; she
mowed down the field of heliotropes, piling her harvest of blooms into
a heap; and she thrust bundles of lilies under her arms like handles
of reeds. When she was again laden with as much as she could carry,
she returned to the pavilion to cast the violets, the carnations, the
lilies, the stocks, the heliotrope, and the mirabilis by the side of
the roses. And then, without stopping to draw breath, she went down yet
again.

This time she repaired to that gloomy corner which seemed like the
graveyard of the flower-garden. A warm autumn had there brought on a
second crop of spring flowers. She raided the borders of tuberoses and
hyacinths; going down upon her knees, and gathering her harvest with
all a miser's care, lest she should miss a single blossom. The tuberoses
seemed to her to be extremely precious flowers, which would distil drops
of gold and wealth and wondrous sweetness. The hyacinths, beaded with
pearly blooms, were like necklets, w