Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes

If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.

When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.

All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing.

We all live in the sublime. Where else can we live? That is the only place of life.

اگر مغز خالی هم مثل شکم خالی سرو صدا !می کرد، انسان خیلی عاقل تر از اینها بود

Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past.

To learn to love, one must first learn to see.

Isolate her, and however abundant the food or favourable the temperature, she will expire in a few days not of hunger or cold, but of loneliness.

As soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way. We think we have plunged into the depths of the abyss, and when we return to the surface the drop of water on our pale fingertips no longer resembles the sea from which it comes. We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered.

اگر مغز خالی هم مثل شکم خالی سرو صدا ! می کرد، انسان خیلی عاقل تر از اینها بود

Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought will not work except in Silence; neither will Virtue Work except in secrecy.

به نظر من اگر مرگ در دنیا نبود، بشر به آن محتاج بود و می بایست آن را خلق كند تا از چنگال كسالتهای زندگی رهایی یابد. در حقیقت بسیاری از ما پیش از مردن، مرده هستیم؛ برای اینكه همه چیز خود را از دست داده ایم

Besides, I myself have now for a long time ceased to look for anything more beautiful in this world, or more interesting, than the truth; or at least than the effort one is able to make towards the truth.

At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future tradition has placed 10 000 men to guard the past

خدا» یعنی» ناتوانی یک موجود که نمی تواند وجود نداشته باشد

Thousands of channels there are through which the beauty of your soul may sail even unto our thoughts. Above all is there the wonderful, central channel of love.

Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not know the flowers?

A thought that is almost beautiful – a thought that you speak not, but that you cherish within you at this moment, will irradiate you as though you were a transparent vase.

For it is our most secret desire that governs and dominates all. If your eyes look for nothing but evil, you will always see evil triumphant; but if you have learned to let your glance rest on sincerity, simpleness, truth, you will ever discover, deep down in all things, the silent overpowering victory of that which you love.

.چیزی را که ما نمی توانیم بفهمیم ضد و نقیض زندگی انسان است زیرا از یک طرف طبیعت یا خدا انسان را آفریده که حتما مرتکب گناه می شود و از طرف دیگر به ما می گویند که هر کسی که مرتکب گناه !!!گردید در جهان مجازات خواهد دید بهتر این بود که از روز نخست ما را طوری می آفریدند که قدرت ارتکاب گناه را نداشته باشیم، نه آنکه ما را بیافرینند و بعد کیفر بدهند

بیچاره شیطان در کره خاکی بدنام شده است.زیرا شیطان جز خود ما هیچکس نیست،ما برای اینکه خودمان را در حضور خود تبرئه کنیم،تمام کینه ها ،حسدها ،دشمنی ها و بیرحمی ها را در وجود موهومی به نام شیطان جا داده ایم

:نويسنده كتاب "عقل الملل" نوشته است با دنيا همانطور كه هست كنار بيائيد ولی اگر ما همانطوری كه دنيا هست با او كنار می آمديم، هنوز تمدن ما نظير تمدن دوره سنگ بود

Can it be that man is nothing but a frightened god?

We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet; and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. —Maurice Maeterlinck

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another ...

آدم تنها اگر در بهشت هم باشد به او خوش نمي گذرد. اما كسي كه به كتاب يا تحقيق علاقه مند است، هنگامي كه به مطالعه يا انديشه درباره محتواي آن كتاب مشغول است، جهنم تنهايي براي او بهترين بهشت هاست

When we lose someone we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.

برای چه توقع دارید كه خیالات، تصورات، احساسات، اقدامات و به طور خلاصه زندگی ما آزاد باشد و حال آنكه به چشم خود می بینیم كهكشانهای بزرگ كه منظومه خورشیدی ما در برابر آنها هیچ است، در حركات خود آزاد نیستند و مجبور شده اند كه خط سیر ویژه ای را پیموده و از قوانین خاصی پیروی كنند

اينك كه بيش از هشتاد سال از زندگی من می گذرد به گفته فرزانه نامی ايرانی ابن سينا تازه دريافته ام كه چيزی نمی دانم. آيا حيف نيست كه فرزندان آدم در هنگامی كه تازه به نادانی خود پی برده اند بميرند؟

Never for an instant does God cease to speak; but no one thinks of opening the doors. And yet, with a little watchfulness, it were not difficult to hear the word that God must speak concerning our every act.

El dolor es inevitable, el sufrimiento es opcional.

Unless we close our eyes we are always deceived.

اگر "نيستي"وجود داشته باشد بايد "هست" شود و در اينصورت ديگر "نيستي" نخواهد بود و "نيستي" همان "هستي" خواهد بود

Be good at the depth of you, and you will discover that those who surround you will be good even to the same depths. Nothing responds more infallibly to the secret cry of goodness than the secret cry of goodness that is near. While you are actively good in the invisible, all those who approach you will unconsciously do things that they could not do by the side of any other man.

We should tell ourselves, once and for all, that it is the first duty of the soul to become as happy, complete, independent, and great as lies in its power. Herein is no egoism, or pride. To become effectually generous and sincerely humble there must be within us a confident, tranquil, and clear comprehension of all that we owe to ourselves.

But cannot we live as though we always loved? It was this that the saints and heroes did; this and nothing more.

It is sad to love and be unloved, but sadder still to be unable to love.

When the Devil was a woman, When Lilith wound Her ebony hair in heavy braids, And framed Her pale features all 'round With Botticelli's tangled thoughts, When she, smiling softly, Ringed all her slim fingers In golden bands with brilliant stones, When she leafed through Villiers And loved Huysmans, When she fathomed Maeterlinck's silence And bathed her Soul In Gabriel d'Annunzio's colors, She even laughed And as she laughed, The little princess of serpents sprang Out of her mouth. Then the most beautiful of she-devils Sought after the serpent, She seized the Queen of Serpents With her ringed finger, So that she wound and hissed Hissed, hissed And spit venom. In a heavy copper vase; Damp earth, Black damp earth She scattered upon it. Lightly her great hands caressed This heavy copper vase All around, Her pale lips lightly sang Her ancient curse. Like a children's rhyme her curses chimed, Soft and languid Languid as the kisses, That the damp earth drank From her mouth, But life arose in the vase, And tempted by her languid kisses, And tempted by those sweet tones, From the black earth slowly there crept, Orchids - When the most beloved Adorns her pale features before the mirror All 'round with Botticelli's adders, There creep sideways from the copper vase, Orchids- Devil's blossoms which the ancient earth, Wed by Lilith's curse To serpent's venom, has borne to the light Orchids- The Devil's blossoms- "The Diary Of An Orange Tree

To love one’s neighbour in the immovable depths means to love in others that which is eternal; for one’s neighbour, in the truest sense of the term, is that which approaches the nearest to God; in other words, all that is best and purest in man; and it is only by ever lingering near the gates I spoke of, that you can discover the divine in the soul.

Before we can bring happiness to others, we first must be happy ourselves; nor will happiness abide within us unless we confer it on others. If there be a smile upon our lips, those around us will soon smile too; and our happiness will become the truer and deeper as we see that these others are happy. "It is not seemly that I, who, willingly, have brought sorrow to none, should permit myself to be sad," said Marcus Aurelius, in one of his noblest passages.

Nothing in the whole world is so athirst for beauty as the soul, nor is there anything to which beauty clings so readily. There is nothing in the world capable of such spontaneous up-lifting, of such speedy ennoblement; nothing that offers more scrupulous obedience to the pure and noble command it receives.

(there is) no other means of escaping from one's consciousness than to deny it, to look upon it as an organic disease of the terrestrial intelligence - a disease which we must endeavor to cure by an action which must appear to us an action of violent and willful madness, but which, on the other side of our appearances, is probably an action of health. ("Of Immortality")

Every new star that is found in the sky will lend of its rays to the passions, and thoughts, and the courage, of man. Whatever of beauty we see in all that surrounds us, within us already is beautiful; whatever we find in ourselves that is great and adorable, that do we find too in others.

… it is that such of us as have loved deeply have learnt many secrets that are unknown to others; for thousands and thousands of things quiver in silence on the lips of true friendship and love, that are not to be found in the silence of other lips, to which friendship and love are unknown. …

Niemand is waarlijk mijn vriend, voordat we geleerd hebben in elkanders tegenwoordigheid te zwijgen.

سئل حكيم : هل هناك أقبح من البخل ؟ قال : نعم الكريم إذا تحدث بإحسانه لمن أحسن إليه.

It feels like I’ve got all the flames in hell burning in my head.

There may be human joy in doing good with definite purpose, but they who do good expecting nothing in return know a joy that is divine.

At every crossway on the road that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past.

Evităm să ne gândim la moarte până când nu mai avem forța, n-aș spune, de a gândi, ci chiar de a respira.

We can be born thus more than once; and each birth brings us a little nearer to our God.

Sobald wir etwas aussprechen, entwerten wir es seltsam. Wir glauben in die Tiefe der Abgründe hinabgetaucht zu sein, und wenn wir wieder an die Oberfläche kommen, gleicht der Wassertropfen an unseren bleichen Fingerspitzen nicht mehr dem Meere, dem er entstammt. Wir wähnen eine Schatzgrube wunderbarer Schätze entdeckt zu haben, und wenn wir wieder ans Tageslicht kommen, haben wir nur falsche Steine und Glasscherben mitgebracht; und trotzdem schimmert der Schatz im Finstern unverändert.

We subdue that in others which we have learned to subdue in ourselves. Around the upright man there is drawn a wide circle of peace, within which the arrows of evil soon cease to fall; nor have his fellows the power to inflict moral suffering upon him.

He who knows himself is wise; yet have we no sooner acquired real consciousness of our being than we learn that true wisdom is a thing that lies far deeper than consciousness. The chief gain of increased consciousness is that it unveils an ever-loftier unconsciousness, on whose heights do the sources lie of the purest wisdom.

This invisible and divine goodness, of which I only speak here because of its being one of the surest and nearest signs of the unceasing activity of our soul, this invisible and divine goodness ennobles, in decisive fashion, all that it has unconsciously touched.

Must we always be warned, and can we only fall on our knees when some one is there to tell us that God is passing by? If you have loved profoundly you have needed no one to tell you that your soul was a thing as great in itself as the world; that the stars, the flowers, the waves of night and sea were not solitary; that it was on the threshold of appearances that everything began, but nothing ended, and that the very lips you kissed belonged to a creature who was loftier, much purer, and much more beautiful than the one whom your arms enfolded.

It is well to believe that there needs but a little more thought, a little more courage, more love, more devotion to life, a little more eagerness, one day to fling open wide the portals of joy and of truth.

I have only my brightness, which Man does not understand…. But I watch over him to the end of his days…. Never forget that I am speaking to you in every spreading moonbeam, in every twinkling star, in every dawn that rises, in every lamp that is lit, in every good and bright thought of your soul…

Look upon men and things with the inner eye, with its form and desire, never forgetting that the shadow they throw as they pass by, upon hillock or wall, is but the fleeting image of a mightier shadow, which, like the wing of an imperishable swan, floats over every soul that draws near to their soul. Do not believe that thoughts such as these can be mere ornaments, and without influence upon the lives of those who admit them. It is far more important that one’s life should be perceived than that it should be transformed; for no sooner has it been perceived, than it transforms itself of its own accord.

It is the disaster of our entire existence that we live thus away from our soul, and stand in such dread of its slightest movement. Did we but allow it to smile frankly in its silence and its radiance, we should be already living an eternal life. We have only to think for an instant how much it succeeds in accomplishing during those rare moments when we knock off its chains – for it is our custom to enchain it as though it were distraught – what it does in love, for instance, for there we do permit it at times to approach the lattices of external life.

من بعضي از اشعار شعراي ايراني را در ترجمه هاي فرانسوي خوانده ام و بعضي از ابيات فريدالدين عطار نيشاپوري تاثير زيادي در من كرده است. فريدالدين در يكي از اشعار خود مي گويد خداوندا اگر چه گناهكار هستم و خود را درخور مجازات مي بينم. ليكن از درگاه تو نااميد نيستم براي اينكه مي دانم كه اگر من در اين جهان بر طبق پيروي از طبيعت خود رفتار كرده ام تو در آن جهان نسبت به من بر طبق طبيعت خود رفتار خواهي نمود. انصاف بدهيد كه آيا از آغاز زندگي بشر تاكنون در جهان چيزي گفته شده است كه از حيث عمق معني بالاتر از اين گفته عطار نيشاپوري باشد و به اين اندازه اميدبخش باشد؟؟؟

He is wise who at last sees in suffering only the light that it sheds on his soul; and whose eyes never rest on the shadow it casts upon those who have sent it towards him. And wiser still is the man to whom sorrow and joy not only bring increase of consciousness, but also the knowledge that something exists superior to consciousness even. To have reached this point is to reach the summit of inward life, whence at last we look down on the flames whose light has helped our ascent.

Our real life is not the life we live, and we feel that our deepest, nay, our most intimate thoughts are quite apart from ourselves, for we are other than our thoughts and our dreams. And it is only at special moments – it may be by merest accident – that we live our own life. Will the day ever dawn when we shall be what we are? …

Truly they who know still know nothing if the strength of love be not theirs; for the true sage is not he who sees, but he who, seeing the furthest, has the deepest love for mankind. He who sees without loving is only straining his eyes in the darkness.

Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature.

yet may it not be that these questions are idle, and we who are putting them to you mere childish dreamers, hedged round with error and doubt?

… signs of a life that we cannot explain are everywhere, vibrating by the side of the life of every day.

A single hour snatched from death outweighs a whole existence of tortures.

Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought will not work except in Silence; neither will Virtue Work except in secrecy.

When once misfortune enters a house, silence is in vain.

Each man has to seek out his own special aptitude for a higher life in the midst of the humble and inevitable reality of daily existence. Than this there can be no nobler aim in life. It is only by the communications we have with the infinite that we are to be distinguished from each other.

We all live in the sublime. Where else can we live? That is the only place of life. … All that happens to us is divinely great, and we are always in the centre of a great world. But we must accustom ourselves to live like an angel who has just sprung to life, like a woman who loves, or a man on the point of death. If you knew that you were going to die to-night, or merely that you would have to go away and never return, would you, looking upon men and things for the last time, see them in the same light that you have hitherto seen them? Would you not love as you never yet have loved?

If I tell some one that I love him – as I may have told a hundred others – my words will convey nothing to him; but the silence which will ensue, if I do indeed love him, will make clear in what depths lie the roots of my love, and will in its turn give birth to a conviction, that shall itself be silent; and in the course of a lifetime, this silence and this conviction will never again be the same. …

It is not the arrival of death, but the departure of life that is appalling. It is not death, but life that we must act upon. It is not death that attacks life; it is life that wrongfully resists death.

For what are in reality the things we call ‘Wisdom,’ ‘Virtue,’ ‘Heroism,’ ‘sublime hours,’ and ‘great moments of life,’ but the moments when we have more or less issued forth from ourselves, and have been able to halt, be it only for an instant, on the step of one of the eternal gates whence we see that the faintest cry, the most colourless thought, and most nerveless gestures do not drop into nothingness; …

There needs but so little to encourage beauty in our soul; so little to awaken the slumbering angels; or perhaps is there no need of awakening --- it is enough that we lull them not to sleep. It requires more effort to fall, perhaps, than to rise. Can we, without putting constraint upon ourselves, confine our thoughts to everyday things at times when the sea stretches before us, and we are face to face with the night? And what soul is there but knows that it is ever confronting the sea, ever in presence of an eternal night?

Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention; and what we term justice is truly nothing but this equilibrium transformed, as honey is nothing but a transformation of the sweetness found in the flower. Outside man there is no justice; within him injustice cannot be.

It is only too evident that the invisible agitations of the kingdoms within us are arbitrarily set on foot by the thoughts we shelter. Our myriad intuitions are the veiled queens who steer our course through life, though we have no words in which to speak of them. How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words!

Are we to believe that earth marks the most advanced stage and the most favoured experiment? What, then, can the thought of the universe have done and against what darkness must it have struggled, to have come no farther than this?

Our lives must be spent seeking our God, for God hides; but His artifices, once they be known, seem so simple and smiling! From that moment, the merest nothing reveals His presence, and the greatness of our life depends on so little.

We suffer but little from suffering itself; but from the manner wherein we accept it overwhelming sorrow may spring. We are wrong in believing that it comes from without. For indeed we create it within us, out of our very substance.

انها لا تشبه اى واحدة من النساء انه جمال من نوع اخر جمال اكثر غرابة واكثر سموا جمال ذو نواح متعددة جمال يدعو الروح دائما ان تنعكس على الوجه اما شعرها فيصح ان يكون المفرد فى ذاته شعر كانه يساهم فى افكارها فيضحك حين تكون سعيدة ويبكى حين تكون حزينة على حين انها هى شخصيا قد تجهل ما اذا كانت ينبغى لها ان تكون سعيدة او حزينة وانا لم ارى قط شعر تنبعث منه الحياه كهذا الشعر انه يخدعها فى جميع الاحيان اذا صح ان نسمى هذه الفضيلة المراد اخفاؤها خداعا لانه ليس لديها ما تحاول ان تخفيه الا الفضيلة

Pero la hora magnífica pertenece a las rosas de mayo. Entonces, hasta mas allá de donde alcanza la vista, desde las vertientes de las colinas hasta las hondonadas de las llanuras, entre diques de viñas y de olivares, afluyen de todas partes como un río de pétalos del que emergen las casas y los árboles, un río del color que damos a la juventud, a la salud y a la alegría. Diríase que el aroma a la vez cálido y fresco, pero sobretodo espacioso que entreabre el cielo, emana directamente los manantiales de la beatitud.

What are we to do now? Must we hate the enemy to the end of time? The burden of hatred is the heaviest that man can bear upon this earth; and we should faint under the weight of it. On the other hand, we do not wish once more to be the dupes and victims of confidence and love.

Through the whole course of history, two distinct willpowers have been noticed that would seem to be the opposed, elemental manifestations of the spirit of our globe, the one seeking only evil, injustice, tyranny and suffering, while the other strives for liberty, the right, radiance and joy.

Wisdom is the lamp of love, and love is the oil of the lamp. Love, sinking deeper, grows wiser; and wisdom that springs up aloft comes ever the nearer to love. Love is the food of wisdom; wisdom the food of love; a circle of light within which those who love, clasp the hands of those who are wise.

Are you not pleased to have seen your grandparents? Is that not enough happiness for one day? Are you not glad that you have restored the old blackbird to life? Listen to him singing! As you look for the Blue Bird, dear children, accustom yourselves to love the gray birds which you find on your way.

As soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way…We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered.

Perhaps we do not yet know what the word “to love” means. There are within us lives in which we love unconsciously. To love thus means more than to have pity, to make inner sacrifices, to be anxious to help and give happiness; it is a thing that lies a thousand fathoms deeper, where our softest, swiftest, strongest words cannot reach it. At moments we might believe it to be a recollection, furtive but excessively keen, of great primitive unity. There is in this love a force that nothing can resist.

However imperfect our conception of virtue, still let us cling to it; for a moment’s forgetfulness exposes us to all the malignant forces from without. The simplest lie to myself, buried though it may be in the silence of my soul, may yet be as dangerous to my inner liberty as an act of treachery on the marketplace. Widfom and Destiny

It is a thing that knows no limit, and before it all men are equal; and the silence of king or slave, in presence of death, or grief, or love, reveals the same features, hides beneath its impenetrable mantle the self-same treasure. For this is the essential silence of our soul, our most inviolable sanctuary, and its secret can never be lost;

And it is because we all of us know of this sombre power and its perilous manifestations, that we stand in so deep a dread of silence. We can bear, when need must be, the silence of ourselves, that of isolation: but the silence of many - silence multiplied - and above all the silence of a crowd - these are supernatural burdens, whose inexplicable weight brings dread to the mightiest soul.

We are not wrong, perhaps, to be heedful of justice in the midst of a universe that heeds not at all; as the bee is not wrong to make honey in a world that itself can make none. But we are wrong to desire an external justice, since we know that it does not exist. Let that which is in us suffice. All is for ever being weighed and judged in our soul. It is we who shall judge ourselves; or rather, our happiness is our judge.

دنیا برای چه ما و سایر موجودات را به وجود آورده؟... آیا برای این ما را به وجود آورد که خود را تنها می دید و در تنهایی خویشتن را سعادتمند نمی دانست؟... و آیا برای این که او سعادتمند نیست ما و سایر موجودات هم سعادتمند نیستیم؟ ولی فراموش نکنید که وقتی ما در خصوص تصمیمات جهان، آفریننده و یا هر چیز دیگر که به جایش بگذارید، صحبت می کنیم عینا مثل است که یک پشه بخواهد در خصوص تصمیمات ما که انسان هستیم صحبت و تفکر نماید و یا کور مادرزاد بخواهد رنگ های مختلف را توصیف کند

Death and death alone is what we must consult about life; and not some vague future or survival, in which we shall not be present. It is our own end; and everything happens in the interval between death and now. Do not talk to me of those imaginary prolongations which wield over us the childish spell of number; do not talk to me—to me who am to die outright—of societies and peoples! There is no reality, there is no true duration, save that between the cradle and the grave. The rest is mere bombast, show, delusion! They call me a master because of some magic in my speech and thoughts; but I am a frightened child in the presence of death!

There are other herbs endowed with spontaneous movements that are not so well known, notably the Hedysareæ, among which the Hedysa­rum gyrans, or Moving-plant, acts in a very restless and surprising fashion. This little Leguminosa, which is a native of Bengal, but often cultivated in our hothouses, performs a sort of perpetual and intricate dance in hon­our of the light. Its leaves are divided into three foli­oles, one wide and terminal, the two others narrow and planted at the base of the first. Each of these leaflets is animated with a different movement of its own. They live in a state of rhythmical, almost chronometrical and continuous agitation. They are so sensitive

We know that, if a third or a fourth part of the fabulous sums expended on extermination and destruction had been devoted to works of peace, all the iniquities that poison the air we breathe would have been triumphantly redressed and that the social question, the one great question, that matter of life and death which justice demands that posterity should face, would have found its definite solution, once and for all, in a happiness which now perhaps even our sons and grandsons will not realize. We know that the disappearance of two or three million young existences, cut down when they were on the point of bearing fruit, will leave in history a void that will not be easily filled, even as we know that among those dead were mighty intellects, treasures of genius which will not come back again and which contained inventions and discoveries that will now perhaps be lost to us for centuries. We

Las más bellas morales humanas están todas fundadas sobre la idea de que es preciso luchar y sufrir para purificarse, elevarse y perfeccionarse; pero ninguna trata de explicar por qué es necesario empezar de nuevo sin cesar. ¿Dónde va, pues, en qué abismos infinitos se pierde, desde eternidades sin límites, lo que se ha elevado en nosotros y no ha dejado vestigios? ¿Por qué si el Anima Mundi es soberanamente sabia ha querido estas luchas y estos sufrimientos que jamás han llegado y que, por consecuencia, jamás llegarán al fin? ¿Por qué no haber puesto, al primer esfuerzo, todas las cosas al punto de perfección a que nosotros creemos que tienden? ¿Por qué es preciso merecer su dicha? Pero ¿qué méritos pueden tener los que luchan o sufren mejor que sus hermanos, puesto que la fuerza o la virtud que les anima no la tienen más que porque un poder exterior la ha puesto en ellos más propiciamente que en otros?

We cannot take leave of the aquatic plants without briefly mentioning the life of the most romantic of them all: the legendary Val­lisneria, an Hydrocharad whose nuptials form the most tragic episode in the love-history of the flowers. The Vallisneria is a rather insignificant herb, possess­ing none of the strange grace of the Water-lily or of certain submersed comas. But it seems as though nature had delighted in giving it a beautiful idea. The whole existence of the little plant is spent at the bottom of the water, in a sort of half-slumber, until the moment of the wedding-hour in which it aspires to a new life. Then the female flower slowly uncoils the long spiral of its peduncle, rises, emerges and floats and blossoms on the sur­face of the pond. From a neighbouring stem, the male flowers, which see it through the sunlit water, soar in their turn, full of hope, towards the one that rocks, that awaits them, that calls them to a magic world. But, when they have come half-way, they feel themselves suddenly held back: their stalk, the very source of their life, is too short; they will never reach the abode of light, the only spot in which the union of the stamens and the pistil can be achieved! .

Is there any more cruel inadvertence or ordeal in na­ture Picture the tragedy of that longing, the inac­cessible so nearly attained, the transparent fatality, the impossible with not a visible obstacle! . . . It would be insoluble, like our own tragedy upon this earth, were it not that an unex­pected element is mingled with it. Did the males foresee the disillusion to which they would be sub­jected? One thing is certain, that they have locked up in their hearts a bubble of air, even as we lock up in our souls a thought of desperate deliverance. It is as though they hesitated for a moment; then, with a magnificent effort, the finest, the most supernatural that I know of in the annals of the insects and the flowers, in order to rise to happiness they deliberately break the bond that attaches them to life. They tear themselves from their peduncle and, with an incomparable flight, amid pearly beads of glad­ness, their petals dart up and break the surface of the water. Wounded to death, but radiant and free, they float for a moment beside their heedless brides and the union is accom­plished, whereupon the victims drift away to perish, while the wife, already a mother, closes her corolla, in which lives their last breath, rolls up her spiral and descends to the depths, there to ripen the fruit of the heroic kiss.