The sublime and heavenly cynicism of that artless question, the question itself, these combined to form the germs of a philosophy which has clung to me since then, a philosophy which, combined with love, has slain in me the remains of what was once Philippe de Saluce.
Then day by day and week by week the forest, the fields, the hills, became slowly overspread with the quiet, assured and triumphant beauty of spring. Just as long ago, I fancied that I could hear the forest awakening from sleep, so now I fancied I could hear the world awakening from war and night. Communards might fight in Paris, kings and captains assemble at Versailles, Alsace might go or Alsace might remain, what was all that toy and trumpery business to the great business of Life, to the preparation of the blossom, the building of the butterflies in the aerial shipyards, the letting slip of the dragon-fly on his dazzling voyage? What a hubbub they were making in the Courts of Europe as Von der Tann's army, the King of Saxony's army, all those other triumphant armies turned from Paris with bugles blowing, drums beating, and colours flying, laden with tumbrils of gold and the spoils of war!
"France will never arise again!" said the drums and the bugles, "never again," echoed Europe. "Ah, wait," said spring.
Behind the veils of sunshine and April rain, heedless of Von der Tann's drums or the Saxon bugles, or the vanquished men or the vanquished treasure; viewless and unvanquished, the Spirit of Earth was preparing the future for a new and more beautiful France. Each bee passing from blossom to blossom that spring was labouring for the greater France of the future, each acorn forming in its cup, each wheat grain sprouting in the dark, each grape globing in the vineyards of the Côte d'Or; each and all were labouring for the motherland, to fill again her granaries and her treasure house. Folly had brought her under the knee of Force; drained of blood, half dying, wholly vanquished; in tears, in madness, in despair, she lay forsaken by all the Olympians but Demeter.
Had I but known, those first violets in the forest of Sénart held in their beauty all the future splendour and beauty of the New France.
In my life I have seen many a wonderful thing, but my memory carries with it nothing more miraculous than those flowers of promise seen as I saw them in the forest of Despair.