III.
Higher up, on the barren steeps, the yellowish box twists its knotty feet beneath the stones. It is a melancholy and tenacious creature, stunted and thrust back upon itself; overborne amidst the rocks, it dares not shoot upward nor spread. Its small thick leaves follow each other in monotonous rows, clumsily oval and of a formal regularity. Its stem, short and grayish, is rough to the touch; the round fruit encloses black capsules, hard as ebony, that must be broken open for the seed. Everything in the plant is calculated with a view to utility: it thinks only of lasting and resisting; it has neither ornaments, elegance, nor richness; it expends its sap only in solid tissues, in dull colors, in durable fibres. It is an economical and active housewife, the only thing capable of vegetating in the quagmires that it fills.
If you continue to ascend, the trees begin to fail. The brush-fir creeps in a carpet of turf. The rhododendrons grow in tufts and crown the mountain with rosy clusters. The heather crowds its white bunches, small, open, vase-shaped flowers, from which springs a crown of garnet stamens. In the sheltered hollows, the blue campanulas swing their pretty bells; the least wind lays them low; they live for all that, and smile, trembling and graceful.
But, among all these flowers nourished with light and pure air, the most precious is the thornless rose. Never did petals form a frailer and lovelier corolla; never did a vermilion so vivid color a more delicate tissue.
