I have had primroses put in this little flower-pot. They are a bit crowded, and their poor little stems are prisoners; they are no longer in their garden.
I look at them on my table like a vivisector. I admire their beautiful leaves, round-headed, vigorous, like peasants. They point toward me, and between them is the flower. The one on this side is resigned, and as beautiful as a caryatid. In profile it seems to hold up the leaf against which it leans and which gives it shade.
These little flowers are not beautiful, nor are they radiant. They live peaceably, gently contented in their misery; and yet they offer something to one who is ill, as I am to-day, and cause him to write to ward off weariness.
I always have flowers in the morning, and make no distinction between them and my models.
Many flowers together are like women with heads bowed down.
There is no longer the sap of life in flowers in a vase.
The lace work of the flower of the elder-tree—Venice.
The anemone is only an eye, cruelly melancholy. It is the eye of a woman who has been badly used.
These anemones are flowers that have stayed up too late at night; flowers that are resplendent, with their colors as though spread over them superficially and wiped away. Even in the spring, in the hour of anticipation, they are already in the fullness of enjoyment.