Certainly one ought to write a physiological monograph of these black mushrooms, which to-day protect humanity, just as one ought to rhyme a poem of the dainty Sunshade, that pretty rosy cupola, which is one of the most charming coquetries of a Frenchwoman.
We write this one ought with a vague sadness, with the discouragement which makes us wish for the future, what we should have been so glad to bury in the past. In beginning our work, we experienced a careless joy, we thought the end was near on our very entry into the field, and that we should quickly attain it, with the satisfaction of having created a little work, both complete and altogether graceful; but once on our way, ferreting without relaxation in all the literary thickets where some Parasol might lie buried, in the fold of a phrase, in the middle of a story, of an anecdote, or of a dissertation, of some fact, we have gathered so ample a harvest, our sheaf has become so large, so very large, that it was impossible for us to bind our arms about it, after having co-ordinated its various parts. It is but a few poor strays then which lie stranded here, the flotsam and jetsam of our hope, sole vestiges of a project which, like all projects, became Homeric as it grew great in the workshop of the imagination.
We end this essay, therefore, with a sentiment of ridicule, in which we laugh at our own selves, that of having dreamed of making a perfect monograph, and of having produced nothing more than a little tumbled fantasy, which ironically steals away out of sight, like that minuscular mouse, of which the mountain was once upon a time delivered in much moaning.
What matter! We must end. Let us hide our melancholy retreat by humming this last lovely burden of a poet of the school of Clairville—
’Tis called a Pépin, a Riflard,
And other viler names there are;
Not one of all the Umbrella moves.
Wisely it counts them no disgrace;
Since—child of April’s art—the loves
Oft make their quivers of its case!