As for me, I nearly perished of the cold; only the love I bore to Lili kept a little life in my leafless branches.
All that cruel winter-time they were strong still, those children of Paris.
For they sought no alms, and in their uttermost extremity neither of them ever whispered to the other: “Go seek the tempter; repent, be wise. Give not up our lives for a mere phantasy of honor.”
“When the snow is on the ground, and the canvases have to burn in the stove, then you will change your minds and come to me on your knees,” the old wicked, foul spirit had said mocking them, as he had opened the door of the attic and passed away creaking down the dark stairs.
And I suppose he had reckoned on this; but if he had done so, he had reckoned without his host, as your phrase runs: neither René nor Lili ever went to him, either on knees or in any other wise.
When the spring came we three were still all living—at least their hearts still beat and their lips still drew breath, as my boughs were still green and my roots still clung to the soil. But no more to them or to me did the coming of spring bring, as of old, the real living of life, which is joy. And my lover the wind wooed me no more, and the birds no more brought me the rose-whispers of my kindred in Provence. For even the little pigeon-hole in the roof had become too costly a home for us, and we dwelt in a den under the stones of the streets, where no light came and scarce a breath of air ever strayed to us.
There the uncompleted canvases, on which the painter whom Lili loved had tried to write his title to the immortality of fame, were at last finished—finished, for the rats ate them.
All this while we lived—the man whose genius and misery were hell on earth; the woman whose very purity and perfectness of love were her direst torture; and I, the little white flower born of the sun and the dew, of fragrance and freedom, to whom every moment of this blindness, this suffocation, this starvation, this stench of putrid odors, this horrible roar of the street above, was a moment worse than any pang of death.
Away there in Provence so many a fair rose-sister of mine bowed her glad, proud, innocent head with anguish and shuddering terrors to the sharp summons of the severing knife that cut in twain her life, whilst I—I, on and on—was forced to keep so much of life as lies in the capacity to suffer and to love in vain.
So much was left to them: no more.