A young girl had found and rescued me,—a girl of the people, poor enough to deem a trampled flower a treasure-trove.
She carried me very gently, carefully veiling me from sun and dust as we went; and when I recovered perception I was floating in a porcelain bath on the surface of cool, fresh water, from which I drank eagerly as soon as my sickly sense of faintness passed away.
My bath stood on the lattice-sill of a small chamber; it was, I knew afterward, but a white pan of common earthenware, such as you buy for two sous and put in your birdcages. But no bath of ivory and pearl and silver was ever more refreshing to imperial or patrician limbs than was that little clean and snowy pattypan to me.
Under its reviving influences I became able to lift my head and raise my leaves and spread myself to the sunlight, and look round me. The chamber was in the roof, high above the traffic of the passage-way beneath; it was very poor, very simple, furnished with few and homely things. True, to all our nation of flowers it matters little, when we are borne into captivity, whether the prison-house which receives us be palace or garret. Not to us can it signify whether we perish in Sèvres vase of royal blue, or in kitchen pipkin of brown ware. Your lordliest halls can seem but dark, pent, noisome dungeons to creatures born to live on the wide plain, by the sunlit meadow, in the hedgerow, or the forest, or the green, leafy garden-way; tossing always in the joyous winds, and looking always upward to the open sky.
But it is of little use to dwell on this. You think that flowers, like animals, were only created to be used and abused by you, and that we, like your horse and dog, should be grateful when you honor us by slaughter or starvation at your hands. To be brief, this room was very humble, a mere attic, with one smaller still opening from it; but I scarcely thought of its size or aspect. I looked at nothing but the woman who had saved me. She was quite young; not very beautiful, perhaps, except for wonderful soft azure eyes, and a mouth smiling and glad, with lovely curves to the lips, and hair dark as a raven’s wing, which was braided and bound close to her head. She was clad very poorly, yet with an exquisite neatness and even grace; for she was of the people no doubt, but of the people of France. Her voice was very melodious; she had a silver cross on her bosom; and, though her face was pale, it had health.
She was my friend, I felt sure. Yes, even when she held me and pierced me with steel and murmured over me, “They say roses are so hard to rear so, and you are such a little thing; but do grow to a tree and live with me. Surely, you can if you try.”
She had wounded me sharply and thrust me into a tomb of baked red clay filled with black and heavy mould. But I knew that I was pierced to the heart that I might—though only a little offshoot gathered to die in a day—strike root of my own and be strong, and carry a crown of fresh blossoms. For she but dealt with me as your world deals with you, when your heart aches and your brain burns, and Fate stabs you, and says in your ear, “O fool! to be great you must suffer.” You to your fate are thankless, being human; but I, a rose, was not.
I tried to feel not utterly wretched in that little, dull clay cell; I tried to forget my sweet, glad southern birthplace, and not to sicken and swoon in the noxious gases of the city air. I did my best not to shudder in the vapor of the stove, and not to grow pale in the clammy heats of the street, and not to die of useless lamentation for all that I had lost—for the noble tawny sunsets, and the sapphire blue skies, and the winds all fragrant with the almond-tree flowers, and the sunlight in which the yellow orioles flashed like gold.
I did my best to be content and show my gratitude all through a parching autumn and a hateful winter; and with the spring a wandering wind came and wooed me with low, amorous whispers—came from the south, he said; and I learned that even in exile in an attic window love may find us out and make for us a country and a home.
So I lived and grew and was happy there against the small, dim garret panes, and my lover from the south came, still faithful, year by year; and all the voices round me said that I was fair—pale indeed, and fragile of strength, as a creature torn from its own land and all its friends must be, but contented and glad, and grateful to the God who made me, because I had not lived in vain, but often saw sad eyes, half blinded with toil and tears, smile at me when they had no other cause for smiles.