He could not see the stars because of the crown, but in time, in those long midsummer nights, he came to see a little glow-worm amongst my blossoms, which in a manner, perhaps, did nearly as well.
He came to notice Lili at her work. Often she had to sit up half the night to get enough coloring done to make up the due amount of labor; and she sat at her little deal table, with her little feeble lamp, with her beautiful hair coiled up in a great knot and her pretty head drooping so wearily—as we do in the long days of drought—but never once looking off, nor giving way to rebellion or fatigue, though from the whole city without there came one ceaseless sound, like the sound of an endless sea; which truly it was—the sea of pleasure.
Not for want of coaxings, not for want of tempters, various and subtle, and dangers often and perilously sweet, did Lili sit there in her solitude earning two sous an hour with straining sight and aching nerves that the old paralytic creature within might have bed and board without alms. Lili had been sore beset in a thousand ways, for she was very fair to see; but she was proud and she was innocent, and she kept her courage and her honor; yea, though you smile—though she dwelt under an attic roof, and that roof a roof of Paris.
My neighbor, in the old gabled window over the way, leaning above his stone-wort, saw her one night thus at work by her lamp, with the silver ear-rings, that were her sole heirloom and her sole wealth, drooped against the soft hues and curves of her graceful throat.
And when he had looked once, he looked every night, and found her there; and I, who could see straight into his chamber, saw that he went and made a picture of it all—of me, and the bird in the cage, and the little old dusky lamp, and Lili with her silver ear-rings and her pretty, drooping head.
Every day he worked at the picture, and every night he put his light out and came and sat in the dark square of his lattice, and gazed across the street through my leaves and my blossoms at my mistress. Lili knew nothing of this watch which he kept on her; she had put up a little blind of white network, and she fancied that it kept out every eye when it was up; and often she took even that away, because she had not the heart to deprive me of the few faint breezes which the sultry weather gave us.
She never saw him in his dark hole in the old gable there, and I never betrayed him—not I. Roses have been the flowers of silence ever since the world began. Are we not the flowers of love?
“Who is he?” I asked of my gossip the vine. The vine had lived fifty years in the street, and knew the stories and sorrows of all the human bees in the hive.
“He is called René Claude,” said the vine. “He is a man of genius. He is very poor.”
“You use synonyms,” murmured the old balsam, who heard.