Bimbi: Stories for Children

by Ouida

The azaleas were all crowded round underneath her, like so many kneeling courtiers, but they were not taken out of their pots; they were only shrouded in moss. They had no Sevres vases. And they had always thought so much of themselves and given themselves such airs, for there is nothing so vain as an azalea,—except, indeed, a camellia, which is the most conceited flower in the world, though, to do it justice, it is also the most industrious, for it is busy getting ready its next winter buds whilst the summer is still hot and broad on the land, which is very wise and prudent in it and much to be commended.

Well, there was Rosa Indica at the head of the room in the Sevres vase, and very proud and triumphant she felt throned there, and the azaleas, of course, were whispering enviously underneath her, "Well, after all, she was only Rosa Damascena not so VERY long ago."

Yes, THEY KNEW! What a pity it was! They knew she had once been Rosa Damascena and never would wash it out of their minds—the tiresome, spiteful, malignant creatures!

Even aloft in the vase, in all her glory, the rose could have shed tears of mortification, and was ready to cry like Themistocles, "Can nobody give us oblivion?"

Nobody could give that, for the azaleas, who were so irritated at being below her, were not at all likely to hold their tongues. But she had great consolations and triumphs, and began to believe that, let them say what they chose, she had never been a common garden wall rose. The ladies of the house came in and praised her to the skies; the children ran up to her and clapped their hands and shouted for joy at her beauty; a wonderful big green bird came in and hopped before her, cocked his head on one side, and said to her, "Pretty Poll! oh, SUCH a pretty Poll!"

"Even the birds adore me here!" she thought, not dreaming he was only talking of himself; for when you are as vain as was this poor dear Rosa, creation is pervaded with your own perfections, and even when other people say only "Poll!" you feel sure they are saying "You!" or they ought to be if they are not.

So there she stood in her grand Sevres pot, and she was ready to cry with the poet, "The world may end tonight!" Alas! it was not the world which was to end. Let me hasten to close this true heart-rending history.

There was a great dinner as the sun began to set, and the mistress of the house came in on the arm of the great foreign prince; and what did the foreign prince do but look up at Rosa, straight up at her, and over the heads of the azaleas, and say to his hostess: "What a beautiful rose you have there! A Niphetos, is it not?"

And her mistress, who had known her long as simple Rosa Damascena, answered, "Yes, sir; it is a Niphetos."

Oh, to have lived for that hour! The silly thing thought it worth all her suffering from the gardener's knife, all the loss of her robust health and delightful power of flowering in all four seasons. She was a Niphetos, really and truly a Niphetos! and not one syllable hinted as to her origin! She began to believe she had been BORN a tea rose!