What Flowers Say - George Sand

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marry the sun. Put yourselves between them. Pile up enormous thunderheads, roar, and may your breath flatten the forests, level the mountains, and unleash the seas. Go and don’t come back as long as there is a living being or a plant standing on this cursed arena where life wants to establish itself in spite of us.’

      “We scattered like seeds of death over the two hemispheres. Like an eagle, I tore through the curtain of clouds and swept down on the ancient countries of the Far East. There deep valleys slope toward the ocean from the high Asiatic plateaus under a fiery sky and, bathed in a swamp of humidity, give birth to gigantic plants and fearsome animals. I had rested from my earlier tiredness, I felt endowed with an incomparable strength, and I was proud to bring disorder and death to all these weaklings trying to defy me. With one flap of a wing, I flattened an entire country; with one puff, I knocked down a whole forest, and I felt within me a blind, drunken joy, the joy of being stronger than all the forces of nature.

      “Suddenly a perfume entered me as if I had inhaled something foreign into my body, and surprised by this new experience, I stopped to gather my senses. Then, for the first time, I saw a being who had appeared on the earth while I was gone, a new, delicate, almost imperceptible being—the rose!

      “I swooped down to crush her. She bent over, lay down on the grass and said, ‘Have pity on me! I am so beautiful and sweet! Sniff me and you will spare me.’

      “I sniffed her and a sudden exhilaration overcame my fury. I lay down on the grass and fell asleep beside her.

      “When I woke up, the rose had stood up again and was swaying softly, rocked by my now calmed breath.

      “‘Be my friend,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave me again. When your terrible wings are folded, I love you, and I think you are beautiful. No doubt you are the King of the Forest. Your softened breath is a delicious song. Stay with me and take me with you, so I can go see the sun and the clouds close up.’

      “I took the rose to my breast and flew away with her. But soon it seemed to me she was wilting. Listless, she could no longer talk to me; her fragrance, however, continued to enchant me. Afraid that I would destroy her, I flew quite slowly. I gently brushed the treetops, avoiding the least little bump. I climbed cautiously to the palace of dark clouds where my father was waiting for me.

      “‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘And why is that forest I see on the shores of India still standing? Return immediately and wipe it out.’

      “‘Yes,’ I answered, showing him the rose, ‘but let me entrust to you this treasure I want to save.’

      “‘Save!’ he cried, roaring in anger. ‘You want to save something?’

      “And with one breath, he tore the rose from my hand and she disappeared into space, scattering her wilted petals.

      “I lunged to try to capture at least a remnant; but the king, irritated and implacable, seized me in turn, turned me over his lap and violently tore off my wings. My feathers went flying into space to join the scattered petals of the rose.

      “‘You wretched child,’ he told me, ‘you felt pity! You are no longer my son. Go back to earth and join up with that disastrous Spirit of Life that defies me. We’ll see if she can make anything of you, because now, thanks to me, you are nothing.’

      “And throwing me into the pit of emptiness he forgot me forever.

      “I tumbled as far as a clearing and lay exhausted beside the rose, who was happier and more fragrant than ever.

      “What is this miracle? I thought you were dead and I cried for you. Do you have the gift of life after death?

      “‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘like all creatures whom the Spirit of Life enriches. Look at these buds that surround me. This evening I will have lost my brilliance and I will work to renew myself, while my sisters charm you with their beauty and pour their perfumes over you in their day of celebration. Stay with us. Aren’t you our companion and our friend?’

      “I was so humiliated by my dethronement, that with my tears I watered the earth, to which I felt bound forever. The Spirit of Life felt my tears and was moved by them. She appeared to me in the form of a radiant angel and said, ‘You felt pity, you pitied the rose. I want to have pity on you. Your father is powerful, but I am more powerful than he is. He can destroy, but it is I who create.’

      “While she was saying this, the shining being touched me, and my body became like that of a beautiful child with a face the color of a rose. Butterfly wings sprouted from my shoulders and I started to flutter about with sheer delight.

      “‘Stay with the flowers, in the cool shelter of the forests,’ said the goddess. ‘For now, these canopies of greenery will hide and protect you. Later, when I have conquered the rage of the elements, you will be able to travel the earth, where you will be blessed by the people and celebrated by poets.’

      “‘As for you, charming rose, the first to be able to disarm anger with beauty, you are to be the symbol of the future reconciliation of forces that are enemies of nature. You will also be the educator of future races, because those civilized races will want to make everything serve their own needs. My most precious gifts—grace, gentleness, and beauty—will be in danger of seeming to have less value than money and power. Teach them, kind rose, that the greatest and most legitimate power is that which charms and reconciles. Now I give you the title that future generations will not dare take away from you. I proclaim you Queen of the Flowers. The ranks that I establish are divine and have only one means of expression—charm.’

      “Since that day, I have lived in peace with the heavens, loved by people, animals, and plants. My free and divine beginnings allow me the choice of living where I please, but I am too much a friend of the earth and servant of the life that my beneficial breezes sustain, to leave this dear earth where my first and eternal love keeps me. Yes, my dear little ones, I am the rose’s faithful lover and consequently your brother and your friend.”

      “In that case,” cried all the little roses on the wild rosebush, “take us dancing and celebrate with us, singing praises to the queen, the hundred-petaled rose of the East.”

      The West Wind fluttered his pretty wings, and over my head there was a joyful dance, accompanied by the beating branches and clicking leaves acting as kettle drums and castanets. A few of the happy little ones tore their ball gowns and strewed their petals in my hair, but they didn’t notice. They danced very beautifully and as they sang, “Long live the beautiful rose whose sweetness conquered the son of thunderstorms! Long live the good West Wind who remained a friend to the flowers!”

      When I told my tutor what I had heard, he announced that I was sick and should be given medication. But my grandmother saved me from that by telling him, “I feel sorry for you if you have never heard what roses say. As for me, I miss the days when I was able to hear them. It’s a talent that children have. Be careful not to confuse talent with illness.”

      Elsie had a very peculiar Irish governess. She was the nicest person in the world, but there were certain animals she found so unpleasant that she would fly into veritable fits of rage against them. If a bat entered her quarters in the evening, she would scream without apparent reason and become indignant toward anyone who would not chase after the poor creature. Since a lot of people are repulsed by bats, no one would have noticed her hostility toward them, except that she felt the same way about lovely birds: warblers, robins, swallows, and other insectivores, not to mention nightingales, which she called cruel beasts. Her name was Miss Barbara—but they called her “Bug-Eyed Fairy”—“Fairy” because she was very learned and very mysterious, and “Bug-Eyed” because she had huge, clear, bulging round eyes, which mischievous Elise compared to glass bottle stoppers.

      However, Elsie didn’t hate her governess, who was the epitome of indulgence and patience with Elsie. She just liked

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