The garden thus left to itself for more than half a century had become extraordinary and charming. The passers-by of forty years ago halted to gaze at it, without a suspicion of the secrets which it hid in its fresh and verdant depths. More than one dreamer of that epoch often allowed his thoughts and his eyes to penetrate indiscreetly between the bars of that ancient, padlocked gate, twisted, tottering, fastened to two green and moss-covered pillars, and oddly crowned with a pediment of undecipherable arabesque. There was a stone bench in one corner, one or two mouldy statues, several lattices which had lost their nails with time, were rotting on the wall, and there were no walks nor turf; but there was enough grass everywhere. Gardening had taken its departure, and nature had returned. Weeds abounded, which was a great piece of luck for a poor corner of land. The festival of gilliflowers was something splendid. Nothing in this garden obstructed the sacred effort of things towards life. The trees had bent over towards the nettles, the plant had sprung upward, the branch had inclined, that which crawls on the earth had gone in search of that which expands in the air. Trunks, boughs, leaves, fibres, clusters, tendrils, shoots, spines, thorns, had mingled, crossed, married, confounded themselves in each other. Vegetation in a deep and close embrace had celebrated and accomplished there, under the well-pleased eye of the Creator, in that enclosure three hundred feet square, the holy mystery of fraternity, symbol of the human fraternity. This garden was no longer a garden, it was a colossal thicket, that is to say, something as impenetrable as a forest, as peopled as a city, quivering like a nest, sombre like a cathedral, fragrant like a bouquet, solitary as a tomb, living as a throng.
In Floréal this enormous thicket, free behind its gate and within its four walls, entered upon the secret labour of germination, quivered in the rising sun, almost like an animal which drinks in the breaths of cosmic love, and shakes to the wind its enormous wonderful green locks, sprinkled on the damp earth, on the defaced statues, on the crumbling steps of the pavilion, and even on the pavement of the deserted street, flowers like stars, dew like pearls. At midday, a thousand white butterflies took refuge there, and it was a divine spectacle to see that living summer snow whirling about there in flakes amid the shade. There, in those gay shadows of verdure, a throng of innocent voices spoke sweetly to the soul, and what the twittering forgot to say the humming completed. In the evening, a dreamy vapor exhaled from the garden and enveloped it; a shroud of mist, a calm and celestial sadness covered it; the intoxicating perfume of the honeysuckles and convolvulus poured out from every part of it, like an exquisite and subtle poison. One felt the sacred intimacy of the birds and the trees: by day the wings rejoice the leaves, by night the leaves protect the wings. In winter the thicket was black, dripping, bristling, shivering, and allowed some glimpse of the house. Instead of flowers on the branches and dew in the flowers, the long silvery tracks of the snails were visible on the cold, thick carpet of yellow leaves; but in any fashion, under any aspect, at all seasons, this tiny enclosure breathed forth melancholy, contemplation, solitude, liberty, the absence of man, the presence of God; and the rusty old gate had the air of saying that this garden belongs to it.
It was of no avail that the pavements of Paris were there on every side, the classic hotels a couple of paces away, the dome of the Invalides close at hand, the Chamber of Deputies not far off, the carriages rumbling luxuriously in the vicinity, the omnibuses crossing each other's course at the neighboring crossroads. The Rue Plumet was the desert. The death of the former proprietors, the revolution which had passed over it, the crumbling away of ancient fortunes, absence, forgetfulness, forty years of abandonment and widowhood, had sufficed to restore to this privileged spot ferns, mulleins, hemlock, yarrow, tall weeds, lizards, beetles, and a certain indescribable and savage grandeur, and for nature, which disconcerts the petty arrangements of man, to blossom out in a petty little Parisian garden with as much rude force and majesty as in a virgin forest of the New World. Nothing is small, in fact. Any one who is subject to the profound and penetrating influence of nature knows this. Everything toils at everything. Algebra is applied to the clouds; the radiation of the star profits the rose; no thinker would venture to affirm that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who, then, can calculate the course of a molecule. How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand. The tiniest worm is of importance; the great is little, the little is great; everything is balanced in necessity. There are marvellous relations between beings and things; in that inexhaustible whole, from the sun to the grub, nothing despises the other; all have need of each other. The light does not bear away terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths without knowing what it is doing; the night distributes stellar essences to the sleeping flowers. All birds that fly have round their leg the thread of the infinite. Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two possesses the larger field of vision. Choose. A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars. The phenomenon is perpetually returning upon itself. In the vast cosmic exchanges the universal life goes and comes in unknown quantities, dissolving all, except that geometrical point, the I; bringing everything back to the soul-atom; expanding everything in God; attaching the flight of an insect to the movement of the earth. A machine made of mind. Enormous gearing, the prime motor of which is the gnat, and whose final wheel is the zodiac.
