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“The flower-language had nearly caused the
death of your father and your mother. You see to what the study of the
languages may lead us. You see, too, how it was that your father bore all
his life the mark of a frostbitten nose. And yet this did not prevent us
from being happy, or from having a son.”
Jacobus the son threw himself, weeping,
into his mother’s arms.
“And now, as I have shown you that I know
more than she does,” said the good dame, with a threatening look at the
Pansy, “let me get my broom, that I may drive this poor wretch out of
doors.”
But the Pansy did not await the old woman’s
return. She had already departed in consternation, at having learned that
her origin was merely the Panosée.
Instead of representing the most exalted of
human faculties, the poor flower was but the symbol of a vain and worthless
beauty. It was enough to make one even less refined than the Pansy,
disgusted with the world.
Jacobus had an attack of jaundice in
consequence of the hoax which had thus been put upon him. He is yet in
pursuit of that brilliant idea which is to make him cabinet-minister, or
first valet de chamber to the king. France, which has so long been expecting
an epic poem, must still rest satisfied with the Henriade.
The reader will find in the course of this
work, the elements of that flower-language which is spoken at the present
day by men of fancy, like Jacobus.
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