CHAPTER II.
Relieved from all constraint, imbedded in new earth, and capaciously framed in the wide pavement, Picciola seemed to rise triumphantly from her tribulations. She had, however, survived her summer blossoms; with the exception of that single flower, the last to open and the last to fall.
Charney already foresaw important discoveries to be deduced from the seed, which was swelling and ripening in the calyx. He promised himself the triumph of theDies Seminalis, or Feast of the Sowers. For space was no longer wanting for his experiments: Picciola has more than enough room for her own expansion. She has every facility to become a mother, and shelter her uprising children under her branches.
While waiting this important event, the Count becomes eager to ascertain the real name of the fair companion, to whom he is indebted for so many happy hours.
“Shall I never be able,” thought Charney, “to bestow upon my foundling, my adopted child, the name she inherits from science, in common with her legitimate sisters of the plain or mountain?”
And at the first visit paid by the commandant to hischarge, the Count admitted his desire to procure an elementary botanical work. Morand, unwilling either to refuse or to take upon himself the vast responsibility of compliance, thought proper to signify the demand in punctilious form to the governor of Piedmont. But from General Menon, theprotégéof the Empress was now safe from a refusal; and a botanical dictionary soon arrived at the fortress, accompanied by all the folios treating of botany which could be obtained from the Royal Library of Turin.
“I have the honour,” wrote General Menon, “to facilitate to the utmost the wishes of the Sieur Charney; for her Majesty the Empress-Queen, a proficient in botanical science (as in many others), will doubtless be glad to learn the name of a plant in whose welfare she has deigned to evince an interest.”
When Ludovico made his appearance with the piles of books, under the enormous weight of which his back was breaking, Charney could not resist a smile.
“How!” cried he, “all this heavy artillery, to compel a poor helpless flower to give up her name?”
Nevertheless, it afforded him satisfaction tolookonce more upon a book. In turning over the leaves, his heart thrilled with pleasure, as in former days, when the attainment of knowledge was his chief delight in life. What months had now elapsed since printed characters were before his eyes! Already a plan of sage and sober study was concocting in his excited mind.
“If ever I am released from captivity,” thought he, “I will certainly become a botanist. Instead of scholastic and pedantic controversies, which serve only to bewilder the human intellect, I will devote myself to a science where nature, ever varying, yet still the same, dispenses immutable laws to her disciples.”
The books forwarded for the use of the Count de Charney consisted of theSpecies Plantarumof Linnæus; theInstitutiones rei Herbariæof Tournefort; theTheatrum Botanicumof Bauhin; and thePhytographia,Dendrologia, andAgrostographiaof Plukenet, Aldrovandus, and Scheuchzer; besides half a hundred works of minor classicality, in the French, English, and Italian languages.
Though somewhat startled by so formidable an array of learning, the Count was not discouraged; and, by way of preparation for the worst, opened the thinnest volume of the collection, and began to examine the index in search of the most euphonous titles afforded by botanic nomenclature. He longed to appropriate to his purpose some of the softer saints of the floral calendar; such as Alcea, Alisma, Andryala, Bromelia, Celosia, Coronilla, Euphrasia, Helvelia, Passiflora, Primula, Santolina, or some other equally soft to the lip and harmonious to the ear.
And, now, for the first time, he began to tremble, lest his pretty favourite should inherit some quaint or harsh patronymic. A masculine or neuter termination would put to flight all his poetical vagaries concerning his gentle friend. What, for instance, would become of his ethereal Picciola, if her earthly prototype were to be saluted asRumex obtusifolius,Satyrium,Hyoscyamus,Gossypium,Cynoglossum,Cucubalus,Cenchrus,Buxus; or, worse still, and in more vulgar phrase, as Old Man, Dogtooth, Houndstongue, Cuckoo-flower, Devil-in-a-bush, Hen and Chickens, or Spiderwort! How should he support such a disenchantment of his imagination! No! better not to risk the vexation of such an ordeal.
Yet, in spite of himself, he found it impossible to resist the temptation of opening every successive volume—led on from page to page by the development of the mighty mysteries of nature, but irritated by the love of system prevailing among the learned, by whom so charming a science has been rendered the harshest, most technical, and most perplexed, of all the branches of natural history.
For a whole week he devoted himself to the analysis of his flower, with a view to classification, but without success. In the chaos of so many strange words, varying from system to system—bewildered by the vast and ponderous synonymy, which, like the net of Vulcan, overspreads the beauties of botany, overpowering them by its weight, he soon gave up the attempt; having consulted each author in succession, for a clew, wandering from classes to orders, from orders to tribes, from tribes to families, from families to species, from species to individuals; and losing all patience with the blind guides, ever at variance among themselves with respect to the purpose and denomination of the parts of organization in vegetable life.
At the close of his investigations, the poor little flower, the last upon the tree, examined petal by petal, and to the very depth of her calyx, suddenly fell off one day into the hand of the operator, bearing with it Charney’s hopes of inquiry into the progress of the seed, the reproduction of his favourite, the maternity of the lovely Picciola!
“She shall have no other title thanPicciola!” cried Charney. “Picciola, the flower of the captive. What do I want to know more of her name or nature? To what purpose this idle thirst after human knowledge?”
In a moment of petulance, Charney even threw down the vast heap of folios which had served to perplex him; when, from one of the volumes, came fluttering forth a slip of paper, on which had been recently inscribed, in the handwriting of a woman, the following verse, purporting to be a quotation from the Holy Scriptures:
“Hope, and bid thy neighbour hope: for, behold, I have not forsaken ye, and a day of consolation is at hand.”