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Having seen these and other ancient curiosities, the angel said, "It is now time for us to take our leave;" and immediately our host went into the garden, and plucked some twigs off a tree, and bound them into a little bunch, and gave them to us, saying, "These twigs are from a tree, which is native of or peculiar to our heaven, and whose juice has a balsamic fragrance."
With a feeling of mortal weariness I said to myself: "And is this all!" an exclamation which soon afterwards became one of my most frequent unspoken reflections, a phrase indeed that I might well have taken for my motto. When we returned I went to the wooden box to inspect our afternoon's work, and as I did so I inhaled the balsamic odor that had impregnated everything belonging to our theatre.
There the atmosphere was balsamic, strength returned, lost appetite for God was there recovered, there was health succeeding weakness, a regimen, fortified and sustained, instead of languor and the restricted exercises of the towns. The conviction that no trickery was possible to him at Paris brought him to the ground.
These children's voices stretched to breaking, these clear sharp voices threw into the darkness of the chant some whiteness of the dawn, joining their pure, soft sounds to the resonant tones of the basses, piercing as with a jet of living silver the sombre cataract of the deeper singers; they sharpened the wailing, strengthened and embittered the burning salt of tears, but they insinuated also a sort of protecting caress, balsamic freshness, lustral help; they lighted in the darkness those brief gleams which tinkle in the Angelus at dawn of day; they called up, anticipating the prophecies of the text, the compassionate image of the Virgin, passing, in the pale light of their tones, into the darkness of that sequence.
The fragrance of the woods was less marked than that produced during warm rain, when so many balsamic buds and leaves are steeped like tea; but, from the chafing of resiny branches against each other, and the incessant attrition of myriads of needles, the gale was spiced to a very tonic degree. And besides the fragrance from these local sources there were traces of scents brought from afar.
He knew, without testing them, that half of these fair-seeming columns were hollow and rotten at the core; he could detect the chill odor of decay through the hot balsamic spices stirred by the wind that streamed through their long aisles, like incense mingling with the exhalations of a crypt.
We were in the midst of a forest of tall trees that loaded the air with the heavy balsamic odor peculiar to pine trees. A few small rude houses were scattered around near. Stretching out into the darkness was a double row of great heaps of burning pitch pine, that smoked and flamed fiercely, and lit up a little space around in the somber forest with a ruddy glare.
Outside the dyke grew a row of tall fir trees with thick, balsamic boughs. The dyke, which had been built by the first settlers of the Glen, was old enough to be beautiful, with mosses and green things growing out of its crevices, violets purpling at its base in the early spring days, and asters and golden-rod making an autumnal glory in its corners.
When I visited it last spring, the air about it was fragrant with the bloom of sweet-brier and blackberry and the balsamic aroma of the sweet-fern; birds were singing in the birch-trees by the wall; and two little, brown-locked, merry-faced girls were making wreaths of the dandelions and grasses which grew upon the old man's grave.
'Everything about this tree has a strong balsamic odor, and hence the whole grove is so pleasant and fragrant that it is delightful to walk in it. The wood is peculiarly adapted for building, because it is not subject to decay, nor is it eaten of worms. It was much used for rafters and for boards with which to cover houses and form the floors and ceilings of rooms.
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