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Updated: May 11, 2025
They had reached the Florentine Terrace, where stand the marble statues of queens and ladies, and on the other side of the balustrade, ornamented with large vases, they could see through the mist the reservoir with its two swans, the solitary gravel walks, the empty grass-plots of a pale green, surrounded by the skeletons of lilac-trees, and the facade of the old palace, whose clock-hands pointed to ten.
Seated in a little summer-house in the garden, which the speculator's trowel had spared by some fancy of the builder's, who believed that he was preserving these hundred feet square of earth for his own pleasure, they were admiring the first green shoots of the lilac-trees, a spring festival which can only be fully appreciated in Paris when the inhabitants have lived for six months oblivious of what vegetation means, among the cliffs of stone where the ocean of humanity tosses to and fro.
Liszt was playing the piano on the ground floor, and the nightingales, intoxicated with music and sunshine, were singing madly in the lilac-trees around." The party was abruptly dispersed upon the intelligence that reached Madame Sand of her mother's sudden, and, as it proved, fatal illness. She hurried to Paris, and remained with Madame Maurice Dupin during her last days.
"'Tis my mother," she said. "She is seeking you. I will leave you. Adieu, and a thousand thanks from my very heart." And nimbly springing behind a clump of lilac-trees in flower, Micheline disappeared. Pierre mechanically went toward the house. He ascended the marble steps and entered the drawing-room. As he shut the door, Madame Desvarennes appeared.
In the garden below were lilac-trees purple with flowers, and their dizzily sweet fragrance drifted up to the window on the morning wind.
When, on a summer evening, the resounding sky growls like a tawny lion, and everyone is complaining of the storm, it is along the 'Meseglise way' that my fancy strays alone in ecstasy, inhaling, through the noise of falling rain, the odour of invisible and persistent lilac-trees.
"He was your age!" she said, hurrying the words out in a low murmur, hardly louder than the night breeze in the tall lilac-trees. "He was bright and strong and gay like you; his sun went down while it was yet day. The Lord took him into his holy keeping. I wish I wish you all the joy I should have tried to give him, Doctor Geoffrey.
He had thought Philippa very charming and very picturesque as she stood under the lilac-trees; he had said truly that he should never see a lilac without thinking of her as she stood there. But that had not meant that he loved her. He had bent down, as he considered himself in courtesy bound, to kiss her face when he bade her adieu; but it was no lover's kiss that fell so lightly on her lips.
There were costly rugs, huge arm-chairs, bronzes, pictures, gold and plush frames; among the photographs scattered about the walls there were very beautiful women, clever, lovely faces, easy attitudes; from the drawing-room there was a door leading straight into the garden on to a verandah: one could see lilac-trees; one could see a table laid for lunch, a number of bottles, a bouquet of roses; there was a fragrance of spring and expensive cigars, a fragrance of happiness and everything seemed as though it would say: "Here is a man who has lived and laboured, and has attained at last the happiness possible on earth."
"'Tis my mother," she said. "She is seeking you. I will leave you. Adieu, and a thousand thanks from my very heart." And nimbly springing behind a clump of lilac-trees in flower, Micheline disappeared. Pierre mechanically went toward the house. He ascended the marble steps and entered the drawing-room. As he shut the door, Madame Desvarennes appeared.
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