Harriet Prescott Spofford

“ I have but to think of a rose and it is here. They have a spirit—oh, undoubtedly. 'You are a rose yourself,' they say. They tell me to look at the sunrise when I go to the silk-mill, at the sunset on the river—all the world a rose. The floor of heaven is paved with roses. ”

“ There is one climbing over the wall of the queen's garden to see the world go by; it begs me to come for it, in a whisper as soft—oh, as soft as its breath. It is a rose of perfection. Some day I shall go for it." She went; and the gardeners found her in the queen's garden, with her lifted skirt full of the great heavy-headed damask blooms.
It was in vain that grandam and Suzanne and Justine pursued the officers with outcry and vociferation concerning the irresponsibility of the poor papillon; that François followed with comforting words for her till the prison gates were closed upon him. ”

“ And peace reigned again in the poor prison and in the heart of the directress.
"Oh, how good is the air, the wind, the sky, the sun, the freedom, the rustling of the leaf!" cried Aimée, as she sat at work on her flowers in François's window. "How sad for my poor sisters of the prison! But I shall go often to bring them the breath of the outdoors."
"But, yes," said Francois. "Thou art always thinking for others." ”

“ She is innocent as the cherubs who have only heads and wings in the great altar-piece. She is but light in the head, the poor papillon. She has coveted roses—all her life, roses. Now, now, if she has of them—madame can see—it may be—a surfeit of the things. ”

“ And Adriane cut and shaped and delivered, and those others arranged and twisted and gummed—and all for Aimée. In two months' time that cell was lined with roses till one could not see the wall.
At his next call François brought a tiny vial of attar of roses. "It is all they waited for!" Aimée cried; and she forgot he was there while putting a tiniest drop on a bunch of the flowers. "It is able to be too much," she said. And after that she merely left the vial open among her materials, so they might say that if they were not the rose, they had been with the rose. ”

“ She was not quite seventeen when they heard her telling strange tales of her roses. "They are mine," she said. "All the roses on the earth." They accused her of rifling gardens. "The roses love me," she said. "They wish to be about me, and they break their steins to come to me. ”