For a moment she remained standing, glancing around her.  She was looking to see if death was there.  And she gathered up the aromatic greenery, the southernwood, the mint, the verbenas, the balm, and the fennel.  She broke them and twisted them and made wedges of them with which to stop up every little chink and cranny about the windows and the door.  Then she drew the white coarsely sewn calico curtains and, without even a sigh, laid herself upon the bed, on all the florescence of hyacinths and tuberoses.

And then a final rapture was granted her.  With her eyes wide open she smiled at the room.  Ah! how she had loved there!  And how happily she was there going to die!  At that supreme moment the plaster cupids suggested nothing impure to her; the amorous paintings disturbed her no more.  She was conscious of nothing beneath that blue ceiling save the intoxicating perfume of the flowers.  And it seemed to her as if this perfume was none other than the old love-fragrance which had always warmed the room, now increased a hundredfold, till it had become so strong and penetrating that it would surely suffocate her.  Perchance it was the breath of the lady who had died there a century ago.  In perfect stillness, with her hands clasped over her heart, she continued smiling, while she listened to the whispers of the perfumes in her buzzing head.  They were singing to her a soft strange melody of fragrance, which slowly and very gently lulled her to sleep.

At first there was a prelude, bright and childlike; her hands, that had just now twisted and twined the aromatic greenery, exhaled the pungency of crushed herbage, and recalled her old girlish ramblings through the wildness of the Paradou.  Then there came a flutelike song, a song of short musky notes, rising from the violets that lay upon the table near the head of the bed; and this flutelike strain, trilling melodiously to the soft accompaniment of the lilies on the other table, sang to her of the first joys of love, its first confession, and first kiss beneath the trees of the forest.  But she began to stifle as passion drew nigh with the clove-like breath of the carnations, which burst upon her in brazen notes that seemed to drown all others.  She thought that death was nigh when the poppies and the marigolds broke into a wailing strain, which recalled the torment of desire.  But suddenly all grew quieter; she felt that she could breathe more freely; she glided into greater serenity, lulled by a descending scale that came from the throats of the stocks, and died away amidst a delightful hymn from the heliotropes, which, with their vanilla-like breath, proclaimed the approach of nuptial bliss.  Here and there the mirabilis gently trilled.  Then came a hush.  And afterwards the roses languidly made their entry.  Their voices streamed from the ceiling, like the strains of a distant choir.  It was a chorus of great breadth, to which she at first listened with a slight quiver.  Then the volume of the strain increased,