The pumpkin and the sensitive plant.

Tell me what your regimen is, O poor sensitive plant? The pumpkin was asking a small flower, Why keep yourself thus as if you were not alive? I speak to you with much sorrow, Sensitivity wears you down; and weakens you; You will die well before the end of this season; When, as the sun flees and the horizon darkens You will see your leaves then wither: A fatal shudder Runs through your stalk before the brushing breeze; Making the crisis then arrive;

Life is then a torment to you.

And why so much sorrow and such solicitude? Let my example, then, be a tender quietude. What goes on within me, indeed, Does not cost me the slightest emotion; I make it my virtue to sustain myself well, What matters, then, in my temperament, The mysteries of heaven? – The splendor of the day, The darkness of night, the dampness, the heat Everything suits my purpose.

My round form sometimes, it is true, Induces the satirical and cruel observer To say in a murmur: “The pumpkin is a nonentity!” Yet such treatment is no gall to me; Upon my bed I nourish myself and, laughing, I roll about To cause envy, resting upon the ground, My thick belly and amplitude.

Tastes, says the flower, are quite different; You wish to devote yourself to enjoyment, to a life of holiday, To the well-being of matter alone; I believe I do better, see well, at this instant, In shortening my existence, Devoting myself to the excellence, Of good sentiment, of intelligence, I will have lived thus enough.

Dombre, (of Marmande.)