across space, similar to the sachet-powders of perfumers.

The senator stopped, breathed in the cloud of floating pollen, looked at
the fertile shrub, yellow as the sun, whose seed was floating in the air,
and said:

"When one considers that these imperceptible fragrant atoms will create
existences at a hundred leagues from here, will send a thrill through the
fibres and sap of female trees and produce beings with roots, growing
from a germ, just as we do, mortal like ourselves, and who will be
replaced by other beings of the same order, like ourselves again!"

And, standing in front of the brilliant cytisus, whose live pollen was
shaken off by each breath of air, the senator added:

"Ah, old fellow, if you had to keep count of all your children you would
be mightily embarrassed. Here is one who generates freely, and then lets
them go without a pang and troubles himself no more about them."

"We do the same, my friend," said the academician.

"Yes, I do not deny it; we let them go sometimes," resumed the senator,
"but we are aware that we do, and that constitutes our superiority."

"No, that is not what I mean," said the other, shaking his head. "You
see, my friend, that there is scarcely a man who has not some children
that he does not know, children--'father unknown'--whom he has
generated almost unconsciously, just as this tree reproduces.

"If we had to keep account of our amours, we should be just as