the hedge had once been full of trees and bushes, but they were cut down and nothing now shot up from their stubs but long, thin twigs.

in between the stubs grew goat’s-foot and fool’s-parsley and more weeds of the same kind, which all look like one another and are called wild chervil by people who know no better.

their branches were almost as long as those of the bushes. and they were as pretentious as though they really were bushes and as though they did not wither in the autumn and have to start all over again with a little seed, just like some silly daisy or pansy. they strutted and swaggered, they rustled in the wind, they snapped, they lost their leaves and got new ones, exactly as if their time were their own. if any one asked them what they really were, they pretended not to hear, or turned it off as a jest, or refused pointblank to answer.

and then they had beautiful white flowers, which they lifted high in the air, like parasols, whereas the real branches, that grew on the stubs, never got to look like anything but overgrown children and could put forth neither flowers nor fruit.