Winter returned.
The _mistral_ shrieked, tore the budding leaves of the plane-trees, and scattered them over the ground.

It was cold as December.

We had to light fires in the evening, and resume the heavy clothes we had begun to leave off.
My butterflies were too sorely tried.

They emerged late and were torpid.
Around my cages, in which the females waited--to-day one, to-morrow another, according to the order of their birth--few males or none came from without.

Yet there were some in the neighbourhood, for those with large antennae which issued from my collection of cocoons were placed in the garden directly they had emerged, and were recognised.