DAUGHTER OF THE SEAS.
I passed the early part of 1858 in the pleasant little town of Hyères
which, from afar, gazes down on the sea, the islets and the peninsula
by which its coast is sheltered. The sea, seen from this distance, is
even more potently seductive than when one is on its very shore. The
paths leading to it, whether we pass between gardens with their hedges
of jasmin and myrtle, or, ascending some little, pass through the
olive grounds and a little wood of pines and laurels, are exceedingly
tempting. The wood by no means hinders us from catching, now and then,
a glance of the bright sea. The place is, by no means unjustly, called
Fair-Coast. Often in the fine days of its gentle winters we met there
a most interesting invalid, a young foreign princess who had come
thither from a distance of five hundred leagues, in the hope of adding
some span to her fading and failing life. That life, short as it was,
had been a hard and sad one. Scarcely had she become a glad wife when
she found herself rudely threatened by Death. And now she dragged on
from day to day of suffering, supported and most tenderly treated by
him who lived only for her and hoped not to survive her. If wishes and
prayers could have preserved her she would still live; for all prayed
for her, especially the poor. But spring came, and bloomed and ended,
and on one of those April days whose genial influence revives every
thing we saw the two shadows pass, pale as the wandering Elysian
spectres of Virgil.
Sad at heart with sympathy, we reached the gulf. Between the bold
rocks, the pools left by the sea contained some little creatures that
had not been able to accompany the retreating tide. Some shelled
creatures were there, self-concentrated and suffering from want of
water, and amongst them, unshelled, unsheltered, lay the living
parasol, that for some, anything, rather than good reason, we call the
_Medusa_. Why has that name of terror been given to a creature so
charming? Never before had my attention been attracted to those
wrecked beauties, which we so often see high and dry upon the sea
shore at low ebb tide. This especial one was small, not larger than my
hand, but singularly beautiful, in its delicate colors, passing so
lightly from tint to tint. It was of an opal whiteness, into which
passed, as in a light cloud, a crown of the most delicate lilac. The
wind had turned it over, so that its lilac filaments floated above,
while the umbrella, that is to say, its proper body, lay upon the
rock. Much bruised in that tender body, it was also wounded and
mutilated in its fine filaments, or hairs, which are its sensitive
organs of respiration, absorption, and even love. And the whole
creature thus thrown upside down was receiving in full force the rays
of the Provençal sun, severe in its first awakening and rendered still
more severe by the dryness of the occasional gusts of the
south-westerly winds, the _Mistral_ of our Provençal coasts. The
transparent creature was thus doubly pierced, doubly tormented,
accustomed as it was to the caressing sea, and unprovided with the
resisting epidermis of land animals.
Close to her dried up lagune were other lagunes still full of water,
and communicating with the sea. Within a few paces of her, then, was
safety, but for her who had no organs of locomotion, excepting her
undulating hairs, it was impossible to traverse even that petty
distance, and it seemed that remaining under that fierce sun and
exposed to the arid blasts of that wind she very speedily must faint,
die, and be actually dissolved.
Nothing more ephemeral, more delicate than these daughters of the sea.
Some of them are so fluid that they dissolve and disappear as soon as
taken from the sea. Such is that slight band of azure called the
_Girdle of Venus_. The Medusa, a little more solid has all the more
trouble in dying. Was she dying or already dead? I do not readily
believe in death, and believing that she still lived I resolved to
convey her to a lagune of salt water. To say the truth I felt some
repugnance to touching her. The delicious creature with her visible
innocence, and rainbow of tender colors, looked like a trembling jelly
which must slip from one's touch or dissolve in one's grasp. However,
I conquered this repugnance, slid my hand gently beneath her and as I
turned her over her hairs fell down into their natural position, when
used in swimming. I thus carried her to the water, where she sank
without giving the slightest sign of life. I walked about the shore,
but in about ten minutes returned to look after my Medusa. She was
swimming under water, her hairs undulating gracefully beneath her; and
slowly, but safely, she had left the rock far behind her.
Poor creature, perhaps she got wrecked or stranded again, ere long,
for it is impossible to navigate with weaker means or in a fashion
more dangerous. The Medusæ fear the shore where so many hard
substances hurt them, and in the open sea they are liable
to be overturned at every gust of wind, in which case, their
swimming-feathers being above instead of below their bodies, they are
carried hither and thither, at random, upon the waves, as the prey of
fish or the delight of birds who find sport and profit in seizing
them.
During a whole season which I spent on the banks of Gironde I saw them
cast ashore to perish miserably by hundreds. On their arrival they
were white and brilliant as crystal. Alas! How different was their
aspect in the course of a couple of days. Very happily they sank
beneath the sand and were lost to my pitying view.
They are the food of every thing marine, and have themselves scarce
any aliment, none that we know of, but the, as yet, scarce organized
atoms floating in the sea which they, etherialize, as we may say, and
suck in without making them suffer. They have neither teeth nor
weapons; no defence, excepting that some species, Forbes says not all,
can secrete, when attacked, a liquid which stings somewhat like the
nettle, but so faintly that Dicquemare with impunity received some of
it in his eye.
Here we have, indeed, a creature little provided and in great peril.
She is superior already; she has senses, and, if we may judge from her
contractions, a great sensibility to suffering. She cannot, like the
Polypus, be divided and live. Divide him and you double his existence;
divide her and she dies. Gelatinous as the polypus, the Medusa seems
to be an embryon cast away too soon from the bosom of the common
mother, torn from the solid base and the association to which the
Polypus owes his safety, and launched into adventure. How has the
imprudent creature set out? How, without sails, or oars, or helm, has
she left her port? What is her point of departure?
Ellis, as long ago as 1750, saw a little Medusa produced from the
campanular polypus, and many later observers have ascertained that she
is a kind of polypus that has left the society. To speak more simply,
she is an escaped polypus.
And the learned M. Forbes who has so deeply studied them, very aptly
asks, what is there astonishing in that? It only shows that to that
extent the animal still obeys the vegetable law. From the tree, the
collective being, proceeds the individual, the detached fruit which
fruit will make another tree. A pear tree is a sort of vegetable
polypus of which the pear, (the emancipated individual) can give us a
pear tree.
In like manner, adds Forbes, as the leaf laden tree, stops in its
development, contracts, and becomes an organ of love--i. e. a flower,
the _Polypier_, contracting some of its polypes and transforming their
contractions, forms the placenta, the eggs from which proceeds the
young and graceful Medusa.
One would guess as much from her hesitating grace, that weakness at
once so unarmed and so fearless, which embarks without instruments of
navigation, and trusts too much to life. It is the first tender and
touching adventure of the new soul going forth without defence from
the security of the common life, to be itself, an individual acting
and suffering on its own account--soft sketch of free nature; an
embryon of liberty.
To be oneself, oneself alone, in a little complete world, was a great
temptation for all. A universal seduction! a beautiful folly, which
causes all the effort and all the progress of the world, from our
earth upward to the very stars. But in her first attempts the Medusa,
seems especially unjustified. One would say that she was created on
purpose to be drowned. Laden above, and ill-ballasted below, she is
formed in conditions exactly opposite to those of her parent, the
Physalie. This latter displays on the surface of the water, only a
little balloon, an insubmersible membrane and below has infinitely
long tentaculæ, of twenty feet or more, which steady her, sweep the
waters, stupefy the fish, make prey of him. Light and careless,
inflating her pearly balloon of blue or purple tints, she darts from
her long hairy tentaculæ a subtle and murderous poison. Less
formidable, the Velelles are no less secure. They have the form of
_radeaux_, their minute organization is already somewhat solid, and
they can steer and trim their oblique sail to every wind. The
Porpites, that seem to be only a flower, a sea Margaret, have their
own peculiar levity; even after death, they continue to float. It is
the same with many other fantastic and almost aërial beings, garlands
with golden bells or with rosebuds--such as the Physopheres,
Stephanomie, &c., azure girdles of Venus. All these swim and float
invincibly, fear only the shore, and sail boldly out on the open sea,
and when it is ever so rough are perfectly safe there. So little do
the Porpites and Velelles fear the sea, that, being able to rise at
pleasure, they exert themselves to sink to the concealing depths when
the weather is bad.
Not such is our poor Medusa. Fearing the shore, she is also in danger
at sea. She could sink into the depths at will, but the watery abyss
is forbidden to her; she can live only on the surface, in the broad
light and in full peril. She sees, she hears, and her sense of touch
is very delicate, to her misfortune, too much so. She cannot guide
herself; her most complicated organs overload and overbalance her.
And so we are tempted to believe that she must needs repent of so
perilous a search after liberty; and desires to be back in the
inferior state, the security of the common life. The polypier made the
Medusa, she in turn makes the polypier, and returns to the life of
community. But this vegetating state wearies her, and in the next
generation she again emancipates herself and goes forth again to the
perils of her vain navigation. Strange alternation, in which she
floats incessantly; moving, she dreams of repose; in rest, she sighs
for movement.
These strange metamorphoses, which by turns raise and abase the
undecided creature, keeping her alternating between two lives so
different, are apparently the case of the inferior species, of the
Medusa which have not been able to enter decidedly into the
irrevocable career of emancipation. For the others, we can easily
suppose that their charming varieties mark the interior progress of
life, the degrees of development, the sports, the smiling graces of
their new liberty. This latter class, admirably artistic, won this so
simple theme of a disk or parasol which floats, of a light lustre of
crystal which reflects the sun's glowing and coloring lights, has made
an infinity of variations, a deluge of little marvels.
All these beauties floating on the green mirror of the sea in their
gay and delicate colors, and in the thousand attractions of an
infantine and unconscious coquetry, have puzzled Science, which to
class and to name them, has been obliged to call to its aid both the
Queens of History and the Goddesses of Mythology. Here we have the
waving Berenice, whose rich hair floats another and brighter flood
upon the flood; there we have the little Orithya, the fair spouse of
Eölus, who, at the breathing of her husband, displays her pure, white
urn, uncertain, and scarcely supported by her fine hair, which she
often entangles beneath, or the weeping Dionea, looking like an
alabaster cup, from which, in crystalline streamlets, flow splendid
tears. Such, when in Switzerland, I saw spreading themselves the
wearied and idle cascades, which, having made too many turnings,
seemed dropping with drowsiness and languor.
In the great faëry of the illumination of the sea on stormy nights,
the Medusa has her separate part. Bathed, like so many other beings,
in the phosphoric fluid with which they are all penetrated, she
returns it in her manner, with a peculiar charm.
How dark is the night at sea when we do not see that phosphoric gleam
or a fitful flashing! How vast and formidable are those dark depths,
on such gloomy nights. On land, the shadows are less dense and
impenetrable, we see, if dimly, and make out forms, if imperfectly, so
that we get so many directing marks. But at sea, how vast, unbroken,
infinitely dense is the darkness of the dark nights. Nothing, still
nothing; a thousand dangers to be imagined, but not one to be seen and
avoided!
We feel all this, even when living on the coast. It is a great
gladness, an exciting pleasure, when, the air becoming electric, we
see in the distance, a slight line of pale fire. What is it? We see it
even at home, on the dead fish, the Herring, for instance. But, living
in his great sea, he is still more luminous in the long trains that
he leaves behind him. That phosphoric brilliancy is by no means the
exclusive privilege of Death. Is it an effect of Heat? No, for you
find it at both poles, in the Antarctic Seas, in the Siberian Seas, in
ours--in all.
It is the common electricity which the half-living waters throw off in
stormy weather; the innocent and pacific lightning of which all marine
creatures are then so many conductors. They inhale it, and they exhale
it, and they restore it largely when they die. The sea gives it, and
the sea takes it back again. Along the coasts and in the straits, the
currents and the collisions, cause it to circulate the more
powerfully, and each creature, according to its waters, takes more or
less of it. Here, immense surfaces of peaceable infusoriæ appear, like
a milky sea, of a mild, white light, which, when more animated, turns
to the yellow of burning sulphur; there their conical lights pirouette
upon their own bases, or roll in red balls. A great disc of fire
(Pyrosome) commences with an opaline yellow, becomes for a moment
greenish, then bursts into red and orange, and at last darkens down
into blue. These changes occur with an approach to regularity that
would indicate a natural function, the contraction and dilatation of
some vast creature, breathing fire.
Then on the horizon, fiery serpents writhe and glide along an immense
length--sometimes to the extent of twenty-five or thirty leagues. The
Biphores and the Salpas, transparent alike to sea and sulphur, are the
performers in this serpentine spectacle, an astonishing company which
disport themselves in this frantic dance, and then separate.
Separated, its free members produce free little ones, which, in their
turn light up the horizon with their dancing and wild lights. Great
fleets, more peaceful, float over the waves of lights. The Velelles,
at night, light up their little craft. The Beroes are triumphant as
flames. None more magical than those of our Medusæ. Is it in part a
physical effect like that which gives their serpentine motion to the
Salpas, injected with fire? Is it, as others think, and as some
observations would lead us to believe, an act of aspiration? Is it a
caprice, as with so many beings that throw out their sparkles and
flashes of a vain and inconstant joy? No, the noble and beautiful
Medusæ, such as the crowned Oceanique, and the lovely Idonea, seem to
express gravest thoughts. Beneath them, their luminous hair, like some
sombre watch-light, gives out mysterious lights of emerald and other
colors, which, now flashing, anon growing pale, reveal a sentiment,
and, I know not what of mystery; suggesting to us the spirit of the
abyss, meditating its secrets; the soul that exists, or is to exist
some day. Or should it not rather suggest to us some melancholy dream
of an impossible destiny which is never to attain its end? Or an
appeal to that rapture of love which alone consoles us here below?
We know that on land our fire flies, by their fire give the signal of
the bashful yet eager lover who thus betrays her retreat, and decoys
her mate. Have the Medusæ this same sense? We know not; but thus much
is certain, that they yield at once their flame and their life. The
fecund sap, their generative virtue, escapes and diminishes at every
gleam. If we desire the cruel pleasure of redoubling this brilliant
faëry, we have only to expose them to warmth. Then they become
excited, flash, and become beautiful, oh, so exquisitely
beautiful--and then the scene is at an end. Flame, love, and life, all
are at an end--all evanish for ever.