‘You fools!’ cried my wife, ‘it’s the baker with the bread.’
Six o’clock.
She went to throw back the shutters, but ere it was done, a cry came
from Julia. There, half in and half out its crack, there wriggled the
bug, flashing in the room’s general dimness, like a fiery opal.
Had this bug had a tiny sword by its side--a Damascus sword--and a tiny
necklace round its neck--a diamond necklace--and a tiny gun in its
claw--brass gun--and a tiny manuscript in its mouth--a Chaldee
manuscript--Julia and Anna could not have stood more charmed.
In truth, it was a beautiful bug--a Jew jeweller’s bug--a bug like a
sparkle of a glorious sunset.
Julia and Anna had never dreamed of such a bug. To them, bug had been a
word synonymous with hideousness. But this was a seraphical bug; or
rather, all it had of the bug was the B, for it was beautiful as a
butterfly.
Julia and Anna gazed and gazed. They were no more alarmed. They were
delighted.
‘But how got this strange, pretty creature into the table?’ cried Julia.
‘Spirits can get anywhere,’ replied Anna.
‘Pshaw!’ said my wife.
‘Do you hear any more ticking?’ said I.
They all applied their ears, but heard nothing.
‘Well, then, wife and daughters, now that it is all over, this very
morning I will go and make inquiries about it.’
‘Oh do, papa,’ cried Julia, ‘do go and consult Madame Pazzi, the
conjuress.’
‘Better go and consult Professor Johnson, the naturalist,’ said my wife.
‘Bravo, Mrs. Democritus!’ said I. ‘Professor Johnson is the man.’
By good fortune I found the professor in. Informing him briefly of the
incident, he manifested a cool, collected sort of interest, and gravely
accompanied me home. The table was produced, the two openings pointed
out, the bug displayed, and the details of the affair set forth; my wife
and daughters being present.
‘And now, Professor,’ said I, ‘what do you think of it?’
Putting on his spectacles, the learned professor looked hard at the
table, and gently scraped with his penknife into the holes, but said
nothing.
‘Is it not an unusual thing, this?’ anxiously asked Anna.
‘Very unusual, Miss.’
At which Julia and Anna exchanged significant glances.
‘But is it not wonderful, very wonderful?’ demanded Julia.
‘Very wonderful, Miss.’
My daughters exchanged still more significant glances, and Julia,
emboldened, again spoke.
‘And must you not admit, sir, that it is the work of--of--of sp----?’
‘Spirits? No,’ was the crusty rejoinder.
‘My daughters,’ said I, mildly, ‘you should remember that this is not
Madame Pazzi, the conjuress, you put your questions to, but the eminent
naturalist, Professor Johnson. And now, Professor,’ I added, ‘be pleased
to explain. Enlighten our ignorance.’
Without repeating all the learned gentleman said--for, indeed, though
lucid, he was a little prosy--let the following summary of his
explication suffice.
The incident was not wholly without example. The wood of the table was
apple-tree, a sort of tree much fancied by various insects. The bugs had
come from eggs laid inside the bark of the living tree in the orchard.
By careful examination of the position of the hole from which the last
bug had emerged, in relation to the cortical layers of the slab, and
then allowing for the inch and a half along the grain, ere the bug had
eaten its way entirely out, and then computing the whole number of
cortical layers in the slab, with a reasonable conjecture for the number
cut off from the outside, it appeared that the egg must have been laid
in the tree some ninety years, more or less, before the tree could have
been felled. But between the felling of the tree and the present time,
how long might that be? It was a very old-fashioned table. Allow eighty
years for the age of the table, which would make one hundred and fifty
years that the bug had lain in the egg. Such, at least, was Professor
Johnson’s computation.
‘Now, Julia,’ said I, ‘after that scientific statement of the case
(though, I confess, I don’t exactly understand it) where are your
spirits? It is very wonderful as it is, but where are your spirits?’
‘Where, indeed?’ said my wife.
‘Why, now, she did not _really_ associate this purely natural phenomenon
with any crude, spiritual hypothesis, did she?’ observed the learned
professor, with a slight sneer.
‘Say what you will,’ said Julia, holding up, in the covered tumbler, the
glorious, lustrous, flashing, live opal, ‘say what you will, if this
beauteous creature be not a spirit, it yet teaches a spiritual lesson.
For if, after one hundred and fifty years’ entombment, a mere insect
comes forth at last into light, itself an effulgence, shall there be no
glorified resurrection for the spirit of man? Spirits! spirits!’ she
exclaimed, with rapture, ‘I still believe in them with delight, when
before I but thought of them with terror.’
The mysterious insect did not long enjoy its radiant life; it expired
the next day. But my girls have preserved it. Embalmed in a silver
vinaigrette, it lies on the little apple-tree table in the pier of the
cedar-parlour.
And whatever lady doubts this story, my daughters will be happy to show
her both the bug and the table, and point out to her, in the repaired
slab of the latter, the two sealing-wax drops designating the exact
place of the two holes made by the two bugs, something in the same way
in which are marked the spots where the cannon balls struck Brattle
Street church.
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