[Illustration: THE PURSUIT.
_See page 158._]
THE INSECT
BY
JULES MICHELET.
WITH 140 ILLUSTRATIONS BY GIACOMELLI,
ILLUSTRATOR OF "THE BIRD."
[Illustration]
LONDON:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;
EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.
1875.
[Illustration]
Preface.
"The Insect" is one of the four remarkable works in which the late
M. Michelet embodied the results of a loving and persevering study
of Nature. These works are absolutely unique; the poetry of Science
was never before illustrated on so large a scale, or with so much
vividness of fancy, or in so eloquent a style. The aspects of Nature
were never before examined with so strong an enthusiasm or so definite
an individuality,--with so eager a desire to identify them with the
feelings, hopes, and aspirations of humanity. Michelet approached his
subject neither as philosopher nor as poet, but yet with something
of the spirit of both. His philosophy and poetry, however, were both
subordinate to his ardent sympathy with what he conceived to be the
soul, the personality of Nature; and whether his attention was directed
to the life of ocean, the bird, the insect, or the mountain-plant, he
still sought for some evidence of its special and distinct existence,
with thoughts and emotions, as it were, and a character of its own. It
was almost as if he saw in Nature a likeness to, and a kinship with,
humanity. No doubt, in expressing these views he was occasionally led
into a certain extravagance, and his enthusiasm not infrequently outran
or overmastered his judgment. He lacked the profound insight and sober
reflection of Wordsworth, and accuracy of detail was often sacrificed
for the sake of a brilliant generalization. But, after making due
allowance for defects inseparable, perhaps, from a genius rather
passionate and impulsive than analytic and self-composed, it must be
admitted that the lover of Nature has cause to be grateful for the fine
fancies, rich illustrations, and suggestive analogies crowded into the
books we speak of.
A recent writer, M. Monod,[A] has pronounced upon them an animated
eulogium:--"Scientific men may discover in these books errors,
inaccuracies, and exaggerations; but, in spite of all, they have shown
that the physical sciences, though accused of withering the soul, and
robbing Nature of poetry and life of enchantment, contain the elements
of a profound and varied poetry, that never loses its charm, because
it is not dependent on the caprices of taste and fashion, but has its
source in the unchangeable reality of things. Many have said that
science will drive out religion and poetry; Michelet finds in every
branch of science the demonstration of a new faith, revealing to him
a harmony till then unperceived, centred in the supreme unity of the
Divine mind and of the Absolute Being."
[Footnote A: _Macmillan's Magazine_, July 1874, pp. 231, 232.]
Whether the reader endorses this high eulogium or not, he will
certainly, in "The Insect," as in "The Bird," find a new stimulus to
the study of Nature, and a fresh proof of the power and fancy of one of
the greatest of modern French writers.
Of the present translation, it is necessary only to say that it has
been executed with a conscientious adherence to the original, and with
an effort to preserve, as far as possible, its peculiarities of style.
If it should be thought that in the attempt something of freedom and
fluency has been sacrificed, it is hoped the critic will acknowledge
that something of faithfulness has been gained. The author of "The
Insect" took much interest in the presentation of it and its companions
to the English reader in an English dress, and was pleased to express
his approval of the manner in which the Translator had accomplished his
task.
It remains to be added that the exquisite Illustrations, by M. H.
Giacomelli, have all been specially drawn and engraved for the English
edition.
W. H. DAVENPORT ADAMS.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Contents.
INTRODUCTION.
I. THE LIVING INFINITE, 17
II. OUR STUDIES AT PARIS AND IN SWITZERLAND, 23
III. OUR STUDIES AT FONTAINEBLEAU, 36
IV. OUR STUDIES AT FONTAINEBLEAU (CONTINUED), 46
BOOK I.--METAMORPHOSIS.
I. TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD, 57
II. COMPASSION, 67
III. WORLD-BUILDERS, 79
IV. LOVE AND DEATH, 89
V. THE ORPHAN: ITS FEEBLENESS, 99
VI. THE MUMMY, NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS, 109
VII. THE PHOENIX, 119
BOOK II.--MISSION AND ARTS OF THE INSECT.
I. SWAMMERDAM, 129
II. THE MICROSCOPE:--HAS THE INSECT A PHYSIOGNOMY? 143
III. THE INSECT AS THE AGENT OF NATURE IN THE
ACCELERATION OF DEATH AND LIFE, 155
IV. THE INSECT AS MAN'S AUXILIARY, 165
V. A PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIGHT AND COLOUR, 175
VI. THE SILKWORM, 185
VII. INSTRUMENTS OF THE INSECT: AND ITS CHEMICAL
ENERGIES, AS IN THE COCHINEAL AND THE CANTHARIDES, 193
VIII. ON THE RENOVATION OF OUR ARTS BY THE STUDY OF THE INSECT, 201
IX. THE SPIDER--INDUSTRY--THE STOPPAGE, 211
X. THE HOME AND LOVES OF THE SPIDER, 223
BOOK III.--COMMUNITIES OF INSECTS.
I. THE CITY IN THE SHADOWS: THE TERMITES, OR WHITE ANTS, 235
II. THE ANTS:--THEIR DOMESTIC ECONOMY--THEIR NUPTIALS, 245
III. THE ANTS:--THEIR FLOCKS AND THEIR SLAVES, 259
IV. THE ANTS:--CIVIL WAR--EXTERMINATION OF THE COMMUNITY, 271
V. THE WASPS: THEIR FURY OF IMPROVISATION, 283
VI. "THE BEES" OF VIRGIL, 293
VII. THE BEE IN THE FIELDS, 301
VIII. THE BEES AS ARCHITECTS: THE CITY, 311
IX. HOW THE BEES CREATE THE PEOPLE AND THE COMMON MOTHER, 321
CONCLUSION, 333
ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES, 341
ANALYSIS OF SUBJECTS, 363
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
List of Illustrations.
DRAWN BY H. GIACOMELLI.
[Illustration: arrows]
_Engraved by_ _Page_
The Pursuit, _Rouget_, _Frontispiece_
A Home among the Mountains--Lucerne, _Sargent_, 15
On the Watch, _Berveiller_, 17
Border--Amongst the Flowers, _Berveiller_, 18
Border--Insect Life, _Berveiller_, 19
Border--Mailed Insects, _Méaulle_, 20
Border--Bees and Beetles, _Méaulle_, 21
Border--Grasshoppers and Beetles, _Méaulle_, 22
Tailpiece--Naturalist's "Traps," _Berveiller_, 22
Border--Caterpillars, _Coste_, 23
Tailpiece--The Author's Implements, _Ansseau_, 35
The Forest of Fontainebleau, _Rouget_, 39
The Woodpecker, _Berveiller_, 46
Tailpiece--Flowers, _Morison_, 52
Fallen Fruit, _Whymper_, 55
Horned Beetles, _Méaulle_, 57
The Childhood's Home of Madame Michelet, _Rouget_, 59
Tailpiece--Insect Prey, _Méaulle_, 63
A Winged Intruder, _Sargent_, 65
War! _Méaulle_, 67
Between Chillon and Clarens, _Jonnard_, 71
The Field--Various Insects, _Berveiller_, 72
Tailpiece--An Etherized Prisoner, _Méaulle_, 75
World-Builders, _Méaulle_, 77
Polyzoa, _Jonnard_, 79
"Food for Fishes," _Jonnard_, 82
Coral Island, _Whymper_, 84
Tailpiece--Shells, _Jonnard_, 85
Sunshine and Shade, _Jonnard_, 87
Love and Death, _Méaulle_, 89
In the Wood, _Sargent_, 91
Gathering Sweets, _Berveiller_, 92
Tailpiece--A Shady Nook, _Morison_, 95
Nest of Humble-Bee, _Rouget_, 97
"The Chilly One," _Sargent_, 99
Tailpiece--Cocoon, _Berveiller_, 105
The Dragon-Fly, _Jonnard_, 107
The Sacred Beetle of the Egyptians, _Jonnard_, 109
Butterflies and Flowers, _Jonnard_, 112
Tailpiece--Chrysalis, _Sargent_, 115
The Phoenix, _Méaulle_, 117
Seeking the Light, _Whymper_, 119
A Winged Warrior, _Berveiller_, 122
The Imperial Weevil, _Berveiller_, 123
Tailpiece--The Weevil on the Mountain-Top, _Morison_, 124
Swammerdam, _Méaulle_, 127
Dutch Landscape, _Méaulle_, 129
"Melancholy Meads," _Ansseau_, 132
A Tempest on the Dutch Coast, _Méaulle_, 137
Tailpiece--The Task, _Ansseau_, 139
Under the Microscope, _Méaulle_, 141
A Philosopher's "Den," _Coste_, 143
Tailpiece--A Finished Task, _Ansseau_, 151
A Coleopterous Giant, _Méaulle_, 153
An Agent of Nature, _Rouget_, 155
"Rhinoceros-like Cuirassiers." _Méaulle_, 159
Tailpiece--Horned Beetle, _Méaulle_, 162
Man's Auxiliary, _Rouget_, 163
Carabidæ, _Jonnard_, 165
Hunting the Enemy, _Ansseau_, 168
Tailpiece--The Pilgrim Locust, _Ansseau_, 172
Aerial Beauties, _Sargent_, 173
The Acrocinus, _Whymper_, 175
Streaked Taupin, and Earwig, _Ansseau_, 176
Buprestidans, _Coste_, 179
Tailpiece--Butterfly and Flower, _Berveiller_, 182
Insect Manufacturers _Méaulle_, 183
The Dead-Leaf Moth, _Sargent_, 185
Cocoons, _Jonnard_, 188
Tailpiece--A Prisoner, _Jonnard_, 189
Long-Horned Beetles, _Méaulle_, 191
Insects and their Weapons, _Méaulle_, 193
Tailpiece--Cat and Cantharides, _Ansseau_, 197
A Thing of Beauty, _Jonnard_, 199
Leaf-Rollers, _Berveiller_, 201
Grasshopper of Guiana, _Ansseau_, 203
Cassida, _Coste_, 205
Tailpiece--Insects "Fantastic and
Wonderful," _Méaulle_, 207
The Spider, _Rouget_, 209
Aquatic Spiders, _Jonnard_, 211
On the Look-out, _Berveiller_, 216
Blue-Bottles and Beetles, _Ansseau_, 217
Tailpiece--Bird-catching Spider, _Berveiller_, 219
The Garden Spider, _Jonnard_, 221
Trap-door Spider and House, _Sargent_, 223
Spider and Butterfly, _Méaulle_, 226
Tailpiece--The Musical Spider, _Ansseau_, 230
The City in the Shadows, _Méaulle_, 233
Ruins Caused by the Termites in Valencia, _Méaulle_, 235
Tailpiece--Termites (Solders, Worker, and
Female) from the Coast of Guinea, _Berveiller_, 241
Ants at Work, _Rouget_, 243
The Nuptials of the Ants, _Jonnard_, 245
Nest of Russet Ants, _Rouget_, 249
Carpenter Ants, _Berveiller_, 253
Tailpiece--Ants and Flowers, _Jonnard_, 255
A Migration of Ants, _Rouget_, 257
Roses, Grubs, and Ants, _Whymper_, 259
A Feast for the Ants, _Berveiller_, 266
Tailpiece--Honey-making Ants, _Ansseau_, 268
The Nightingale--"Dreaming and Listening," _Rouget_, 269
Bramble and Ants, _Berveiller_, 271
Tailpiece--The Unhappy Fugitive, _Berveiller_, 280
The Home of the Wasps, _Rouget_, 281
Polystes and their Nests, _Berveiller_, 283
Eumenes domiformes and their Nests, _Sargent_, 287
Tailpiece--Wasp and Fruit, _Méaulle_, 289
A Tomb at Père-Lachaise, _Sargent_, 291
The Living and the Dead, _Berveiller_, 293
Tailpiece--Virgilian Bees, _Berveiller_, 298
The Bee in the Fields, _Berveiller_, 299
Bees and Wild Flowers, _Berveiller_, 301
Bees and Blossoms, _Berveiller_, 305
Tailpiece--Drone Bee, _Berveiller_, 308
"Busy Bees," _Méaulle_, 309
The Sphinx Atropos, _Méaulle_, 311
Tailpiece--A Winged Brigand, _Méaulle_, 317
Bees on the Wing, _Méaulle_, 319
Inside the Hive, _Berveiller_, 321
Bees in Search of the Natural Hive, _Jonnard_, 326
Tailpiece--Queen-Bee, _Berveiller_, 329
The Praying-Mantis, and other Insects, _Berveiller_, 331
Lady-Birds and Grain, _Méaulle_, 333
Butterfly and Moth, _Jonnard_, 334
The Stag-Beetle, _Méaulle,_, 335
Tailpiece--The Author's Visitors, _Berveiller_, 338
Book, Flowers, and Insects, _Berveiller_, 339
Stag-Beetle, _Sargent_, 341
Carabus Auratus, _Sargent_, 345
A Sacrifice to Science, _Méaulle_, 346
Horned Centrote and Globular Bocydie, _Sargent_, 347
Beetle, _Méaulle_, 348
Caterpillar and Leaf, _Sargent_, 348
Butterfly and Flower, _Sargent_, 350
Rhinoceros-horned Beetle, _Méaulle_, 351
Birds and Lady-Bird, _Berveiller_, 351
Wasps, _Morison_, 352
Tuft-horned Beetle, _Morison_, 353
Garden Spider, _Morison_, 354
Termite: Long-sheathed Nymph, _Ansseau_, 354
Rhinoceros-horned Beetle, _Morison_, 356
Dragon-Fly and Ants, _Ansseau_, 356
Wasps, _Berveiller_, 357
Bees, _Ansseau_, 358
Bird and Butterfly, _Berveiller_, 362
[Illustration]
Introduction.
[Illustration: A HOME AMONG THE MOUNTAINS.]
[Illustration]
I.
THE LIVING INFINITE.
We have followed the Bird in all its liberties of flight, and space,
and light; but the Earth which we quitted would not quit us. The sweet
melodies of the winged world could not prevent us from hearing the
murmur of an infinite world of shadow and silence, which, wanting the
speech of man, expresses itself, nevertheless, with eloquent force, by
means of a myriad mute tongues.
A universal appeal made to us simultaneously by all Nature, from the
depths of Earth and Sea, from the bosom of every plant, from the very
air which we breathe.
The eloquent appeal of the ingenious arts of the Insect, of its powers
of love so vividly manifested through its wings and colours, in the
brilliant scintillation with which it enkindles our nights.
[Illustration]
An appeal which becomes frightful from the number of those who make it.
What is the little tribe of Birds, or that of Quadrupeds, compared with
them? All the animal species, all the various forms of life, brought
face to face with this one family, disappear, and are as nothing. Put
the world on one side, and on the other the Insect World; the latter
has the advantage.
Our collections contain about one hundred thousand species. But taking
into consideration that every plant at the least nourishes three,
we obtain the result, according to the number of known plants, of
three hundred and sixty thousand species of insects! And each, be it
remembered, of prodigious fecundity.
Now call to mind that every creature nourishes other creatures on its
surface, in the thickness of its solids, in its fluids, and in its
blood; that each insect is a little world inhabited by insects; and
that these again have parasites of their own.
Is this all? No; in the masses men have supposed to be mineral or
inorganic, animals are now revealed to us of which it would take a
thousand millions to form one inch in thickness,--the which do not
the less present us with a rough sketch or outline of the Insect, and
have a right to be spoken of as _insects commenced_. And what are the
numbers of these? A single species accumulates the Apennines out of its
_débris_, and with its atoms has raised up that enormous backbone of
America, the Cordilleras.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
Having arrived at this point, we think our review is ended. Patience!
The molluscs, which in the Southern Seas have created so many
islands,--which literally pave, as recent soundings have shown, the
twelve hundred leagues of Ocean separating us from America,--these
molluscs are qualified by many naturalists with the name of _embryo
insects_; so that their fertile tribes form, as it were, a dependency
of the higher race,--candidates, one might say, for the rank of Insect.
This is sublime. The reason that, nevertheless, makes me regret the
little world of Birds,--those charming companions which bore me aloft
on their wings not long ago,--is not their harmonious concerts, is not
even the spectacle of their airy and sublime life--but because they
understood me!
We comprehended and we loved one another; we interchanged our
languages. I spoke for the Bird, and the Bird sang for me.
Having fallen from heaven at the threshold of the sombre kingdom, and
in the presence of the mute and mysterious sons of night, what language
am I to invent, and what signs of intelligence? How am I to exercise
my wits to discover a mode of communicating with them? My voice and
gestures do but drive them away. There is no glance of recognition in
their eyes; no emotion visible on their inscrutable mask. Under its
warrior-cuirass the Insect remains impenetrable. Does its heart--for
it has one--beat after the fashion of mine? Its senses are infinitely
subtle, but do they resemble _my_ senses? It seems as if they still
remained apart, unknown, ay, and without a name.
[Illustration]
It escapes us; Nature has created for it, with respect to man, a
perpetual _alibi_. If she reveals it to us for a moment in a single
gleam of love, she hides it for years in the depths of the shadowy
earth or in the discreet bosom of the oaks. And even when discovered,
captured, opened, dissected, and examined by a microscope in every
detail, it still remains to us an enigma.
And an enigma of by no means reassuring character,--whose singularity
almost scandalizes, while it so confuses our ideas. What shall we say
of a being which breathes through its side and flanks? of a paradoxical
walker, which, contrary to all other organisms, presents its back to
the earth and its belly to the sky? In many respects, we may look upon
the insect as a creature of contradictions.
Add, moreover, that its littleness contributes to the misunderstanding.
Every organ appears to us fantastic and threatening, because our weak
eyes do not see it with sufficient clearness to be able to explain its
structure and utility. What is imperfectly seen always perplexes; and
therefore provisionally, we kill it! And it is so little, too, that we
do not trouble ourselves to be just towards it.
We are in no want of systems. We could willingly accept the definitive
decree of a German dreamer, who sums up the whole matter in a word:
"The good God made the world; but the devil made the insect!"
[Illustration]
The Insect, nevertheless, does not look upon itself as vanquished. To
the systems of the philosopher and the terror of the child (which are,
perhaps, both the same thing), this is its answer:--
In the first place, that Justice is universal, that size has nothing to
do with Right; that if one could suppose the Right to be unequal in its
application, and the Universal Love to incline the balance, it would be
on the side of the little.
It says that it would be absurd to judge by the figure, to condemn
organs of whose uses we are ignorant, which are principally the tools
of special professions, the instruments of a hundred trades; that it,
the insect, is the great destroyer and fabricator, the most industrious
of artisans, the energetic workman of life.
And, finally, it says (this pretension will perhaps appear most
arrogant), that if we judge by visible signs, by works and results,
it is It, among all beings, which loves most truly. Love endows it
with wings, with a marvellous iris of colours, and even with visible
flames. Love is for _it_ the instantaneous or approaching death, with
an astonishing _second sight_ of maternity which continues over the
orphan an ingenious superintendence. And lastly, the maternal genius
extends so far, that, surpassing and eclipsing the rare associations of
birds and quadrupeds, it has enabled the Insect to create republics and
establish cities!
[Illustration]
I admit that this weighty plea has made an impression on me.
If thou toilest and lovest, O Insect, whatever may be thy aspect, I
cannot separate myself from thee. We are truly somewhat akin. For what
am I myself, but a worker? What has been my greatest happiness in this
world?
Our communion of action and destiny will open my heart, and give me
a new sense with which to understand thy silence. Love--the divine
force which circulates in all things, like an universal soul--is the
interpreter through whose agency our insects discourse and understand
each other without speech.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
II.
OUR STUDIES AT PARIS AND IN SWITZERLAND.
In the prolonged perusal of naturalists and travellers by which we
prepared ourselves for writing "The Bird," and for which nothing less
was required than the patience of a solitary woman, we gathered on
the way a number of facts and details which presented the Insect to
our eyes under the most varied aspects. The Insect appeared to us
incessantly in company with the Bird,--here like a harmony, there as an
antagonism,--but too often in profile, and as a subordinate being.
I was in the middle of the sixteenth century, and while engaged for
about three years in historical studies, my knowledge on this point was
collected only by means of extracts, readings, and conversations every
evening. The various elements of this grand study I acquired through
the medium of a soul eminently gentle towards the things of nature, and
generously given to love the weak; whose loyal and patient affection,
indefinitely extending curiosity, picked up, so to speak, like the
ant, and as so many grains of sand, the materials which we found less
frequently in the more important works than in an infinity of memoirs
and scattered dissertations.
To live long, steadfastly, for ever,--this it is which renders weak
spirits strong. Such a perseverance of taste and affection is not
less necessary when one wishes to put aside one's books, and enter
upon a course of observation, of long and delicate studies of life. I
am not surprised that Mademoiselle Jurine contributed so largely to
her father's astonishing discoveries respecting bees, nor that Madame
Mérian, as the fruit of her far-off wanderings, has bequeathed to us
her wise and beautiful book of drawings of the Insects of Guiana. The
eyes and hands of women, so delicate and well adapted for dealing with
tiny objects, are eminently appropriate for such pursuits as these.
They have also a greater respect for, attention to, and condescension
towards trifling existences, than man exhibits. Though poetical, they
are less poets, and impose less upon the Real the tyranny of their
thought. They are more docile towards it, do not dominate over it,
submit themselves to it, and do not bestow on these little beings
the rapid and often disdainful glance of the higher life. And when,
with all this, they are patient also, they may well become excellent
observers, and miniature Réaumurs.
[Illustration]
Feminine qualities are specially needful in microscopical studies. To
succeed in these, one must become somewhat of a woman. The microscope
is amusing at a first hasty glance; but if one would make a serious
use of it, it demands a certain amount of dexterity, patient tact, and
especially leisure,--considerable leisure,--full liberty of time,--in
order that one may indefinitely repeat the same observations, and
examine the same object on different days, in the pure light of
morning, in the warm ray of noon, and occasionally even at a later
hour. For certain objects which we must regard as a whole are best
seen through a single lens; others only through a transparency, by
illuminating them beneath the mirror of the microscope. Others,
insignificant or commonplace by day, grow marvellous in the evening,
when the focus of the instrument concentrates the light. To conclude:
their study demands--what in the present age one least possesses--an
isolation from the world, a point beyond time; the support of a
blameless curiosity, and of a constant and reverent love of these
imperceptible existences. Theirs is a kind of virginal and solitary
maternity.
[Illustration]
I was not released from my absorption in that terrible sixteenth
century until the spring of 1856. "The Bird" had also made its
appearance. I sought an interval of rest, and established myself at
Montreux, near Clarens, on the Lake of Geneva. But this most delightful
locality, awakening in me a keen perception of Nature, did not restore
my tranquillity. I was still too much affected by the bloody story
I had been narrating. A flame burned within me which nothing could
extinguish. I rambled along the roads, with my cup of fir-wood, tasting
the water at every fountain--all so fresh and so pure!--and demanding
of them if any possessed the property of effacing the bitternesses of
the Past and Present, and which, out of so many springs, might prove to
me a Lethe.
At length I found, at about half a league from Lucerne, an old convent
transformed into a hostelry, where I selected for my study the parlour,
a very spacious apartment, which, through its seven windows opening on
the mountains, the lake, and the town--a threefold prospect--afforded
me a magnificent light at all hours. From morning to evening the sun
remained faithful to me, and revolved around my microscope, set in
the middle of the chamber. The beautiful lake, shining in front and
on every side, is not that which afterwards, when hemmed in by the
heights, and furious and violent, will be called the Lake of Uri. But
the firs which everywhere overhang the landscape warn you not to place
too much reliance on the season,--inform you that you are residing
in a cold country. In numerous things, moreover, you find a certain
barbarous savagery prevailing. It is from the very south the breath
of winter blows. In front of me, and my constant companion, arose, on
the farther shore, the gloomy Pilatus, a barren mountain with keen
razor-like edges; and over its black shoulder gleamed, at ten leagues
distant, the snow-white _Virgin_ and the _Silver Peak_ (the Jungfrau
and the Silberhorn).
[Illustration]
The country is very beautiful and very fresh in July, but frequently,
in September, is already cold. You perceive above and behind you, at
an enormous elevation, an ocean of water suspended. This is the main
reservoir whence issue the great European reservoirs; the mass of St.
Gothard, a table-land measuring ten leagues in every direction, which
from one extremity pours out the Rhine, from another the Rhone, from
a third the Reuss, and towards the south the Ticino. You do not _see_
this reservoir--except a little of its outline--but you _feel_ it. Do
you wish for water? Come hither. Drink; it is the grandest cup which
quenches the thirst of humanity.
[Illustration]
I began to feel less athirst. In the middle of summer the nights were
cold, the mornings and evenings fresh. Those spotless snows, which I
gazed at so eagerly and with insatiable eyes, purified me, it seemed,
from the long, dusty, sun-burned, blood-besprinkled, and sublime, but
also sometimes miry, revolutions of history. I recovered a little my
equilibrium between the drama of the world and the eternal epopea.
What can be more divine than these Alps? Elsewhere I have called
them "the common altar of Europe." And wherefore? Not on account of
their height,--a little higher, or a little lower, one is no nearer
heaven,--but because the grand harmony, elsewhere vague, is palpable
here. The solidarity of life, the circulation of nature, the beneficent
concord of the elements,--all is visible. It kindles a glorious
illumination.
Each chain filters from its glacier, as a revelation of the
inaccessible zone, a torrent which, concentrated, tranquillized
and purified in an ample lake,--translated into pure and azure
water,--emerges as a great river, and diffuses everywhere the soul of
the Alps. From these innumerable waters reascend to the mountains the
mists which renew the treasure of their glaciers.
All is in such perfect sympathy, and the perspectives are so noble,
that the lakes and their rivers still reflect or survey, as they wander
afar, the grave assemblage of the mountains, the upper snows, the
sublime virgin peaks of which they are an emanation.
[Illustration]
They face, they explain one another, harmonize with and love one
another. But in what austerity! In their mutual love we recognize an
identity of the strongest contrasts,--fixity and fluidity, rapidity and
eternity, the snows above the verdure, forebodings of winter in summer.
Hence results a prudent nature, a general sagacity in the things
themselves. One enjoys without forgetting that one's enjoyment will not
be of long duration. But the heart is not the less moved by a world of
such seriousness and purity. This brevity attracts, and this austerity
takes one captive. From the gleaming snows to the lakes, from the woods
to the rivers and to the fresh emerald meads, a sovereign virginity
predominates over the whole country.
Such localities are for all the seasons of life. Old age grows
strengthened by its association with nature, and greets without
melancholy the grand shadows falling from the mountains. And hearts
still young, which feel only the morning and the dawn, expand to the
charming joys of religious tenderness,--tenderness for the Soul of the
world, tenderness for its smallest infants.
The favourite place for our walks, and our usual studio, was a small
grove of firs situated at a tolerable elevation above the lake, in the
rear of the rock of Seeberg. We ascended thither by two routes doubly
illuminated by the mighty radiance of the splendid mirror in which the
four cantons are reflected. No landscape can be more gentle, if we look
towards Lucerne; none more serious or solemn, in the direction of St.
Gothard and the amphitheatre of mountains. But all this grandeur and
brightness terminated suddenly at the first step we took beneath our
firs. It was as if one had reached the end of the world. The light
lessened; sounds seemed subdued; life itself appeared absent.
[Illustration]
Such, at the first glance, is the customary effect of the woods. But at
the second all is changed. The suffocation, or at least subordination,
imposed by the fir upon all those plants which would fain grow in
its shade, lets light into the depths; and when the eyes have become
accustomed to this kind of gloaming, we see considerably further, and
distinguish much more clearly, than in the inextricable labyrinth of
ordinary forests where everything acts as an obstruction.
The spectacle first presented to us under the noble funereal
pillars--the pillars, may we not say? of a stately temple--was a
spectacle of death; not of a saddening death, but of a death rich,
adorned, and graceful, such as Nature frequently vouchsafes to plants.
At every step the old trunks of trees, felled but not uprooted, were
clothed in an incomparable velvety green,--a tissue superbly woven
of fine mosses soft to the touch, which delighted the eye by their
changing aspects, their reflexes, and their shifting gleams.
But where was the animal life of the forest? Our ears soon grew
accustomed to recognize and divine its presence. I do not refer to the
whistle of the tomtits, or the strange laughter of the woodpecker, the
evident lord of the place. I am thinking of a different people, against
whom the birds wage war.
[Illustration]
A great hum and murmur, sufficiently loud to drown the noise of a
brook, warned us that the forest was haunted by wasps. Already we had
discovered their fort, whence more than one endeavoured to lead us
astray, suspecting our steps, and obviously ill-disposed towards us.
In the very localities least frequented by the wasps, light, hoarse,
internal rustlings seemed to issue from the trees. Were these the
voices of their genii, their Dryads? No, indeed; but of their
mysterious enemies, the mighty populace of the shadows, which,
following up the veins of the trunk and penetrating its entire
extent, work out for themselves, with patient teeth, innumerable
ways and channels and galleries. Sometimes nearly a hundred thousand
_scolyti_[B] (for such is their name) are found in a single tree. The
sickly fir is at length reduced by their teeth to the condition of a
piece of delicate lace-work. Yet the bark remains intact, and deludes
us with the phantom of life.
[Footnote B: A genus of _Coleoptera_.]
How does the tree defend itself? Sometimes by its sap, which,
while preserving its strength, asphyxiates the enemy; but more
frequently it is assisted by a friend, a physician, from without--the
woodpecker--which carefully auscultates it, taps and strikes it with
its strong hammer, and with persevering ardour watches for and pursues
the nibbling colony.
Is this internal combat between the two lives, the animal and the
vegetable, really understood? Of this I cannot be sure, and there are
times when I think myself deceived.
[Illustration]
In that silence which was not silence, a something--I know not
what--assured us that the dead forest was in truth alive, and on the
point of breaking forth into speech. We entered it full of hope, and
believing that we should discover some secret. We felt certain that to
our inquiring spirit a great manifold Spirit was about to reply. Though
fatigued by the walk, and in an infirm state of health, I felt great
pleasure in the search I had undertaken in these pallid glooms. I loved
to see before me a person deeply moved, and enthusiastically smitten by
their great mysteries. Stick in hand, she advanced into this fantastic
twilight, interrogating the sombre forest, and seeking, as it were, the
Virgilian "golden bough."
I was about to quit the scene, and seat myself in a sunny opening,
when at length a more successful sounding in one of the ancient trunks
brought to light a world whose existence no one would have suspected.
At the summit of this trunk, cut off within a foot of the ground, you
could very easily distinguish the works wrought by the _scolyti_ and
weevils, the former inhabitants of the tree, in conformity to the
concentric arrangement of the sap. But all this belonged to ancient
history; a different condition of things now existed. These miserable
_scolyti_ had perished, having undergone, like their tree, the
energetic action of a great chemical transformation which excluded all
life.
All life, except one, and that the keenest--a consuming and burned-up
life, it seems--the life of those beings powerful under an infinitely
little form, in which one might have readily concluded that a black
flame, shining fitfully, had consumed all that was material, and
reserved only what was spiritual.
[Illustration]
The _coup de théâtre_ was violent, and the immense swarming had its
effect. A vivid and unwonted joy agitated the much-moved hand that had
made the happy discovery; and in proportion to the full revelation of
its greatness, a wild vertigo passed from the distracted people to
the author of this great ruin. The walls of the city fell down, and
revealed the interior of the edifice; innumerable halls and galleries
were laid bare; generally four to five inches in length, and about
half an inch in height,--a height certainly quite sufficient, and
even majestic, if we take into account the size of the members of the
community.
A true palace, or rather a vast and superb city; limited in breadth,
but to what depth may it not penetrate the earth? It is said that some
have been found which, perseveringly excavated, have numbered no fewer
than seven hundred stories. Thebes and Nineveh were insignificant!
Babylon and Babel alone might have sustained, in their audaciously
towering piles, a comparison with these shadowy Babels which
continually expanded in the abyss.
But more astonishing than the grandeur is the interior aspect of
these habitations: without, all damp, and mossy, and overgrown with
tiny cryptogams; within, an astonishing dryness, and an admirable
cleanliness--every partition firm though soft, just as if it had been
tapestried with cotton velvet, very heavy and lustreless. Is this
black velvet produced from the wood itself, after undergoing powerful
modification, or by an extremely delicate layer of microscopic fungi
which may have been established in the tree while it was still moist,
and before it received its all-powerful necromancers? The agent of the
transformation betrayed itself directly: each separate cell, if closely
smelt, betrayed the pungent odour of formic acid, by means of which the
busy race had effected the metamorphosis of its abode, had burned it
and purified it with its flame, had dried it and rendered it wholesome
with its useful poison.
[Illustration]
It is this acid also which, undoubtedly, had accelerated and assisted
the enormous and colossal labour, had opened the way to the tiny
efforts of those indefatigable sculptors whose chisels are their teeth.
Yet even in this case there can be no question but that it must have
occupied a considerable time. Successive generations had very probably
passed their lives in the tree, working always on the same plan and in
the same direction. The image of the projected and longed-for city--the
hope of creating a secure fortress, a noble and massive acropolis--had
for long years sustained the hearts of the courageous citizens. Ah,
what would life be worth if one laboured only for one's-self! Let us
look forward to the future. The first-comers who spent their lives
in the tree, and from their internal reservoir drew and exhausted the
juices that excavated it, could have enjoyed but for a very brief time
a habitation so melancholy, and so steeped, as yet, in pestiferous
damps and protracted rains; but they thought of future generations, and
reverenced posterity.
[Illustration]
Alas, I am much afraid that the sanguine dream is ended! It is not
that a child's stick, held by a young and womanly hand, has penetrated
to the very bottom of the structure carried so deeply into the earth;
but that the exterior defences, which protected and closed up the
whole, and kept off the rains, have been removed and scattered abroad.
And lo! the great autumnal floods pouring down from the Rhigi, Mont
Pilate, and the St. Gothard, the father of rivers,--floating above
the forests in heavy mists or descending in torrents,--will swamp for
ever the internal recesses. And what flame, or what burning life, can
the inhabitants oppose to these repeated invasions of the waters, to
rebuild their palace and purify it again?
Seated on a fir, I eyed it steadfastly, and as I gazed I dreamed.
Though accustomed to the fall of empires and republics, its ruins flung
me into an ocean of thought. A wave, and then another wave rose, and
throbbed in my heart. The verse of Homer hung upon my lips,--
"And even Troy shall see its day of doom."
What could I do for this ravaged world, this half-ruined city? What for
this great laborious insect race, which all living tribes pursue, or
devour, or despise, and which nevertheless reveals to us the strongest
images of unselfish love, of public devotion, and the social sense
in its keenest energy? One thing: to comprehend it,--to explain it,
if I could,--to pour light upon it, and supply it with a generous
interpretation.
[Illustration]
My wife and I returned home dreaming, and understanding one another
without speaking. What had previously been an amusement, a curiosity,
and a study, thenceforth became a Book.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
III.
OUR STUDIES AT FONTAINEBLEAU.
I feel no surprise that our great initiator into the Insect World,
Swammerdam, recoiled in affright when the microscope first afforded him
a glimpse of it.
For the name of its inhabitants is, the Living Infinite.
Upwards of two hundred years men have laboured, simplifying in one
direction, and complicating in another. The excellent treatises written
upon this subject leave, among a multitude of partial illuminations, a
certain feeling of being dazzled. Such is the impression which their
study for some time produced upon us.
Ought I to flatter myself that I can render it clearer than my masters
have done? By no means. But I discovered, through the incident which
took place at Lucerne, and others of later date, that our enthusiastic
and sympathetic ignorance could penetrate further, perhaps, into the
meaning of the insect life than has been the lot of many scientific
classificators.
The thought pursued me during the winter, but I could not verify any
experiment at Paris; it was only at Fontainebleau that I worked out the
truly simple formula about to be submitted to the reader, and obtained
some tranquillity of mind, so far as this subject was concerned.
[Illustration]
The place admirably favoured the then condition of my soul. All the
painful circumstances of the time, by driving me back upon myself,
increased my concentration. We constituted for ourselves a perfect
solitude. Our chamber became for us an entire city. And outside
there was nothing but a ring of wood, then tolerably small, which we
traversed on foot.
This ring oppressed me a little in the great heats, when the sun shone
reflected on the sandstone. But in these dry hot days the thought
does not grow enfeebled. I could follow up and investigate mine with
sequence and perseverance, enjoying--what is rare enough in life--a
grand harmonious unity of ideas and sentiments, which I was by no means
anxious to vary, but rather to deepen.
I went forth alone at noonday, and walked some distance into the dull,
dumb, and sandy forest, which was without whisper and without voice.
I carried thither my theme, and trusted to attain its meaning in that
infinite of sand overlaid by an infinite of leaves. But how much vaster
that infinite of animated life, the abyss of imperceptible organisms
into which I was fain to descend!
All that Sénancour says of Fontainebleau is true so far as relates
to the vague dreamer who brings with him no prevailing thought.
Yes; the landscape "is generally on a small scale, dull, low, and
solitary without being wild." Animals are seldom met with, except in
a few kids whose number is easily counted. Birds are not numerous.
Few or no springs are visible; and the apparent absence of water
has a specially depressing effect on the Alpine traveller, who still
recalls the freshness of the innumerable fountains of the Alps, and
still has before his eyes the radiance of those delightful and sublime
mirrors--their lakes. There, all is clear and luminous in the waters
and the snows. Here, all is obscure. This small angle, sequestered as
it were from the rest of France, is an enigma. It shows you the dead
sandstones without a trace of life; it shows you, particularly to-day,
the newly-planted pines, which suffer nothing living under their shade.
To discover what lies concealed beneath this outer mask, you must have
recourse to the divining-rod, the hazel-wand. Revolve it, and you shall
find. But what is this divining-rod? A study or a love; any passion
which lights up the inner world.
[Illustration]
The power of this locality does not lie in its historical, any more
than in its artistic associations.[C]
[Footnote C: It contains, however, three notable things: one
magnificent, the Hall of Henry II.; one marvellous, the Little Gallery
of Francis I.; and one sublime, the four colossi, the incomparable
relics of a lost art, that of sculpture in sandstone.]
The chateau distracts one's attention from the forest by its
abundant variety of memories and epochs; but it fails to increase
the impression. Nature is the true fairy in this strange, sombre,
fantastic, and sterile region.
[Illustration: THE FOREST OF FONTAINEBLEAU.]
Observe that wherever the forest assumes an aspect of grandeur, either
through the extent of its vista or the loftiness of its trees, it
resembles all other forests. The truly magnificent towering beeches
of Bas-Bréau seem to me, in spite of their stately bearing and smooth
shining bark, a thing I have seen elsewhere. The place is original only
where it is low, gloomy rock; where it bears evidence of the struggle
of the sandstone, the twisted tree, the perseverance of the elm, or the
courageous effort of the oak.
[Illustration]
Many persons have remained here fascinated and enthralled. Coming only
for a month, they have lingered until death. To the enchanting scene
they have addressed the lover's speech to his beloved:--"Let me live,
let me die with thee!"--_Tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam libens._
It is a curious fact that every individual finds here what he most
delights in: Saint Louis, the Thébaïd of which he dreamed; while Henry
IV., who cared for nothing but pleasure, exclaimed, "My delicious
deserts!" The poor mystical exile, Kosciusko,[D] felt the attraction
of his Lithuanian forests, and here took root. A man of stone, of
flint,--the Breton Maud'huys,--saw here the image of his native
Brittany, and built up, stone upon stone, the most original book
written upon Fontainebleau.
[Footnote D: The Polish hero who unavailingly struggled to secure his
country's freedom, but was crushed by the power of Russia:--
"And Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell!"]
It is a region of power, which you cannot enter with impunity. Some
persons lose in it their wits, undergo a strange metamorphosis, and
like Bottom, in Windsor Forest, see themselves adorned with ass's ears.
For the forest is a _person_: has its lovers and its detractors--some
curse it, others bless it. A foolish dreamer wrote of it, on a rock
near Nemours, "I _will_ possess thee, cruel stepmother!" And her lover,
the old soldier Denecourt, who bestowed on her all that he had in the
world, called her "My adored!"[E]
[Footnote E: It is impossible to be grateful enough for all that M.
Denecourt has done; he has rendered the place accessible by everybody,
even the poorest, who are no longer in need of guides.--Author.]
[Illustration]
Some one has said to me: "Is she not the _Viola_ of Shakespeare,
with her dubious but always charming aspect; now a maiden, and now a
cavalier? Or his young page, Rosalind, after she appears as a laughing
damsel?" No: the contrasts are much greater.
For the fairy here has countless faces. She has the cold Alpine plants,
and yet she shelters the most delicate flora. Austere in winter and
spring, she terrifies you with the rugged rocks which, in autumn, she
conceals under a crimson mantle of foliage. She has at her disposal,
for a daily change, the delicate tissue of floating gauze which Lantara
never fails to spread over it in all his pictures. With her belt of
forest she arrests on every side the light mists, and gaily weaves
them into veils, and scarfs, and girdles; into all kinds of delicate
disguises. You would think the heavy masses of sandstone invariable;
yet they change their aspects, their colours--I was going to say their
form--every hour. The little chain, for example, known as the Rock of
Avon, had saluted us in the morning with the breath of the heather,
the cheeriest ray of the dawn, an enchanting aurora which tinted with
rose hues the sandstone; all nature seemed to smile, and to harmonize
with the innocent studies of a devout and poetic soul. When we returned
there in the evening, the capricious fairy had changed everything.
Those pines, which had welcomed us under their airy canopy, had
suddenly grown wild and fierce, and resounded with strange noises, with
lamentations of sinister augury. Those shrubs, which in the morning
had graciously invited the white robe to pause beside them and gather
their berries or flowers, now seemed to conceal in their copses an
undefinable something of ill omen--robbers, it might be, or sorcerers!
But greater still the transformation in those rocks, which had
courteously received us, and bidden us be seated. Is it the evening,
or is it a coming storm, which has changed them? I know not; but there
they are, metamorphosed into gloomy sphinxes, into elephants prostrate
on the earth, into mammoths, and other monsters of the old worlds which
have ceased to exist. They are now at rest, it is true; but are they
not about to rise? However this may be, the evening comes on apace; let
us advance. My wife presses close to my arm.
[Illustration]
Does not our forest deserve the name of the Shakespearian comedy, "As
You Like It"?
No; to deal justly with it, we must own that its entertaining
metamorphosis, and all its changes to the eye, are absolutely external.
Movable in its leaves and mists, fugitive in its shifting sands, it
has a firmer foundation than perhaps any other forest, and a power
of fixity which communicates itself to the soul, and invites it to
grow strong; to search out and seek within its own nature whatever it
possesses of the inscrutable. Do not linger too long over its fantastic
accidents. _Without_ it says, "As You Like It;" _within_, "Ever and for
ever."
[Illustration]
Its beauty is that of the profound, faithful, and tender heart, which
does not the less vary its exquisite grace, though it may daily repeat
the words of Charles d'Orléans:
"Who can ever weary of her?
Still her beauty she renews."
These ideas occurred to me one day as, seated upon Mont Ussy, I
looked across Fontainebleau. I comprehended how, in this confined
and ordinary region--in this apparent chaos of rocks, and trees, and
sandstone--prevailed a tolerable degree of order, which necessarily
concealed within it a mystery not obvious at the first glance.
As a whole, it is almost a circle of hills and forests, all dry on the
surface; but the sandstone is very pervious, and the sand filtrates
with great facility. And the unseen waters, descend in all directions
to a great reservoir which occupies the depths.
Storms are frequent here, but do not spread very far. We may nearly
always expect them, for the forest detains and arrests them, preserves
for itself the wealth of suspended waters, transmitting them to the
lower grounds after they have been sifted through the leaves, the
woods, and the sands. All this occurs below, without the process ever
becoming visible.
[Illustration]
Dig, and you shall find.
There lies the charm, the vitality of the _genius loci_.
The word "genius" conveys too great an idea of fixity, and that of
"fairy" is more appropriate. Who shall describe the mystery of this
profound hidden basin? this simple and attractive delusion, which,
while promising only dryness, faithfully stores up underneath the
treasure of its waters?
An eminent Italian artist has given expression to it in the paintings
which adorn the Hall of Henry II. It is the _Nemorosa_, the Wood-Nymph,
with hands full of wild-flowers, hiding beneath a rugged rock, but
subdued and dreamy, and with eyes swimming tearfully.
In the course of our labours, and especially on days when fell a fine
soft rain, we frequently appreciated this sentiment. It prevailed
around us like a concentration of nature. In the deep silence we
could hear only our beating hearts, the pendulum of the clock, or the
occasional cry of the swallow passing above our heads.
Calmed, but not lulled asleep, with clearer brain and keener eye than
before, we penetrated further into the shadowy world of the atom, to
discover its actual nature; the light, and especially the love, which
is the true legitimate sovereign of this lower world; the tongue, the
eloquent voice, by which it appeals to the upper world.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
IV.
OUR STUDIES AT FONTAINEBLEAU.
(_Continued._)
Even in its hours of silence, the forest occasionally finds a voice, a
sound, or a murmur, which recalls to you the remembrance of life.
Sometimes the laborious woodpecker, laboriously toiling at its task of
excavating the oak, cheers itself with its singular cry.
[Illustration]
Frequently the heavy hammer of the quarryman, falling and falling on
the sandstone, resounds in the distance with a hoarse, dull echo.
And finally, if you listen attentively, you catch a significant hum,
and see, at your feet, legions of ants,--countless populations, the
true inhabitants of the place, speeding over the withered and falling
leaves.
So many images are these of persistent toil, which blend with the
fanciful a serious gravity. Each in his own way digs and digs. And do
thou too pursue thy work, and exhume and stir up thy thought.
[Illustration]
It is an admirable place to cure you of the great malady of the
day--its shiftiness, its empty agitation. The time does not know its
own disease; men say that they are clogged and cloyed, when they have
scarcely skimmed the surface. They set out with the delusive notion
that the best of everything is superficial and external, and that it is
sufficient to put their lips to the cup. But the surface is frequently
froth. Lower down, and within, lies the elixir of life. We must
penetrate deeper, and mingle more intimately with things, willingly and
by habit, so as to discover their harmony, in which lies true happiness
and strength. The real misfortune, the moral misery, is our want of
concentration.
I love those spots which confine and limit the field of thought.
Here, in this narrow circle of hill and wood, every change is purely
external and wholly optical. With so many points of shelter, the
winds, necessarily, do not greatly vary. The fixity of the atmosphere
furnishes us with a moral basis. I am not certain that our ideas would
here be strongly stimulated; but he who comes with them fully aroused
may long preserve and cherish them, without any interruption of his
dream; may seize and relish all the outer accidents, as well as the
inner mysteries. The soul may here put forth its roots, and find that
the true, the exquisite sense of life, is not to skim the surface, but
to study, and probe, and enjoy the depth.
This spot admonishes thought. The sandstone, fixed and motionless
beneath the mobility of the leaves, is eloquent enough in its very
silence. Since when has it been planted here? Ah, what ages ago, since,
despite its hardness, the rain has succeeded in excavating it! No other
force has prevailed against it. Such as it was, even so it is; and thus
it seems to say to the heart, "Persevere!"
[Illustration]
Apparently it should be strong enough to exclude all vegetable life.
But the heroic oaks will not be denied, and, being condemned to live
there, have succeeded in defiance of every obstacle. With their
twisted roots, and with their strong talons that have seized upon the
rock, they too, after their fashion, eloquently exclaim, "Persevere!"
The invincible trees, struggling all the more bravely the greater
the resistance they meet with, have, on the unimpeded side, plunged
so much the more deeply into the bowels of the earth, and drawn
from it incalculable forces. One of them, the poor old giant named
_Charlemagne_, worn-out, undermined, thunder-stricken, after so many
centuries and so many trials, is still so vigorous in its loins, that
in a solitary branch it has all the appearance of carrying a great oak
with outstretched arms.
Between this sandstone and these oaks one may profit largely. Nor is
man, if you find him here at work, a less useful teacher. The valiant
quarrymen whom I encountered battling against the rock with monstrous
hammers which seem never made for the hand of man, I could willingly
believe to possess the resistant force of the sandstone and the iron
heart of the oak. And this is undoubtedly true, so far as concerns
the soul and the will. But the body has less power of endurance. Few
quarrymen live beyond forty years of age; and those first carried off
are invariably the most skilful and ardent at their work.
[Illustration]
All the life of the forest centres in the quarrymen and the ants.
Formerly it had the bees also. They were very numerous, and may still
be met with in the direction of Franchart. But they have greatly
decreased in numbers since the planting of so many pines and Northern
trees, which kill everything with their shade, and in many places have
exterminated the heather and the flowers. On the other hand, the yellow
ants, which prefer for their materials the prickles and catkins of
the pines, appear to prosper. No forest, perhaps, is richer in every
species of ants.
These, then, are the true inhabitants, the true soul of the desert; the
ants toiling in the sand, the quarrymen working in the sandstone. Both
are of the same race; the men are ants on the surface, and the ants are
men below.
I admired the resemblance in their destiny, in their laborious
patience, in their admirable perseverance. The sandstone is a very
refractory and rebellious substance, and often splitting badly,
subjects the poor workmen to severe disappointments. Those especially
who are forced by a protracted winter to return to the quarry before
the end of the bad weather, find the hard and yet porous blocks
excessively damp and half frozen. As a result, they have numerous
ill-wrought stones, and a mass of waste. However, they do not lose
their courage; and without murmuring recommence their painful toil.
[Illustration]
The ants teach us a similar lesson of patience. The breeders of birds
and game incessantly damage, overthrow, and carry away the immense
works which have occupied them for a whole season. Incessantly they
begin them anew with heroic ardour.
We constantly paid them a visit, and learned to sympathize with them
more and more. Their patient procedures, their active and concentrated
life, is, in truth, more like that of the artisan than the winged
existence of the bird which formerly occupied our attention. That free
inheritor of the day, that favourite of Nature, soars so high above
man! To what may I compare my long laborious career? I have, indeed,
caught glimpses of the sky, and sometimes heard the songs of the birds
above; but, on the whole, my existence, the indefatigable labour which
chains me to my task, much more nearly resembles the modest communities
of the ant and the bee.
At first sight, the labours of their comrades, the quarrymen, are not
very agreeable to contemplate. So many spoiled and badly quarried
stones, so many fragments, so much dust and sand, have in them nothing
attractive. It is but a field of ruin which is displayed before you.
But what does Nature think of it? To judge by the eagerness with which
the plants take possession of the sand, mingle with it, and convert
it into a soil for their use, Nature is happy enough to see all
this substance, which, while for thousands of years retained in the
sandstone, did not enter into circulation, returning into the mobility
of the Universal Life. That fortunate battle between man and the rock
draws, at length, the captive element from its long enchantment. The
grass seizes upon it; the tree seizes upon it; the animals seize upon
it. All this sand, in which the rock never fails to end eventually,
becomes permeable to the activity of a vast subterranean world.
[Illustration]
Nothing aroused in my mind a greater number of dreams, no spectacle
threw me back more directly upon myself. For I, too, through some
degree of poverty or sluggishness, I have long been rebellious like
this sandstone, upon which, frequently, nothing can make an impression,
or which, splitting cross-wise, yields but irregular, shapeless
fragments and useless refuse. It needed History, with its weighty
iron hammer, to disengage me from myself, to separate me from my own
obstacles, to shatter and release me.
A severe enfranchisement! What have I not lost of myself, in return for
the few stones I have contributed to the great monument of the future!
Sometimes, doubly stricken by the past and the present, I have felt as
if I were crumbling into pieces--what say I?--into powder, into dust;
and at times I have seen myself, as I see the bottom of yonder quarry,
a mass of sand and rubbish.
Nevertheless, it is through these elements, through an undefinable
sap hidden in the bosom of the flint, that all-powerful Nature has
worked out my renovation. With a little grass and heather binding up
what History and the world had crushed, she has said, smilingly: "You
creature, you are Time. I am Nature, the everlasting."
[Illustration]
Thus, then, observe the rough quarry, bristling with the _débris_ of
ages, which grows green, once more reproduces, and attires itself in a
garb of such foliage as it never knew before man applied the iron to
it. "A wild winter vegetation! Black firs! Melancholy birch-trees!" But
with all the gloominess mingles the white hawthorn blossom.
What I have so eagerly craved, and yearned for, in my long years of
silence, when I was as an arid block and a man of stone, was the fluid
nature of the sap and its capacity of expansion. My tardy youth longed
to dilate my lingering soul. Yesterday, I gave to the world "The Bird,"
an impulse of the heart towards light. To-day, the same force compels
me, on the other hand, to descend below the earth, and embark along
with you on the great living sea of metamorphoses. A world of mysteries
and gloom, it is true; but where, nevertheless, the most penetrating
light is thrown on the two cherished treasures of the soul--Immortality
and Love.
[Illustration]
Book the First.
METAMORPHOSIS.
[Illustration: 1.--TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD.[F]
[Footnote F: This fragment of a domestic journal was originally
intended for insertion in "The Bird." [It is from the pen of Madame
Michelet.]]
"Winter, summer, and nearly all the fine days of the year, had passed
since the departure of my father for Louisiana, from which he was not
fated to return. Our country-house had remained deserted. My mother,
full of sad presentiments, and fearing herself to revisit it, sent me
there, one afternoon, with my brothers, to gather some fruit.
"And I went,--cherishing, I must own, a kind of illusion, and almost
believing I should be received on the paternal threshold by the beloved
arms.
"Deeply agitated, I crossed the approach to the domain, and with a
spring arrived opposite the door which my father had so often opened
with that ineffable smile I still can see.
"A child, and yet already a young girl, at that age of the imagination
when dreams are so powerful, I opposed the obstinate need of my heart
to the certain fact. I waited a moment on the threshold with a strange
anxiety; the strength of my faith would fain have conquered the sad
reality. But the door remained closed.
"Then, with a trembling hand, I opened it myself to find at least
his shadow within. But that, too, had disappeared. An obscure world,
hostile to the light, had glided into that asylum, and I was, so to
speak, enveloped in it.
"His little black table--a poor family relic--and the shelves of his
bookcase creaked at intervals beneath the teeth of the worm. The
chamber had already put on an air of antiquity. Great motionless
spiders,--guardians, as it were, of the place,--had threaded and
tapestried the empty alcove. Woodlice and millipeds ran and clambered
hither and thither, seeking a refuge under the panelings.
"The strange and unforeseen physiognomy of the place afflicted me so
keenly that I fell back upon myself, and exclaimed, as the tears flowed
down my cheeks,--'O my father! where are you?'
"From that moment I could perceive nothing but the desolateness of the
scene; and everywhere, in the court, in the garden, I found the new and
silent guests who had taken possession of our places.
"Already the gathering mist of evening mingled with the last rays
of the sun, and the slugs, tempted by the warm damp air, emerged in
crowds from the leaves which strewed the garden-walks. They fared
forth, slowly but surely, to feast on the fallen fruit. Clouds of wasps
revelled in audacious pillage, tearing to pieces with their keen teeth
our finest peaches and most luscious grapes.
"Our apple-trees, formerly so productive, were covered with network
woven by the caterpillars, and offered us nothing but yellow foliage.
In less than a year they had grown aged.
[Illustration: THE CHILDHOOD'S HOME OF MADAME MICHELET.]
"I had never before been brought in contact with a world like this. My
father's vigilance, and still more successfully, the assistance of the
little birds, had preserved us from it. So, in my experience, and with
a heart overcome by the spectacle of so much ruin, I cursed those whom
one ought not to curse, because all creatures are from God.
"Later in life, but much later, I understood the designs of Providence.
When man is absent the insect ought to take his place, so that
everything may pass through the great crucible, to be renewed or
purified."
* * * * *
Such is the fear, such the instinctive repugnance of the child. But
we are all children, and even Philosophy, despite its longing after
universal sympathy, cannot guard against similar impressions. The
apparatus of fantastic weapons with which the insect is usually armed
seems to it a menace against man.
Living in a world of strife, it is imperative that the insect should be
born in mail of proof, and the insects of the Tropics are frequently
terrible to the eye.
Yet a considerable number of these terrifying weapons, pincers, hooks,
saws, pikes, augers, screws, rollers, and dentilated teeth,--the
formidable arsenal which gives them the appearance of veterans setting
out for the battle-field,--prove, if we examine them rightly, to be the
pacific tools with which they gain their livelihood, the implements
with which they do their regular work. Here the artisan carries his
workshop with him. He is at once the workman and the manufacturer. What
should we say of our human operatives, if they marched ever bristling
with the steel and old iron they make use of in their labours? They
would appear to us very strange and monstrous, and would even fill our
minds with fear.
The insect, as we shall hereafter see, is a warrior through
circumstances, through the necessities of self-defence or appetite, but
generally he is before all and above all industrial. There is not a
single species which may not be classified according to its work, and
ranged under the banner of a guild of trades.
The great achievement of the artist, or, to use the language of our
ancient corporations, the test-work of this workman, by which he proves
himself to be a master, is the cradle. In the Insect World, as the
mother generally dies in giving birth to her child, it is important to
provide an ingenious asylum which shall protect and support the orphan,
and supply the mother's place. So difficult a work requires tools and
implements which seem to us inexplicable. This, which you compare to
a medieval poignard, to the subtly treacherous weapon of the Italian
bravo, is, on the contrary, an instrument of love and maternity.
For the rest, Nature is so far from sharing our prejudices, dislikes,
and childish apprehensions, that she seems specially to care for and
protect the gnawing species which injuriously interfere with the
economy of our small farms and plantations, but which, on the other
hand, lend valuable assistance in maintaining the balance of species
and keeping down the vegetable accumulation of certain climates. She
preserves with watchful anxiety the caterpillars which we destroy. In
the case of the oak-grub, she is mindful to glaze over or varnish its
eggs, so that, concealed under the withered leaf, and beaten by winds
and rains, they may safely brave the winter. The crawling worms make
their appearance clothed in and defended by a thick furry garb, which
deceives their enemies, until, transformed into moths, they fly to and
fro in happy freedom under cover of the night.
For some she invents still greater precautions. Essential agents,
undoubtedly, in the transformation of life, they possess, beyond all
others, the guarantees of existence which secure them, infallibly, an
immortality of race.
The grubs, for instance, alternately viviparous and oviparous, spring
into full life in the summer, that they may the more quickly set to
work, but are produced in autumn in the shape of an egg, that they may
the better endure the cold of winter. Finally, their generous mother
reserves for this beloved species an unheard-of gift,--that a moment of
love shall give them the fecundity of forty generations!
Creatures so highly privileged have evidently some task to execute,
some great and important mission which renders them indispensable, and
makes them an essential part of the harmony of the world. Suns are
necessary, but so also are gnats. Grand is the order of the Milky Way,
and no less so that of the bee-hive. Who knows but that the life of the
stars may be of minor importance? I see that some of them vanish, and
God dispenses with them. But no genus of the Insect World ever fails to
answer to the summons. If a single species of ants should disappear,
their loss would be serious, and cause a dangerous gap in the universal
economy.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: II.--COMPASSION.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
COMPASSION.
One day, into the studio of the painter Gros entered a pupil of his, a
handsome and careless young man, who had thought it clever to pin to
his hat a beautiful butterfly, which, having just been captured, was
still struggling painfully. The artist, indignant, broke out into a
violent passion. "What, wretch!" he cried, "is this your feeling for
the Beautiful? You find an exquisite creature, and can make no better
use of it than to crucify and kill it barbarously! Begone, begone, and
return here no more! Never again make your appearance in my presence!"
This speech will not surprise those who are acquainted with the great
master's vivid sensibility, and his reverence for the Beautiful.
What is more astonishing is that an anatomist, a man living with the
scalpel always in his hand--Lyonnet--should speak in the same sense,
and so speak in reference to insects which are to ordinary observers
the least interesting. That able and patient man has opened up, as we
know, an entirely new channel for science by his colossal investigation
of the willow-grub, from which we learn that the muscular development
of the insect is identical with that of the higher animals. Lyonnet
congratulates himself that he was able to bring his prolonged labours
to a conclusion without killing more than eight or nine individuals of
the species he wished to describe.
A noble result of study! In fathoming life by this persevering
toil, far from growing coldly indifferent, he became more intensely
sympathetic. The minute details of the infinitely little had revealed
to him the sources of the keen sensibility which Nature has hidden
everywhere. He had found it existing at the bottom of the animal scale,
and thus he acquired a due reverence for every form of life.
We are sometimes disquieted, repelled, and dismayed by insects exactly
in proportion to our ignorance. Nevertheless almost every species,
especially in our European climates, is perfectly harmless. But we
suspect the unknown; and we are apt to kill those with which we are not
acquainted, by way of acquiring knowledge.
I remember that, one morning in June, about four o'clock, when the
sun was already high in the heavens, I was aroused somewhat abruptly,
though still much fatigued and very sleepy. I was living in the
country, and my chamber, which faced the east, having neither curtain
nor shutter, the sun's rays fell full upon my bed. A magnificent
drone, I do not know how, had made its way into the room, and joyously
fluttered and buzzed in the sunshine. I grew weary of the noise. I
arose, and thinking he wished to sally forth, threw open the window.
But no; such was not his intention. The morning, though beautiful, was
very fresh and damp: he preferred to remain indoors, in a more genial
temperature, which dried and warmed him. Without, it was four A.M.;
within, it was already noon. He acted precisely as I should have done,
and would not depart. Willing to give him time, I left the window open,
and returned to my bed; but I could not sleep. The fresh air from
without entering into the room, my drone entered further and further,
and buzzed about and around. The obstinate and importunate guest
excited in me an angry feeling, and I started up, determined to expel
him by main force. A handkerchief was my weapon, but undoubtedly I made
use of it very unskilfully. I stunned, confused, and frightened the
drone; he whirled round and round in a dizzy fit, but thought less than
ever of quitting the chamber. My impatience increased: I pursued him
with greater, with too great impetuosity. He fell on the window-sill,
and rose no more.
* * * * *
Was he dead, or stunned? I would not close the window, thinking that
in the latter case the air might revive him, and he would fly away.
Meanwhile, by no means satisfied with what I had done, I threw myself
on my bed. On the whole, it was his own fault. Why did he not escape?
Such was my first reflection; but afterwards I grew more severe in
self-judgment, and accused my impatience. So great is the tyranny of
man, he can endure nothing. Like all kings, this lord of creation is
impetuous, and at the slightest contradiction breaks out into a fury,
and kills.
Very beautiful was the morning; fresh, and yet, by degrees, growing
almost warm; a happy mixture of temperature, proper to that delightful
country and that season of the year: it was Normandy, and the month of
June. The peculiar characteristic of this month, distinguishing it from
all those that follow, is, that it gives birth to the innocent species
which live on vegetable food, but to none of the murderous races which
need a living prey,--that it breeds flies, but not spiders. Death has
not yet begun, and love reigns everywhere. All these ideas occurred to
me, but proved by no means agreeable; for at this blessed, sacred time,
when a universal confidence prevails, I had already _killed_: man alone
had broken the peace of God. The thought was very bitter. Whether the
victim was great or small, mattered but little; the dead was always the
dead. And it was without any serious occasion, without provocation,
that I had brutally disturbed the sweet harmony of Spring, and spoiled
the universal idyl.
While revolving all these thoughts, I glanced occasionally from my bed
towards the window, and watched if the drone did not stir a little, if
he were really dead. Unhappily he gave not a sign: his immobility was
complete.
This lasted for half-an-hour, or about three-quarters; then
suddenly--without, so far as I could see, the slightest preliminary
movement--my drone arose with a strong and steady flight, and without
the slightest hesitancy, as if nothing had befallen him. He passed out
into the garden, which by that time was thoroughly warmed and filled
with sunshine.
I confess that I found in his escape a happiness and a relief; but as
for my drone, he had never lost heart. I perceived that he had thought
in his tiny prudence that if, by the least sign, he had betrayed
his returning vitality, his executioner would have finished him.
Accordingly, he imitated death with wonderful fidelity, waiting until
he had quite recovered his strength and breath,--until his wings, dry
and warm, were fully ready to carry him away; and then, at one leap, he
was off, without saying _adieu_.
* * * * *
It was during a journey in Switzerland,--in the land of the Hallers,
the Hubers, and the Bonnets,--that we began to study seriously; no
longer contenting ourselves with collections which only displayed the
exterior, but determined on examining the inner organs with microscope
and scalpel. Then also we committed our first crimes.
I have no need to say that this preoccupation, this emotion--far more
dramatic than one would have supposed--interfered with our journey.
The sublime, enchanting, and solemn scenes of Switzerland lost, no
doubt, their due power over us. But life--suffering life (and we were
compelled to make it suffer)--diverted our thoughts. The hymn or
eternal epopea of these infinitely great could scarcely vie with the
drama of our infinitely little organisms. A fly hid from us the Alps;
the agony of a beetle, which was ten days dying, veiled Mont Blanc from
our gaze; in the anatomy of an ant we forgot the Jungfrau.
It matters not; for who shall rightly determine what is really great
or little? Everything is great, everything important, everything equal
in the bosom of nature and the impartiality of universal love. And
where is it more perceptible than in the infinite travail of the little
organic world on which our eyes were fixed? To lift them towards the
mountains, or lower them towards the insects, was one and the same
thing.
EXTRACT FROM MADAME MICHELET'S JOURNAL.
"On the 20th of July, a very hot day, but freshened nevertheless by the
morning breeze which disported on the lake between Chillon and Clarens,
I went out for a walk alone, my husband remaining indoors to write.
The sun shot athwart our valleys of the Pays de Vaud, and poured his
full splendour on the opposite mountains of Savoy. The lake, already
illumined, reflected the sharp ridges of the rocks, whose base, clothed
in pastures, lends life and freshness to its borders.
[Illustration]
"By-and-by the sun turned, and the scene changed. A warm ray of light
penetrated beyond Chillon, the long defile of the Valais, illuminated
the pointed Dent du Midi, and coloured in vapour the summit of the
remote St. Bernard. But to this scene of glory I preferred the
morning hour, when our Montreux reposed in shadow. It was the hour
of divine service at its little church, whose terrace, half-way down
the slope, propped up by sharp acclivities, wooded, and therefore
obscure, pours out the crystal waters on the thirsty vineyards lying
below. Beneath the terrace a beautiful mossy grot, glittering with
stalactites, preserves a delightful feeling of freshness. The fane
above, surrounded by hospitable wooden seats; a small library (a second
temple), whence the vine-dressers borrow books; and, finally, a pretty
fountain, combine in a graceful little picture, austerely charming. At
morning especially, in the half-misty veil which foretokens a day of
heat, this beautiful spot has all the effect of a religious thought,
concentrating in itself, and yet extended over that immense panorama
which the mind embraces, admires, and blesses.
[Illustration]
"I frequently resorted thither, ascending the first slope of the
mountain, solitary, and enriched with flowers. I took with me a book,
and yet I never read. The prospect was too absorbing. Whether the
eye ranged afar over the level mirror of the lake, and the rocks of
Meillerie, with their forests, meadows, and precipices; or hovered
close at hand about the nest of Clarens and the low towers of Chillon;
or, finally, returned to the pretty villas, with their green lattices,
of our friends the physician and the pastor,[G] in whose company my
husband laboured;--I remained there in a kind of dream, and my heart,
deeply moved, felt the sweetness of a holy harmony.
[Footnote G: It was our good fortune to reside, while at Montreux--the
most beautiful spot on the wide earth--with a very estimable and rare
individual, whom I should have thought of Italian or Spanish birth, if
I had not known her to be a Genevese, and the sister of the able and
enthusiastic historian of Geneva. Next door lived an eminent physician,
of simple character, but all the more learned in natural studies.]
"But soon I discovered that I was not utterly alone. Bees, or drones,
which had also risen early, were already at work, seeking in the cups
of the flowers the honey distilled beneath the dew, penetrating into
the depths of the campanulas, or skilfully gliding into the mysterious
corolla of the charming Venus's Slipper. Brilliant cicindelas opened
the hunt after the gnats, while more unwieldy tribes sought their
livelihood at the bottom of the herbage.
"On this day, then, the 20th of July, allowing my glance to fall
mechanically at my feet, and withdrawing my eyes for a moment from the
too luminous picture, I saw with astonishment a scene which vividly
contrasted with this attractive and holy spot,--an atrocious warlike
struggle. The insect-giant which we call the stag-beetle, one of the
largest of European species, a black shining mass, whose horns bristle
with superb crescent-wise pincers, had seized upon a beetle of far
inferior size. Nevertheless, the two enemies being equally provided
with admirable defensive arms, after the fashion of the corselets,
armlets, and cuisses of our ancient knights, the struggle was long
and fierce. Both belonged to the murderous race which prey on little
insects,--were powerful lords in the habit of devouring their vassals.
Whichever had fallen victim in the fray, the Lilliputian people had
certainly applauded. However, the blind instinctive movement which
leads us, in such cases, to separate the combatants, induced me to
interfere; and with the point of my umbrella, skilfully, delicately,
and without wounding the two antagonists, I compelled the stronger of
the two to release its grasp."
* * * * *
The captive thus secured was, without form of trial, adjudged to
undergo our investigations as a punishment for his fratricidal
voracity. Our system, however, is not to impale the insect,--a horrible
punishment and a pitiful spectacle which has no end; for a month
afterwards, ay, and more, you will see the poor transfixed wretches
writhing in agony. Ether generally kills them rapidly, and apparently
painlessly. Well, then, we _etherized_ our prisoner largely. In a
moment he spun round and fell: we thought him finished. An hour or two
passed, and lo! he was once more alive, once more upright on trembling
feet, and attempting to walk; he fell, and again he rose. But, to tell
the truth, his gait was like that of a drunken man. A child would have
laughed at it. We had no desire to laugh, being obliged to poison him
a second time. A stronger dose was accordingly administered; but in
vain,--he came again to himself. It was a curious circumstance; but
it certainly seemed as if this kind of intoxication, while weakening
and almost paralyzing the faculties of motion, had all the more keenly
excited the nerves, and what we may call the amorous faculties. The use
he sought to make of his vacillating step and last efforts was to join
a female of his species which we had found lying dead, and placed upon
the table. He felt her with his palpi and trembling arms. He contrived
to turn her over, and tumbled about (very probably he could not see) to
assure himself whether she was alive. He would not part from her: one
would have sworn that he had undertaken, though dying, to resuscitate
the dead. It was a fantastic, a gloomy, and yet, for one who knows at
heart that all nature is identical, a touching spectacle.
It afflicted us greatly; we attempted to shorten it by the help of the
ether, and to separate this Juliet from her Romeo. But the indomitable
male laughed at all our poisons, and dismally dragged himself along.
We shut him up in a large box, where he did not die until after a
considerable period, and incredibly large doses. His punishment--and,
reader, you may justly call it _ours_--endured for fully fifteen days.
This robust, enduring being, with his inextinguishable flame of life,
threw us into a prolonged reverie.
On our first dabbling in bloodshed, Nature had wished to show us, and
with a master's hand, the strange and unconquerable energy with which
she has endowed life. "Love is strong as death." Where do we find this
saying? In the Bible. Yes; and it is also the eternal Bible. For what
more powerfully consecrates existence, and renders it sympathetic,
reverend, and sacred? And how great a pity it is, then, to cut it short
at the divine moment when every being has its share of God!
We excused ourselves by saying that this insect, which lives six years
in a single night, could have spread its wings beneath the sky but two
months longer,--just long enough to perpetuate its race. We deprived
it, therefore, of a very little time--a month out of six or seven years.
Yes; but that month was the epoch to which all its life had tended.
Previously it had only vegetated; but then, it could really have lived
and reigned, powerful and joyous. Long an insect, in that hour it would
have become almost a bird, a son of the flower-enamelled earth and the
genial light. We had acted like the Parcæ, which delight in cutting the
thread of our lives at the very moment of happiness!
[Illustration]
[Illustration: III.--WORLD-BUILDERS.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III.
WORLD-BUILDERS.
There is a world under this world, above, below, and all around it, of
which we have no suspicion.
Occasionally, indeed, we catch a faint murmur, a sound, and thereupon
we say, "It is a trifle, it is nothing." But this nothing is the
Infinite.
The Infinite of the invisible life, the silent life, the world of night
and of the inner earth, of the shadowy ocean,--the unseen creatures of
the air which we breathe, or which, mingling in the fluids we drink,
circulate within us unperceived.
An immensely powerful world, which in its details we scorn, but which
at intervals affrights us, when it stands revealed before our eyes in
one of its grand unforeseen manifestations.
The navigator, for example, who at night sees the ocean shimmering with
lustre and wreathing garlands of fire, is at first diverted by the
spectacle. He sails ten leagues; the garland is indefinitely prolonged;
it stirs, and twists, and knots itself in harmony with the motions of
the wave; it becomes a monstrous serpent ever extending its sinuous
length to thirty, ay, and forty leagues. Yet all this is but a dance of
imperceptible animalcules! What are their numbers? At this question the
imagination starts back aghast; it perceives in the distance a nature
of gigantic force, of terrific wealth, but possessing little relation
to the other, the well-ordered, and, in a certain degree, economical
nature, of the higher life.
It is impossible to speak of insects or molluscs without naming these
animalcules, which seem to be their rough outline, and in the extreme
simplicity of their organism already foretoken, indicate, and prepare
for them. With a good microscope you can discern these miniatures of
the insect, which simulate their organism, and mimic their movements.
When you are able to distinguish the _Rotifers_, you think that in
the aggregations and in the tentacles of their mouth you recognize
them as little polypes. The _Rhizopods_, though almost imperceptible,
are furnished, nevertheless, with good solid carapaces, which are
equally as good a protection for them as their great shells are for the
molluscs, the oyster and the snail. The microscopic _Tardigradæ_ are,
in fact, closely connected with insects, and the _Acarina_ with worms.
What are these least of the little? Simply the architects or builders
of the globe which we inhabit. With their bodies and their remains they
have prepared the soil now echoing under our feet. Whether their tiny
shells be still distinguishable, or whether they have been decomposed
into chalk, they are not the less the foundation of immense portions of
our earth. A single bed of this chalk stretches from Paris to Tours;
that is, for fifty miles. Another, of enormous breadth, spreads over
all Champagne. Pure chalk, or Spanish white, which we find everywhere,
is composed of pounded shells.
And it is these most minute of organisms which have wrought the
grandest of works. The imperceptible rhizopod has built for itself a
nobler monument than the Pyramids; nothing less than Central Italy,
a notable portion of the chain of the Apennines. But even this was
too insignificant: the colossal masses of Chili, the prodigious
Cordilleras, which look down upon the world at their feet, are
the funeral monument wherein this impalpable--I had almost said
invisible-organism has interred the remains of its vanished race.
A bygone world, hidden beneath the present and upper world in the
profundities of life or the obscurity of time!
What might it not tell us, if God would give it speech, and permit it
to recall all that it has done or is doing for us! What just demands
might not the elementary plants, the imperfect animals whose dust
has fashioned for our use the fertile crust of the globe, that noble
theatre of life, address to us! "While you were still asleep," might
say the ferns, "we alone, by transforming and purifying the previously
irrespirable air, created after thousands upon thousands of years the
earth now blooming with the corn and the rose! We accumulated that
subterranean treasure of enormous coal-beds which warms your hearth;
and that one mass, among others, a hundred leagues in length, which
feeds the great forge of the world from London to Newcastle."
"We," the imperceptibles might say,--the obscure and unnamed
animalcules despised or ignored by man,--"we are thy guardians, have
laid out thy fields, and built thy dwelling-places. It is not the great
fossil rhinoceros or mastodon whose bones have made thy soil; it is
_our_ work--or rather, it is ourselves. Thy cities, thy Louvres, and
thy Capitols are constructed with our _débris_. Life itself in its
essence, in that sparkling beverage by which France diffuses joy over
all the earth, whence comes it? From arid hills where the vine thrives
in the white dust that once was _we_, and absorbs the concealed warmth
of our prior existences."
The demand made upon us would be a lengthened one; restitution
impossible. These dead myriads, having nourished with their lime the
various articles that form our sustenance, have passed into our very
being. Others also would put forth a claim. The very pebble, the hard
flint, once lived, and now nourishes life.
Great was the astonishment in Europe when a Berlin
professor--Ehrenberg--informed us that the silicious stone, so sharp,
rough, and brittle, the _tripoli_ with which metals are polished, is
neither more nor less than an aggregation of dead animalcules, an
accumulation of the shells of infusoria of a terrible diminutiveness.
So small is the creature I speak of, that it takes one hundred and
eighty-seven millions to weigh a grain.
[Illustration]
The labours of the unseen architects of the globe, admired by our men
of science in extinct species, travellers have discovered revived
in living species. They have surprised, in our own day, immense
laboratories in permanent activity, of beings invisible in themselves,
or apparently powerless, but really of boundless capacity of toil, if
we judge by its results. What death accomplishes for life, life itself
relates. Numbers of tiny organisms become by their present works the
interpreters and historians of their vanished predecessors.
These, like the latter, with their structures, or their _débris_,
build up islands in the sea, and construct immense banks of reefs,
which, gradually joining together, will become new lands. Without going
further than Sicily, we find among the madrepores, that cover its
coasts torn by volcanic fires, a little animal, the zoophyte, which
has accomplished a task man would never have dared to undertake. He
contrives to move forward by protecting his soft body with a shield of
stone which he incessantly secretes. Continuously developing the tubes
which in succession afford him shelter, he entirely fills up the empty
spaces left by the madrepores or corals, bridges over the intervals
between the reefs, and connects them with one another; finally, he
creates a passage in defiles previously impassable. In due time this
builder will have accomplished the colossal task of a causeway all
around the island in its circumference of a hundred and eighty leagues.
But it is more particularly in the vast Southern Ocean that these
works are prosecuted on a grand scale by the polypes of the lime,
the corallines, and madrepores of every kind; an animal vegetation
worthy of comparison with the labour of the mosses in a peat-moor,
which continue to flourish in their upper growth while the lower are
transformed and decomposed. Exactly like these vegetables, the polypes,
and even their production, the coral, while still soft and tender,
frequently become the nourishment of worms and fishes which feed and
browse upon them like our cattle, derive their sustenance from them,
and return them in the shape of chalk, without the slightest indication
of a previous existence! Recently English seamen have discovered at
the bottom of the sea this manufacture of chalk, which is incessantly
passing from the living into the inorganic condition.
But these destructive causes do not prevent the polypes from
imperturbably carrying on their gigantic labours, incessantly elevating
the islands and solid barriers which are so skilfully adapted to resist
the oceanic action. They divide the work among themselves according
to their species. The idlest execute their share in the quiet waters,
or in the great depths, remotest from the light; others, under the
sunshine, among the very breakers of which they eventually become the
masters.
Soft, gelatinous, elastic, adhering to their support, the stony and
porous mass; they deaden the fury of the boiling waters which would
wear out the granite, and split the rock into fragments.
Under the mild trade-winds which prevail in the tropic climates, the
sea would uniformly flow with a tranquil tide if it did not encounter
these living ramparts, which force it back upon itself, scatter its
waves in spray, and vex it with everlasting torment.
That the waters should assault them is their fate. But they inflict no
injury upon them; and in truth it is on their behalf they toil. Their
violence does not wear _them_, but it wears the reef, and detaches in
atoms the lime on which they live and with which they build. This lime,
absorbed by them and _animalized_, changes into a hundred sparkling,
living, active flowers, which are identical with our polypes, and form
quite an analogous world enamelling the ocean-bed.
On the margin of these islands,--which are generally circular, like a
ring,--accumulates a layer of vegetable wealth, which speedily grows
green, and embellishes itself with the only tree that can endure
salt-water, the cocoa-nut palm. This, then, is the _humus_; the
life which will for ever continue to develop. The fresh springs and
fountains will next make their appearance, invited and fed by the
vegetation.
[Illustration]
Such is the original type of a young world which in due time will be
inhabited. The cocoa-palm will have its insects; the birds will pause
on its boughs; men will gather its fruit. Wrecked ships and floating
timbers, propelled by the sea, will bring there after awhile tenants of
every kind.
Some of these islands, when extended, enlarged, and solidified, measure
not less than twenty-five miles in circumference. Many are larger
still; fertile, inhabited, and populous, like the Maldives.
The ambition of their architects might rest contented, you would think,
with these vast creations. But to insure their fixity, they have
increased their extent. The buttresses by which they strengthen their
work at the bottom of the sea being prolonged and elevated, expand
into banks, which link the isles to each other over an immense area.
Along the line of burning life, in the tropic zone, these indefatigable
builders have daringly intersected the sea and worked athwart its
currents, and already are arresting the courses of our navigators.
New Caledonia is now surrounded by a reef of 145 leagues in length. The
chain of the Maldive Islands measures 480 English miles. To the east of
New Holland stretches a bank of polypes over 360 leagues, 127 of these
without interruption. Finally, in the Pacific Ocean the mass known as
the Dangerous Archipelago is about 400 leagues in length by 150 in
breadth.
If they continue after this fashion, incessantly connecting their
various piles of submarine masonry, they will perhaps realize the
prophecy of Kirby, who discerned in the coral isles and reefs the
possibility of a new world--a brilliant and fertile world; and in the
course of centuries may accomplish the formation of a causeway, an
immense bridge, connecting Asia with America.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: IV.--LOVE AND DEATH.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV.
LOVE AND DEATH.
Above the infinite elementary life,--that quasi-vegetable life in
which generation is but, as it were, a-budding,--begins the distinct,
individual, and complete organism whose strongly centralized electric
network of nerves is able to sympathize directly with the rapid energy
of its acts and resolutions.
However humble the insect may seem in appearance, it is from the first
independent of the immovable, expectant existence of all the inferior
races. It is born entirely free from that communistic fatalism which
merges the being of each in the life of all. It exists independently;
it moves, goes, comes, advances or returns, changes its determination
or its direction at pleasure, or in obedience to its wants, appetites,
and caprices. It suffices for itself; it foresees, provides, defends,
and boldly confronts the most unexpected chances.
In this, then, do we not discern, as it were, a first glimpse of
personality?
The individual stands out from the mass. He shows himself all at once
admirably provided with the instruments necessary for the support
and sustenance of the individual existence. He is born greedy and
_absorbent_. But this very absorbingness is exactly the service which
Nature expects of him. It is his mission to purify and disencumber
the world; to clear it of morbid or extinct animal matter, which acts
as an obstacle to the growth of life; to save the latter from the
consequences of its excessive fecundity, the danger of its abundance.
No other being, as we shall prove, exercises so great an influence
upon our globe; no other throws itself into the condition of general
existence with so vital an energy. But this extraordinary strength,
in such disproportion to the size, bulk, and weight of the insect, is
subject to a severe law; the rapid, absolute, and complete renewal, at
each generation, of the individual.
_Love implies death._ To engender and to beget is to die. He who is
born, by the very act of his birth kills.
This is a sentence common to all beings, but carried out upon none more
literally than upon the insect.
In the first place, it is death for the father to love. It is
indispensable that he should surrender all his powers, and exhaust the
best part of his vitality; that he should perish in himself, to revive
in him to whom he shall have transmitted his germ of resurrection.
And for the mother, too, in most of the insect species, the
condemnation is the same. She will love, give birth, and speedily die.
Love for her shall not have its prize and recompense. She shall not
see her sons. She shall not enjoy the consolations of death in seeing
herself survive in her image.
A great and harsh difference between this mother and the mothers
of superior animals! The woman--or the female of the mammal--as a
rule cherishes in her own body her beloved treasure, warms it with
her own flame, and feeds it with her love. How envious would be the
insect-mother, if she knew of this supreme maternal happiness! But
_she_ must seek of an ungenial nature, must demand of some other
being--tree, plant, fruit, or perhaps the earth itself--that it will
condescend to continue the work of her maternity. This is rigorous, but
it is not cruel. Let us look at it seriously. If death separate the
mother and the child, it is because they cannot live together; because
they are strongly sundered by the opposite conditions of life and
nutrition. The child, at first a lowly grub, larva, or worm, an obscure
miner, a concealed nocturnal worker, must for a long time continue
to feed upon the coarsest food, and sometimes even on death itself.
She, the mother, who, winged and transfigured, has mounted to a higher
life; and lives solely on the honied sweets of flowers,--how could she
accustom herself to the shades, and the useful but abject circumstances
in which her offspring grows strong? That which is salutary and vital
for the tenebrous child of the earth would be fatal to an aërial
mother, who has already fluttered in the warmth and genial light of
heaven.
[Illustration]
It is needful for the due development of the child that its mother
should provide it with a triple or quadruple cradle, and there deposit
it; not neglected, and without succour, but furnished with its first
aliment--an aliment light and fitted for its feebleness, which it can
find on its waking up into life. This done, she closes the door, seals
it, and voluntarily excludes and interdicts herself from returning
thither. Thenceforth she must cede her rights to the universal mother,
who shall replace her--Nature.
[Illustration]
That in such a cradle the child should live commodiously,--that from
its own body it should draw out a silky covering to line its plastic
prison,--that finally, when sufficiently strong, it should issue forth
under the influence of the heat,--this is self-explanatory, and we
admire without being astonished. But what really excites our wonder
is, that the mother,--a butterfly, or perhaps a beetle,--after the
numerous changes through which she has passed, after her numerous
sloughings, transitory slumbers, and metamorphoses, should remember,
for her offspring's behoof, the place or plant where formerly she
herself was nourished, and grew, and took her point of departure! It
is a marvel which confounds the mind. Those creatures apparently the
most heedless--the fly, or light-headed butterfly--at the moment when
approaching death brightens them with the radiance of love, collect, as
it were, their thoughts, and seem to revive their recollections. Then,
without lapse or error, they flee away; and lo! the plant which was
their own early residence, their birthplace, and their cradle, shall
again become their home, and protect their offspring!
All at once they show themselves prudent, foreseeing, and skilful.
To obtain an entrance to this asylum, they practise unknown arts and
display incredible address. How is this? What happens? Sometimes their
weapons of war, diverted to other uses, become instruments of love;
sometimes new and hitherto concealed apparatus,--frequently of an
extremely complex character,--make their appearance; and yet all for
this solitary act, for this single day.
A curious book has been written on the mechanism and infinitely varied
instrumentation with which insects are provided for the discharge of
the maternal duty. Their implements are often charming from their
precision, delicacy, and subtlety. It will suffice to particularize
that of the rose-bush aphis,--so well described by Réaumur, as a saw
whose two blades act in an inverse direction, and whose teeth are each
a set of teeth.
O unheard-of power of Love! Whether this divine workman prepares for
them their tiny tools, or whether he inspires them to fashion their own
by the effort and vehemency of the burning maternal desire, it matters
not: you see them duly fabricated, and acting when wanted in a wholly
unexpected manner.
It is a simple task for the tribes of sociable insects which labour
with the assistance and protection of a numerous republic; but it is
infinitely arduous and painful for the solitary mothers, who, without
auxiliary, spouse, or friend, undertake enormous enterprises, and
frequently raise constructions which might be the work of giants,--such
as the nest of the mason-wasp. One is lost in astonishment at the
amount of patience and strength of will required for so colossal an
edifice.
This excessive toil ages the mother in a few days. She wears herself
out, yet does not enjoy the fruit. Frequently the elaborate cradle
serves for another. Too frequently a usurping stranger seizes upon it,
profits by the meritorious work, and establishes there its progeny,
which will not only consume the provision of the rightful tenant, but
feed also on the unfortunate tenant himself!
Who will not bestow a glance of pity on this great work, and a result
of such uncertain character?
In the burning days of July, when the narrow belt of forests
surrounding Fontainebleau concentrated upon it the summer heats, we
were astonished at the incessant and continuous labour, despite the
indolence of the season, of a solitary bee which was ever going and
coming. Her indefatigable journeys always brought her near some vases
of camelias and rose-bays. I saw her, still fair and shapely, of a
beautiful brown mingled with black, returning, at regular intervals
of about five minutes, with woven fragments of leaves, which she
introduced through a deep aperture into the soil of the vase where she
had made her nest.
For three days she worked with undiminished ardour. There were no signs
that she took the least food: constantly at her work, she appeared to
have already abandoned all care for her own life.
Her preoccupation was so great and her activity so eager that we were
able to approach her very closely. Nothing frightened her; so that we
could establish ourselves at our ease near her little nest, and observe
her with as much patience as she herself brought to her work.
On the fourth morning we found the opening closed, and we saw her no
more. She had completed her task. Exhausted, but rejoicing at its
conclusion, she had retired undoubtedly to some obscure recess to await
her destiny.
We proceeded delicately to loosen the soil around the sides of the
vase, in order to examine into what she had done.
At the bottom, resembling in shape a couple of thimbles, lay two
cradles, and in these cradles two little ones. All the care had been
for them: so many young, so many cells.
Each was composed of six-and-twenty fragments of leaves. Réaumur, in a
similar nest, counted but sixteen. Six of these fragments, which closed
up the entrance, were perfectly round,--a remarkable fact, if we bear
in mind that the instrument which achieved the work was by no means
appropriate to it. Yet they were as accurately finished off as if done
by a punch.
The other portions of leaf, cut into ovals, and carefully placed one
upon another in due accordance with the contour of the nest, resembled
so many roofs designed by the indefatigable mother as a protection
against the wind and rain. At the bottom lay a little honey; the last
and tender legacy of the mother, bequeathed by her to those whom she
had abandoned for ever.
We shall enjoy the satisfaction of seeing them weave their winter
shelter. It will be pleasanter for them under our roof than at the
bottom of the vase. The mother's intentions will be carefully carried
out. Adopted, tended, and removed to Paris, the nymphs of Fontainebleau
will take, one fine morning in spring, their flight above our windows,
and, as young bees, will be able to gather, if not the honey of the
heather, at least that of the Luxembourg.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: V.--THE ORPHAN: ITS FEEBLENESS.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V.
THE ORPHAN: ITS FEEBLENESS.[H]
[Footnote H: _La Frileuse_,--literally, "The chilly one."]
We have told the easiest and pleasantest story to relate, the story
of the privileged creature for whom its mother has duly provided, and
who is nourished and clothed by her efforts. But many--in truth, the
greatest number--enter life destitute and necessitous. They fall naked
into the great world.
Poverty the audacious, necessity the ingenious, the severe internal
travail of hunger and desire, stimulate and develop the energetic
organs which come to their assistance.
What organs? The great Swammerdam, the martyr of patience, was
the first to distinguish them. With a piercing eye, examining the
newly-hatched egg,--that dubious foundation!--he seized the opening
lineaments of life, and marked in them the profound and decisive
characters which make the mystery of the insect. He saw the little
creature, with its gelatinous body, push forward its mandible or
jaws,--a distinct and complete organ, placed in front of the mouth, and
visibly intended to nourish and protect the still feeble being.
Behind this active apparatus he detected on the sides of the body a
passive apparatus, a series of tiny mouths or valves (the _stigmata_)
which await the air, and open to receive it.
Ingenious precautions! The orphan born completely naked, and launched
into life unprotected to undergo the most toilsome metamorphoses,
is rendered competent for the task only by eating greedily from the
moment of its birth, absorbing and devouring! It must eat always and
everywhere, even in the least respirable atmosphere, and in unhealthy
and deadly places. It is for this reason nature has endowed it with
a slower, and, if I may so speak, a more suspicious circulation and
respiration, than that of the superior creatures which live only
in pure air. In these creatures, as in man, the blood continually
flows to meet the air and be vivified by it. In the insect, on the
contrary, the protecting apparatus which guards its lateral mouths
are disposed in such a manner as to be able always to moderate, sift,
and, if need be, exclude, the invading atmosphere. One is overcome
with surprise by the infinite variety of the combinations designed
for this end, the numerous mechanical and chemical arts of the most
complicated character. To receive and yet not receive, to breathe
without breathing, to preserve the control of what must nevertheless
be a passive function, to trust and yet mistrust, to surrender and yet
protect, is the difficult problem which life here proposed to itself,
and of which it has found innumerable solutions. To give air to a
grub! Behold, arrogant humanity, which callest thyself the centre of
all things, the most laborious effort that has engrossed the powers of
nature!
Its circulation resembles that of the embryo in the bosom of its
mother. But how much less favourable the condition of the insect! The
foetus is in immediate contact with the world through the soft maternal
medium. The motherless insect embryo does not swim, like the other, in
a sea of milk. It is cradled in the rude mould of the universal life;
it travels therein at great peril, on the rude earth, from shock to
shock.
This fact the moderns have recognized,--_the insect is an embryo_. But
who would suppose that this very circumstance would doom it to death?
How rude a contradiction! An embryo launched into the thick of the
fray, to be the victim of all--of birds, and even of insects. An embryo
armed, it is true; and nothing is stranger than to see the soft grubs
brandishing their threatening jaws, while their feeble body, deprived
of all defence, is exposed on every side.
Flight offers them but few chances; their best protection is night.
And therefore they shun the light,--they live as they can under the
ground, in the wood, or at least beneath the leaf. If this be true of
the larvæ, the grubs, of what we call worms, we may say the same of the
insect. For its first period (that of the larva) endures a considerable
time, though its life as a nymph, and finally its third period, last
but a very brief while. Numerous species (May-bugs, stag-beetles, and
the like) have three to six years of a tenebrous existence, and only
three months under the sun.
Even the insects which live longest in the sun, like the bees and the
ants, work willingly in obscurity; are partial to the shadows of their
hives and ant-hills.
We may assert as a general rule that _the insect is the child of night_.
Most insects shun the day. But how can they avoid the air? Even in hot
countries, the contact of the variable atmosphere with a live nude
body, whose epidermis is not yet hardened, becomes infinitely painful.
In our severe climates, each breath of air must produce the sensation
of piercing arrows, of a million of fine needles. What would it be, O
Heaven, for a poor human foetus to issue, after a week or a fortnight,
from its mother's womb, and instead of peacefully undergoing the
transformations which strengthen it, to be subjected to them in a naked
condition and in open day? What would be its sensations on quitting its
soft asylum, and falling into the cold air? Yet such must be those of
the insect, when, soft, feeble, assailable, and penetrable everywhere,
still almost floating and gelatinous to the eye, it experiences the
cold, and the wind, and the shock of so many painful accidents.
Certain clothed species are a little better protected. Some are lodged
in the heart of a fruit. Others (bees and ants) form a protecting
community; but the immense majority are born solitary and naked.
Some of our readers, always well clothed and warmed, will say, I am
sure, that cold is an excellent thing, which stimulates the appetite
and strengthens the frame. But those who have been poor will very well
understand my preceding observations. For my part, recollections of
my childhood convince me that cold is, in all truth, a punishment;
you cannot get accustomed to it; its prolongation does not render its
effect less severe. How keen a joy I felt (in rigorous winters) at
each thaw which released me from my agitated, terrified, and uneasy
condition, and secured the happy re-establishment of the internal
harmony!
I do not deny, however, that cold may not be a powerful tonic, which
sharpens and braces up the mind, and draws from it fresh efforts of
invention. Cold, as well as hunger--and perhaps hunger especially--is
the great stimulus of the arts; hunger weakens, cold strengthens.
It is the powerful inspirer of infinite swarms of those chilly
creatures which seek before all things, as soon as they are born, the
means of covering themselves. They are not in want of food; nature
has everywhere prepared for them an ample banquet. All the vegetable
kingdom, and a great part of the animal, are at their disposal; they
might live tender and indolent, as the child sleeps at its ease on
the maternal placenta which nourishes its slothfulness. But the cold
irritates them; the cold damp air deadens and paralyzes their entrails;
finally, the light wounds them. They can enjoy no repose until they
have secured a shelter. In the lowest grade of life the smallest grub
becomes an artist, and by weaving, and spinning, and carving has soon
contrived a robe, and, as with a second skin over her too sensitive
epidermis, has covered her suffering nakedness. Happy she who finds
herself placed at the outset on a prepared soil, a cloth of warm
wool, a fine fur: she does not fail to make in hot haste, according
to our human fashion, a pretty paletot fitted to her figure; which,
nevertheless, she leaves a little loose, like economical mothers for
their young growing children, in whose case the garb too large to-day
will be tight and well-fitting to-morrow.
Those who on their birth come in contact with chill green leaves,
and their lustrous glaze, are still more industrious. They practise
arts which astonish the observer. Some raise enormous masses with
imperceptible cables, and by mechanical processes analogous to those
which were employed in removing and rearing the obelisk of the Place
de la Concorde. Others cut out figures purposedly irregular, which the
seam afterwards fits into its harmonious _ensemble_.
Every industrial corporation may be found represented in this little
world: tailors, weavers, felters, spinners, miners, and the like.
And in each corporation you meet with species working each after its
peculiar fashion, by the various processes appropriate to it.
The tailors work from a pattern. They mark out on the leaf a suitable
piece; which they remove, and lay upon another leaf; tack it, cut out
a second on the first model, and stitch them together. This done, with
their scaly head they flatten the ribs, just as the tailor smooths down
the seams with his iron. Then they line this coat, which they carry
about with them, with the very finest silk.
Others work in mosaic, others in marquetry and veneering. After having
woven the robe, they disguise it by artistically gluing to it a variety
of surrounding materials. The aquatic insects, for example, embellish
theirs with moss, lentils, mussels, or little snails.
The miners erect galleries between a couple of leaves, and roam about
in them, constructing places of exit and ingress in their subterranean
abodes.
The labour is great. But among all the species an admirable justice
prevails. Whoso works hard while a child, does little when an adult;
and _vice versâ_. The bee, which in the larva state is richly fed
by its parents, and always carried about and cradled, is destined
hereafter to an exceedingly laborious life.
On the contrary, another insect which, as a grub, has toiled, and
woven, and spun, will having nothing to do in its later life but
whisper love-phrases to the rose. I am speaking of Sir Butterfly.
For the great majority, hard work is for infancy, for the larva or
the grub; work twofold and excessive. On the one hand, the constant,
urgent, and pressing search after the food craved for by an immense
internal need; the necessity of recruiting and renewing its energies,
of restoring the inherited organs, and developing new ones.
The existence of these poor motherless creatures is divided between two
severe conditions: toil, and growth through disease.
For their moultings, or sloughings, are, in effect, a disease.
The painful moment having arrived for the little creature to change
its clothing, a clothing which clings to its flesh, it is seized with
illness, abandons its leaf, and creeps languidly to some solitary
asylum. If you saw it in such a soft, inert, and withered condition, so
different from its natural state, you would say it was on the point of
death. And many do, indeed, succumb at this laborious crisis.
Passive, and suspended to a branch, it waits until nature shall
complete its work,--until its epidermis be detached from the second
skin beneath, recalling it to all the energies of life.
It is then that you see the garb, which was formerly so brilliant, dry
up and harden like a thenceforth useless thing, carried hither and
thither by the wind.
But before it will yield and separate, the invalid, despite of its
weakness, must twist in every direction, and writhe, and swell, and
contract, and employ all the efforts of a being in its strongest
moments.
At length it has conquered; the old sheath is rent; and I see the
insect free, but bathed in sweat.
Do not touch it yet, for the slightest pressure will wound. Of this
it is aware, and lies perfectly motionless. It is pale, and almost
swooning; it must wait patiently, before beginning to move, till
its skin is less sensitive and its limbs are much firmer. Soon,
fortunately, it will be invigorated by its food; it feels a terrible
hunger, which restores its strength and prepares it for another
sloughing. Such is its destiny. It is condemned to deliver itself
continually in a series of _accouchements_, until it finally attains
its latest transformation.
If either the exertion or the pain inspire it with a transient gleam of
thought, it would say, on each painful occasion: "Now it is ended! I
have finished my task; I will rest in peace; this is my last change."
To which Nature would respond: "Not yet! not yet! Thou art not yet
engendered. What art thou? Nothing but a larva, a mask which is about
to fall."
What! A mask! and yet it wills and toils, strives and suffers, and
sometimes seems more advanced than will be the being produced from it!
So much industry and skill imprisoned in a skin which will immediately
dry up and be blown away by the breeze!
However this may be, it is seized one morning by an undefinable kind of
irritability and disquiet,--by a mysterious impulse which excites it
to undertake a new task. You would say that within itself another self
exists, moving, and stirring, and following up a distinct purpose, and
yearning to become--what? does it know? This I cannot assert; but after
awhile you may see it acting, and acting sagaciously, as if inspired by
a perfect knowledge. Its presentiment of the slumber which will shortly
seize upon it, paralyze its forces, and surrender it helplessly to all
its enemies, incites it to the sudden display of a novel activity. "Let
us work well! Let us work quickly! For soon I shall sleep soundly."
[Illustration]
[Illustration: VI.--THE MUMMY, NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI.
THE MUMMY, NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS.
Let us respect the childhood of the world. Let us pardon the early ages
for the consolations and hopes which they drew from the strange drama
represented by the Insect, the thoughts of immortality which grave
Egypt founded upon it. This drama tranquillized more hearts and wiped
away more tears than all the mysteries of Canopus or the revels of
Eleusis.
When the mourning widow, the eternal Isis, ever reproducing herself in
eternal anguish, was snatched from her beloved Osiris, she reposed her
hope of a future reunion on the sacred beetle, and hushed her sobs.
What is death? What is life? What is the awakening, or what the
slumber? Do you not see this little miracle, this dumb confidant of
the grave, which makes us the mock of destiny? It sleeps in the egg,
and afterwards sleeps again in the nymph. It is thrice born; and it
dies thrice--as larva, nymph, and beetle. In each of these existences
the larva or mask is the prefigurement of the succeeding existence. It
prepares, begets, and hatches itself. From the most repulsive sepulchre
it emerges sparkling. On the dust it shines; on the gray Egyptian
plain, in its season of aridity, it shimmers, and eclipses everything.
Its jewelled wing mirrors the all-powerful sun.
Where was it? In the foul shadow, in night and death. A deity has
summoned it forth, and will yet do much more for this beloved soul!
Sweet, tender ray! The hope was surely founded upon justice, on the
impartial love of the Creator of all life.
Accordingly, the widow draws from its death the brilliant pledge of the
future, and gives utterance to this woman's cry:--"Merciful Heaven!
do for my husband and for me what thou hast done for the insect. Do
not grant less to man; do not grant to my best-beloved less than thou
accordest to this brother of the gnat!"
* * * * *
Has modern science swept away the ancient poesy? Has it completely
eliminated the miraculous from nature?
The inaugurator of this science, Swammerdam, has discovered that the
grub already contains the nymph; nay more, even the butterfly. In the
grub he has detected the rudiment of the wing and proboscis of the
future being.
This is not all. Malpighi saw the _nymph_ of the silkworm in its
virgin slumber, _already furnished with the attributes of its coming
maternity_,--containing the eggs which, as a butterfly, it would
fecundate.
And yet again, this is not all. Réaumur, in the oak-grub, _in a grub
scarcely a few hours old, found the eggs of the future butterfly_.
In other words, the infant insect, at that very stage when the grub
itself, as Harvey points out, is simply a mobile egg, already possesses
eggs and children.
It is the identity of three beings. It seems as if there could be no
intermediary deaths; one single life is continuously carried on.
All this seems clear, does it not? The ancient mystery has perished?
Man has discovered, in its fulness, the secret of things?
Réaumur does not think so; Réaumur himself, who has guided us so
far. In recording his observations he does not appear satisfied, and
confesses "that they still leave very much to be desired."[I]
[Footnote I: Réaumur, "Histoire des Insectes," tome i., p. 351.]
In truth, it is a thing to confound and almost to terrify the
imagination, to think that a grub, at the outset no bigger than a
thread, should include in itself all the elements of its moultings and
metamorphoses; should contain its triple, and even octuple envelopes;
nay more, the sheath or case of its _nympha_ and its complete
butterfly, all folded up one in another, with an immense apparatus
of vessels, respiratory and digestive, of nerves for feeling and
muscles for moving! A prodigious system of anatomy! first traced out
in complete detail in Lyonnet's colossal work on the willow-grub. The
twofold monster, endowed with a strong grub-stomach for the destruction
of innumerable hard leaves, will possess ere long a light and delicate
apparatus for extracting the honey of flowers. And yet the clothed
creature, which contains in its organism a complete silk-manufactory,
will almost immediately sweep away the complex system.
One knows the gentle manoeuvres by which nature conducts the young of
the higher animals from the embryonic existence to the independent
life, adapting the old organs to new functions. Here, this is not
done. It is not a simple change of condition. The destination is not
merely different, but contrary, with a violent contrast. Therefore,
instruments fitted for an entirely novel existence are required, and
the abolition and definitive sacrifice of the primitive organism.
The revolution, which for all other beings is so well concealed, is
here entirely thrown open. And we are enabled to scrutinize with our
eyes this astonishing _tour de force_ in numerous grubs which undergo
the great change in the light of day, suspended to the branch of a tree
by a silken cable.
The effort is worthy of our admiration and pity. To see yonder
nymph, short and feeble, soft and gelatinous, without arms or paws,
contriving, by the skill with which it expands and contracts its
rings, to escape from the heavy and rough machine which it was at
first, flinging aside its limbs, setting free its head, and--one hardly
dares to record the fact--throwing off its body, and rejecting many of
its principal internal organs!
[Illustration]
This little body, when it has thus escaped from its long heavy mask
(living, nevertheless, but a moment since, a life full of energy), will
dangle, and grow dry, and skilfully ascend to its silken fastening.
There it prepares to fix itself in its new "Me" as a nymph, while its
former "Me," tossed about by the wind, is speedily driven I know not
whither.
All is, and ought to be, changed. _The legs will not again be the
legs._ It will need lighter organs. What can the child of the air,
which can balance on the point of a blade of grass, do with those
coarse short feet, armed with hooks, vent-holes, and so many heavy
implements?
_The head will not be the head_; at least, the enormous apparatus of
mandibles will disappear, and also that of the muscles by which they
were energetically moved. All is thrown aside with the mask. A colossal
change! From a masticator the animal becomes a sucker. A flexible
proboscis emerges.
If anything in the grub appeared of a fundamental character, it was the
digestive apparatus. Ah, well! this basis of its being is no more. The
absorbing throat--the powerful stomach--the greedy entrails,--all are
suppressed, or reduced nearly to nothing. What would they avail the
new being which, in certain species of butterflies, dispenses with
sustenance, has no mouth but by agreement, and is so completely freed
from digestion that frequently it has not even an inferior orifice?
It abandons without difficulty its thenceforth useless furniture, and
expectorates the skin of its stomach!
This is grand and magnificent,--no spectacle is grander! For life
at such a point to change, to dominate over the organs, to rise
victorious, so entirely free of the ancient _Ego_! To those who have
revealed to us such a prodigy of transfiguration, from the bottom of my
heart I say, "Thanks!"
How marvellous the security in this being which abandons everything,
which unhesitatingly dismisses its strong and solid existence,
the complicated organism which just now was _itself_, its own
individuality! We call it its _larva_, its mask; but why? The
personality seems at least as energetic in the vigorous grub as in
the delicate butterfly. And, therefore, it is most indubitably its
individual being which it courageously leaves to shrivel up and perish,
to become--what? Nothing reassuring, nothing but a little, soft,
whitish substance.
Open the nymph soon after it has spun its cocoon: in its shroud you
shall find nothing but a kind of milky fluid, wherein you see, or
fancy you see, certain dubious lineaments. After awhile you may, with
a fine needle, separate these I know not what,--and figure to yourself
that they are the limbs of the future butterfly. A frightful lacuna!
For many species a moment occurs when nothing of the old any longer
appears, and nothing of the new as yet has come. When Æson, cut in
pieces, was thrown, in order to rejuvenate him, into the caldron of
Medea, you would have found, on groping there, the limbs of Æson. But
here there is nothing parallel.
Trustfully, nevertheless, the mummy surrounds its body with its bands,
docilely accepting the shadows, the inertness, and the captivity of
the sepulchre. It feels in itself a force, a _raison d'être_, a _causa
vivendi_,--a reason for living still. And what reason? What cause? The
vitality accumulated by its previous toil. All that, like a laborious
grub, it has accumulated, is its obstacle to death,--its incapability
of perishing,--the reason why it will immediately live again; and not
only live, but with a light and tender existence, whose facility is
proportioned exactly to the efforts which it makes in its anterior
condition of life.
Admirable compensation! When penetrating so deep down into life, I
expected to encounter certain physical fatalities. And I found justice,
immortality, and hope.
Yes, antiquity was right, and modern science is right. It is death, and
yet it is not death; let us call it if you will partial death. Is death
ever otherwise? Is it not a new birth?
Throughout my life I have remarked that each day I died and was
born again; I have undergone many painful strugglings and laborious
transformations. One more does not astonish me. Many and many times I
have passed from the larva into the chrysalis, and into a more complete
condition; the which, after awhile, incomplete under other relations,
has put me in the way of accomplishing a new circle of metamorphoses.
All this from me to me, but not less from _me_ to those who were
_still_ me, who loved me, or made me, or, so long as I lived, whom I
made. These, too, have been, or will be, my metamorphoses. Sometimes,
a certain intonation or gesture which I detect makes me exclaim:--"Ah!
this is a gesture or a tone of my father." I had not foreseen it,
and if I had foreseen it, it would not have occurred; reflection had
changed all; but, not thinking of it, I employed it. A tender emotion,
a holy impulse seized me, when I felt my father thus living in myself.
Are we two? Were we one? Oh! it was my chrysalis. And I--I play the
same part for those who shall follow me, my children, or the children
of my thought. I know, I feel, that besides the bases which I derived
from my father, my ancestors and masters, besides the inheritance
of artist-historian which I shall bequeath to others, germs existed
within me which were never developed. Another, and perchance a better,
man was within me, who has not arisen. Why were not the loftier germs
which might have made me great, and the powerful wings of which I have
sometimes felt myself possessed, displayed in life and action?
These germs, though put aside, remain to me; too late for expansion in
this life, perhaps, but in another,--who knows?
An ingenious philosopher has remarked that if the human embryo, while
imprisoned in the maternal bosom, might reason, it would say:--"I see
myself endowed with organs of which here I can make no use,--limbs
which do not move, a stomach and teeth which do not eat. Patience!
these organs convince me that nature calls me elsewhere; a time will
come when I shall have another residence, a life in which all these
implements will find employment. They are standing still, they are
waiting. I am but the chrysalis of a man!"
[Illustration]
[Illustration: VII.--THE PHOENIX.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VII.
THE PHOENIX.
The drama is complete. From the gray or blackish mummy which just now
lay before you dried and shrivelled, you see the new creature, the
resuscitated, the phoenix, blithely escaping, to shine resplendent in
all the glory of youth.
The very reverse of _our_ destiny: commencing with bright and butterfly
days, in later life we crawl and languish; while the insect commences
with years of gloom, and from a long life of obscurity emerges into the
youth in which it dies glorified.
Let us be present at this departure. The warm breath of spring has
awakened the plants; its banquet is prepared. More than one flower,
awaiting it, secretes its honey. It delays, because to-day that
impenetrable envelope which ensured its safety becomes for a moment
its obstacle. Enfeebled and fatigued by so great a transformation,
how shall it break through the too solid cradle which threatens to
suffocate it?
Some species--as, for example, the ants--experience so great a
difficulty, that the captive, probably, would never effect its release
but for the opportune assistance of some power which, from without,
hastens to extricate it, to deliver it (so to speak), and separate it
from the trammels of its swaddling-clothes. Fortunate difficulty! which
creates the bond between the two ages, attaches the liberator to the
child she has delivered, and herself begins its education and society!
But, for the majority of insects, the liberator is no other than
Nature. This mother, inexhaustible in tenderness and invention, gives
to the little one the key which will open the barrier, pierce the
prison, and introduce it to daylight and liberty.
"What key?--and how?" say you. "How can this soft and fluid being
contrive to seize upon a firm, compact tissue, frequently doubled and
immured by the alluvial accumulation of a protracted winter?"
The circumstance embarrasses _us_ greatly, but Nature is not troubled.
Means of the utmost simplicity suffice her; she eludes, and sports
with, the difficulty. The butterfly of the silkworm, for instance, at
the critical moment finds a file--where?--in its eye! This eye, with
numerous facets, has a fine diamond point, which files through and
severs the silken prison.
Another, the cockchafer, shut up underground, suddenly discovers that
it is a perfect mechanician. Of its whole body it makes a lever. Its
posterior extremity furnishes it with a strong-pointed auger. It sinks
solidly, anchors, and makes fast. From this _point d'appui_ it derives
an enormous force, and with its robust shoulders uplifts the heavy
clod, enlarges the aperture, finds at length the light, extends its
unwieldy apparatus of wings and wing-cases, and flies as a gnat.
Another deformed (or shapeless) miner, the mole-cricket, would never
reach the surface if, to reascend from the depth of the earth, it
had not two enormous hands, or rather two powerful rakes, which
open up its way. Though hideous, it is not the less sensitive to the
influence of spring, but it takes the precaution of never exposing its
strange figure save to the doubtful rays of the moon. Its plaintive
cry singularly affects the female; she yields to it, and makes her
appearance, but to return again into the night and confide to the
protecting shade the hope of her posterity.
A frail aquatic insect, the gnat, on this important day assumes the
daring mission of the navigator. It makes fresh use of its demitted
envelope, and turns it into a bark. In this it stands upright, extends
its new wings for sails, glides along the wave, and very frequently
without shipwreck reaches the shore; where, when dried, the same wings
will bear it off to the chase and the pursuit of pleasure. In an
hour it appears a complete master of all these novel arts. It is the
peculiarity of love to know without having been taught.
Love is winged. Mythology is perfectly in the right. This is verified
in the proper sense and without metaphor. In one brief moment, Nature
displays a restless anxiety to fly towards the beloved object. All
creatures rise above their own level, all mount towards the light, on
the pinions of desire. The internal fire is also revealed in glowing
colours. Every one decorates his person, every one wishes to please.
The butterfly apparently looks upon you with the great velvety eyes
which adorn its wings. Beetles of every species, like mobile stones,
astonish by their brilliant reflexes, their burning vivacities.
Finally, from the bosom of the shadows bursts the flame of love, naked
and unveiled, in flashing stars!
At such a moment it accomplishes the strangest transformations, and
from the humblest masks issue, in violent contrast, the superbest
individuals.
A dull larva of the morass, which lives only by stratagem, becomes
the brilliant amazon, the agile winged warrior, called Demoiselle
(_libellula_). It is the only creature of its tribe which expresses
the complete liberty of flight, holding the same rank among insects as
the swallow among birds. Who has not followed with attentive gaze its
thousand varied movements, its turns, and returns, and the infinite
circles which it makes with azure and emerald wings on the meadow or
over the waters? A flight apparently capricious; but not really so, for
it is a chase, a rapid and elegant extermination of myriads of insects.
What seems to you a pastime, is the greedy absorption with which this
brilliant creature of war feeds its season of love.
[Illustration]
Do not believe that these riches are simply the gifts of genial
climates; that these glittering festal garments which they assume
to love and die in are only the sheen of the sun, the all-powerful,
decorator, which with its rays intensifies the enamel and gems we
admire upon their wings. Another sun--a sun which shines for the
whole earth, even for the ice-regions of the pole--profits them far
more considerably. It exalts in them the inner life, evokes all their
powers, and, on the given day, calls forth the supreme flower. Yonder
scintillating colours are their visible energies which become speaking
and eloquent. It is the pride of a complete life, which, having
attained its climax, displays its energy in triumph, wishes to expand
and diffuse; it is the tradition of desire, the imperious prayer and
urgent appeal to the beloved objects.
In pale and temperate climates, you will meet with those brilliant
liveries which one would think belonged to the tropics. Who, under our
gloomy and variable sky, has not seen the sparkling Spanish fly? Even
in the fatal deserts where summer beams but for an instant, as if in
despite of the sun,--in despite of the poor and naked earth,--love
supports some beings of a sumptuous splendour, of opulent raiment and
rich decoration. Miserable Siberia sees the princes and great lords
of the Insect World simultaneously displaying their grandeur. The
tyrannical Russian climate cannot prevent enormous beetles, pitiless
hunters, fiercer than Ivan the Terrible, from appearing in green,
black, violet, or deep blue morocco, shaded with purple sapphires.
While some, usurping the ancient copes consecrated to the czars and the
porphyrogeniti, stalk to and fro in robes of purple, broidered with
Byzantine gold.
[Illustration]
In our neighbouring Siberias, I mean our lofty mountains,--under the
hailstorms, for instance, of the Pyrenean glaciers,--without being
discouraged by their rude blows, fly noble insects, of exquisite
appearance, the rosalia in a mantle of pearl-gray satin, spotted with
black velvet.
Among the lofty Alps, at the Grindelwald,--the formidable descent
where that glacier comes to us, and you may touch its _aiguilles_,
and its keen breath freezes you--I once admired a timid but touching
protestation of love. Among some miserable birches, martyr trees, which
undergo an eternal chastisement, a poor little plant, elegant and
delicate, persists in flowering, with a rose-hued blossom, but a violet
rose, not unworthy of the mournful region. The brother of this tragical
rose is a very tiny insect which, all feeble as it is, mounts higher
than any other species, and is found shivering among the lofty snows
of Mont Blanc. There, above you, is only the heaven, and, beneath,
the vast shroud of ice. The poetic creature has assumed exactly two
tints: the celestial blue of its wings, incredibly delicate, seems
lightly kindled with the white powder of the hoar-frost. The storms
and avalanches which overthrow the rocks awaken in it no sensations of
terror. Under the breath of the terrible giant, in his ice-bristling
beard and formidable frown, it, the little one, flies daringly, as if
conscious that this king of the everlasting winters would hesitate to
destroy the last winged flower of love which, in his realm of death,
preserves for him a reflection of heaven.
[Illustration]
Book the Second.
MISSION AND ARTS OF THE INSECT.
[Illustration: I.--SWAMMERDAM.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
SWAMMERDAM.
What was known of the Infinite prior to 1600? Nothing whatever.
Nothing of the infinitely great; nothing of the infinitely little. The
celebrated page of Pascal, very frequently cited upon this subject, is
the frank astonishment of a humanity so old and yet so young, which
begins to be aware of its prodigious ignorance, opens its eyes to the
Real, and awakens between two abysses.
No one forgets that in 1610 Galileo, having received from Holland a
magnifying lens, constructed the telescope, elevated it in position,
and saw the firmament. But it is less generally known that Swammerdam,
seizing, with the instinct of genius, on the imperfect microscope,
directed it to the lower world, and was the first to detect the living
infinite, the world of animated atoms! These great men succeeded one
another. At the epoch of the famous Italian's death (1632) was born the
Hollander, the Galileo of the infinitely little (1637).
An astounding revolution! The abyss of life was unfolded in its
profundity with myriads upon myriads of unknown beings and fantastic
organizations of which men had not even dared to dream. But the most
surprising circumstance is, that the very method of the sciences
underwent a total change. Hitherto men had relied upon their senses.
The severest observation invoked their testimony, and they thought that
no appeal could lie from their judgment. But now behold experiment
and the senses themselves, rectified by a powerful auxiliary, confess
that not only have they concealed from us the greater part of things,
but that, in those they have laid bare, they have every moment been
mistaken!
Nothing is more curious than to observe the very opposite impressions
produced by these two revolutions upon their authors. Galileo
before the infinite of heaven, where all appeared harmonious and
marvellously ordered, felt more of joy than of surprise; he announced
his discoveries to Europe in a style of the greatest enthusiasm.
Swammerdam, before the infinite of the microscopic world, seemed
overcome with terror. He recoiled before the spectacle of Nature at
war, devouring her very self. He grew perturbed; he seemed to fear
that all his ideas and beliefs would be overthrown: a melancholy and
singular condition, which, added to his incessant labours, shortened
his days. Let us pause awhile to dwell upon this creator of science,
who was also its martyr.
The eminent physician Boerhaave, who, a hundred years after
Swammerdam's time, published with pious care his "Bible of Nature,"
gave utterance to a surprising observation, which sets one a-dreaming:--
"He had an ardent imagination of impassioned melancholy, which raised
him to the sublime."
Thus, this surpassing master in all the works of patient inquiry, this
insatiable observer of the most minute details, who pursued Nature so
far into the imperceptible, was a poetic soul, a man of imagination,
one of those mournful spirits who groan after nothing less than the
infinite, and die because they fail to conquer it.
His was a remarkable combination of mental endowments which, at the
first glance, seem opposed to one another: a love of the great, and
a taste for the subtlest researches; a sublimity of aim, and that
obstinacy of analysis which would subdivide the atom, and yet never
cry, "Hold, enough!" But, in reality, are these qualities of so
contradictory a nature? By no means. Men whose hearts are filled with
the love of Nature will declare that they harmonize admirably. Nothing
great and nothing little. For the lover a simple hair is worth as much
as, frequently more than, a world.
He was born in a cabinet of natural history; and his birth decided his
destiny. The cabinet, formed by his father, an apothecary of Amsterdam,
was a pell-mell, a chaos. The child wished to arrange it, and drew up a
catalogue of it. A modest ambition led him from point to point, until
he became the greatest naturalist of the century.
His father was one of the zealot collectors who then became common
in Holland--insatiable treasurers of diverse rarities. It was not
with pictures--though Rembrandt was then in his glory--it was not
with antiquities, that he filled his house. But all that the ships
brought back from the two Indies of minerals, plants, fantastic and
extraordinary animals, he acquired at any cost, and heaped up in piles.
These marvels of the unknown world, contrasting by their splendour and
tropical magnificence with the gloomy climate which received them and
the pale sea of the North, aroused in the young Hollander's mind a
lively curiosity and a passionate devotion to Nature.
A very good Dutch painter has drawn a charming picture of the young
Grotius: a universal scholar at twelve years of age, surrounded by
folios, maps, charts, and all the appliances of learning. How much I
should have preferred that the same artist--or rather the all-powerful
magician, Rembrandt--had revealed to us the mysterious study, that
brilliant chaos of the three kingdoms, and the young Swammerdam
endeavouring to grasp the grand enigma!
The crowds and prodigious movement of Amsterdam favoured his solitude.
The Babylons of commerce are for the thinker profound deserts. In that
dumb ocean of men of mercantile activity, on the border of sluggish
canals, he lived almost like Robinson Crusoe in his island. Isolated
even in the midst of his family, who could not comprehend him, he
seldom emerged from his cabinet, and descended on the fewest possible
occasions into the paternal shop.
[Illustration]
His sole recreation was to go in search of insects in the little soil
which Holland offers above the waters. The melancholy meads, covered
with Paul Potter's herds, possess, in the moist warmth of the summer, a
great variety of animal life. The traveller is much impressed when he
sees the crane, the stork, and the crow, elsewhere hostile, reconciled
here by the abundance of their food, which they frequently hunt in
company on terms of perfect accord. Hence the landscape acquires a
peculiar charm. The cattle assume an air of placid security which they
do not elsewhere exhibit. The summer is short, and early assumes the
gravity of autumn. Man and Nature--all appears of a pacific character,
harmonized in a great moral sweetness and remarkable seriousness of
mood.
Enthusiastic collector as his father was, he grieved to see the youth
of Swammerdam thus employed. It had been his ambition to make of
his son a renowned minister who should shine in controversy, and an
eloquent preacher. But his son seemed daily to grow more dumb. The
chagrined father lowered his views from glory to money. In that golden
city, so feverish and so diseased, no career is more lucrative than
that of a physician. But here arose another difficulty. Swammerdam
threw himself heartily into his medical studies; but on condition that
he created them--as yet they did not exist. Therefore, the basis on
which he desired to rest them was the preliminary creation of the
natural sciences. How cure the sick man unless you understood the
healthy? And how understand the latter without studying side by side
the inferior animals which translate and explain disease? But can one
see into such delicate mysteries with the eye alone? Does not the
feebleness of the sense of vision lead us astray? The serious creation
of science would suppose a reform of our senses and the creation of
optics.
A veritable creation! Look at the microscope. Is it a simple spy-glass?
To the eyes which the instrument possessed, Swammerdam added two arms,
one of which bears the glass and the other the object. He himself
says, in reference to his more difficult investigations, "that he had
attempted to obtain the assistance of another person, but that such
assistance proved, in fact, an obstacle." It was for this reason that
he organized a dumb man of copper, a discreet servant ready for every
work; thanks to whom the observer disposes of supplementary hands and
numerous eyes of different degrees of power. In the same manner as the
birds expand or contract their visual organs, either to grasp objects
in a whole or to scrutinize with searching glance the smallest detail,
Swammerdam created the method of successive enlargement; the art of
employing lenses of different sizes and varying curvature, which permit
the observer to see _en masse_, and to study each separate portion, and
finally to survey the whole for the purpose of properly replacing the
details and reconstituting the general harmony.
Was this all? No. To observe dead bodies, time is required; but then
time robs us of them. Death, which seemingly conduces to study by its
immobility, is deceitful; it fixes the mask for a moment, and the
object beneath melts away. Now came a new creation of Swammerdam's.
He not only taught us to see and investigate, but he devised means
for our permanent investigation. By preservative injections he fixed
these ephemeral objects; he compelled time to halt, and forced death
to endure. The Czar Peter, who, a long time afterwards, saw in the
dissecting-room of one of Swammerdam's disciples the beautiful body,
supple and fresh, of a little child, with its exquisite carnation tint,
thought that the rose was living, and could not be prevented from
embracing it.
All this is soon said; but it was long to do. How many attempts! What
miracles of patience, of delicacy, of skilful management! In exact
proportion as one descends the scale of littleness, the insufficiency
of our means proves more and more embarrassing. We can touch nothing
without breaking it. Our large fingers will hold no more: they cast
a shadow, they throw obstacles in our way. Our instruments are too
coarse to seize upon such atoms; therefore we refine them. But then
how can we put the invisible point in an invisible object? The two
terms in sight avoid us. Only one single passion--the unconquerable
love of life and Nature, the undefinable, indescribable tenderness, a
feminine sensibility directed by a masculine, scientific genius--could
succeed in so great an aim. Our Hollander loved the tiny creatures. He
dreaded wounding them so much that he spared the scalpel. He avoided
as far as he could the steel, and preferred the firm but nevertheless
the delicate ivory. He fashioned in it infinitely small instruments,
sharpened by aid of the microscope, which would not work rapidly, and
compelled the student to make his observations with due patience.
His tender respect for Nature found its reward. While still a youth,
and a simple student at Leyden University, he had two strong holds upon
her in her highest and lowest manifestations. He was the first to see
and understand the maternity of the insect and the human maternity.
The latter subject, so delicate and yet so grand--in which he laboured
conjointly with his master at Leyden--I put aside: let us dwell upon
the former. He dissected and described the ovaries of the bee: found
them in the pretended "king;" and proved that she was a queen, or
rather a mother. In like manner he explained the maternity of the ant;
an all-important discovery, which revealed the true mystery of the
superior insect, and initiated us into the real character of these
societies, which are not monarchies, but maternal republics and vast
public nurseries, each of which raises up a people.
The most general fact in the life of insects, and the great law of
their existence, is the Metamorphosis. Changes which in other creatures
are obscure, are in them exceedingly conspicuous. The three ages of the
insect appear to be three creatures. Who would have dared to assert
that the grub, with its heavy luxuriance of digestive organs and its
great hairy feet, was identical with a winged and ethereal being, the
butterfly?
He dared to say, and by the most delicate anatomy he demonstrated, that
the larva, the pupa, and the butterfly represented three conditions of
the same individual, three natural and legitimate evolutions of its
life.
How did learned Europe welcome this novel science of metamorphoses?
That was the question. Swammerdam, young and without authority, without
any position in the academy or university, lived in his cabinet.
Scarcely anything of his works was published during his life, nor even
fifty years afterwards, so that his discoveries might circulate and
advantage all, rather than himself and his fame.
Holland remained indifferent. Eminent professors in the University of
Leyden were opposed to him; and took umbrage at the fact that a simple
student placed himself by his discoveries on a level with them, or even
above them.
The miserable and necessitous condition in which his father left
him was not calculated to recommend him greatly in a country like
Holland. In his costly labours he was supported by the generosity of
his friends. At Leyden it was Van Horn, his professor of anatomy, who
defrayed all his expenses.
At this epoch two illustrious academies were founded,--the Royal
Society of London and the _Académie des Sciences_ of Paris. But the
former, specially inspired by the genius of Harvey, a pupil of Padua,
turned its gaze towards Italy, and addressed its inquiries to the
distinguished and very accurate observer, Malpighi, who furnished at
its request the anatomy of the silkworm. I know not why the Englishmen
turned aside from Holland, and did not also interrogate the genius of
Swammerdam.
He was honoured only in France. It was here, in the neighbourhood of
Paris, that he made the first public demonstration of his discovery.
His friend Thévenot, the famous traveller and publisher of travels,
collected around him at Issy different classes of _savants_, linguists,
orientalists, and, before all, inquiring students of Nature. Such was
the origin of the _Académie des Sciences_. One might justly say that
the revelation of the illustrious Hollander inaugurated its cradle.
A Frenchman rescued from the hands of the Inquisition the last
manuscripts of Galileo. A Frenchman also--Thévenot--supported
Swammerdam with his purse and credit. He was desirous of establishing
him at Paris. On the other hand, the Grand-Duke of Tuscany invited him
to Florence. But the fate of Galileo was too strong a warning. Even in
France there was little safety. The mystic Morin was burned at Paris in
1664; the very year in which Molière performed the first acts of his
"Tartuffe." Swammerdam, who was then residing there, might have been
present at both spectacles.
He himself, notwithstanding his positivism, showed very singular
tendencies towards mysticism. The more deeply he entered into details,
the more eagerly did he long to reascend to the general source of love
and life; an impotent effort which consumed him. Already, at the age of
thirty-two, excessive toil, chagrin, and religious melancholy brought
him to the grave. From his early years he had suffered from the fevers
so common in Holland, that land of swamp and morass, and had not paid
due attention to them. He studied with his microscope every day from
dawn till noon; the remainder of the day he wrote. And for his studies
he preferred the summer days, with their strong light and burning
sunshine. Then he would remain, with his head bare that he might not
lose the smallest ray, frequently until deluged and bathed in sweat.
His eyesight grew very weak.
He was already in a feeble condition when, in 1669, he published in a
preliminary essay the principle of the metamorphosis of insects. He
was sure of being immortal; but so much the more in danger of dying
of hunger. His father thenceforth withdrew from him all assistance.
Swammerdam by his discoveries (as of the lymphatic vessels and hernias)
had very considerably promoted the progress of medicine, and even of
surgery; but he was not a physician. From a spirit of obedience he had
attempted to practise: he could not continue, and fell ill. He was now
without a home. His father shut up his house, retired to live with his
son-in-law, and bade Swammerdam provide for himself, and lodge where
he would. A wealthy friend had often solicited him to reside with him.
When expelled from the paternal roof, he made an effort to seek out
this friend and remind him of his offer; but he remembered it no longer.
Misfortunes now accumulated upon his head. Poor and infirm, and
dragging himself along the streets of Amsterdam with a large collection
which he knew not where to store away, he received another terrible
shock--the ruin of his country. The earth sunk under his feet.
It was the fatal year of 1672, when Holland seemed crushed by the
invasion of Louis XIV. Assuredly his fatherland had not spoiled
Swammerdam; but nevertheless it was the native home of science, of free
reason, the asylum of human thought. And lo! she sank, engulfed by the
hosts of the French; engulfed in the ocean which she had summoned to
her assistance. She lived only by committing suicide. Did she live?
Yes; but to be thenceforth no more than the shadow of her former
greatness.
[Illustration]
The infinite melancholy of such a change has had its painter and its
poet in Ruysdaël, who was born and who died in Swammerdam's time,
and, like him, at the age of forty. When I contemplate in the Louvre
the inestimable picture which that Museum possesses of him, the one
leads me to think of the other. The little man who followed the gloomy
route of the dunes at the approach of the storm reminds me of my
insect-hunter; and the sublime marine picture of the palisade in the
red-brown waters, chafing so terribly, and electrified by the tempest,
seems a dramatic expression of the moral tempests which poor Swammerdam
experienced when he wrote "The Ephemera"--"among tears and sobs."
The Ephemera is the fly which is born but to die, living a single hour
of love.
But Swammerdam did not enjoy that hour; and it seems as if he spent
his too brief life in a state of complete isolation. At the age
of thirty-six he was already drawing near his end. The depths of
imagination and universal tenderness in his nature could not be
alimented by the barren controversies of the age. In this condition
there accidentally fell into his hand an unknown work,--a woman's
book. This sweet voice spoke to his very soul, and somewhat consoled
him. It was one of the _opuscula_ of a celebrated mystic of that age,
Mademoiselle Bourignon.
Poor as was Swammerdam, he undertook a pilgrimage to Germany, where she
resided, and went to see his consoler. He found in the journey a very
real assistance in escaping at the least from his contention with the
_savants_, his rivals, in forgetting every collision, and in remitting
to God alone his defence and his discoveries.
He longed to withdraw himself into a profound solitude. For this
purpose it was necessary he should dispose of the dear and precious
cabinet on which he had spent his days, in which he had enshrined
his heart, and which had at length become a portion of himself. He
must tear himself from it. At this cost he calculated that he would
obtain a revenue sufficient for his wants; but the very loss and
separation he longed for he could not undergo. Neither in Holland nor
in France could buyers be found for the cabinet. Perhaps the wealthy
amateurs, who think of nothing but empty _éclat_, did not find in it
the glittering species which give us a child's pleasure. The great
inventor's collection offered things more serious: the logical order
and arrangement of his discoveries; that eloquent and living method
which had guided his genius to new achievements. Alas! it perished,
scattered abroad.
Having been for a long time ill, in 1680, either through weakness, or
a disgust for life and men, he shut himself up, and would not go out
any more. He bequeathed his manuscripts to his faithful and life-long
friend, whom, when dying, he himself styled the "incomparable,"--the
Frenchman Thévenot. He died aged forty-three.
What really killed him? His own science. The too abrupt revelation
wounded and seized upon him. If Pascal saw an imaginary abyss opening
before him, what would happen to this Dutch Pascal, who saw the real
abyss and the limitless profundity of the unexpected world? It was not
a matter of a decreasing scale of abstract greatnesses or of inorganic
atoms, but of the successive envelopment and prodigious movements of
beings which are the one in the other. For the little we see, each
animal is a tiny planet, a small world inhabited by animals still
more diminutive, which in their turn are inhabited by others very
much smaller. And this, too, without end or rest, except from the
powerlessness of our senses and the imperfection of optical science.
All men now began to fathom, and incessantly toil in, that infinity
which the hand of Swammerdam had opened up to them. From that time
Europe laboured therein with diverse aims. Leuwenhoek, precipitating
himself upon it, discovered and conquered new worlds. The Italian
positivist, Malpighi, showed perhaps the highest boldness. He proved
that the insect has a heart--a heart which beats like man's. One has
not far to go to endow it also with a soul. Swammerdam, who was living
then, was terrified by the fact. He drew back affrighted from the
declivity; he wished to keep his footing, and was fain to doubt the
existence of the heart.
It seemed to him that the science to which he had given the first
impulse, which he had launched on the flood of his discoveries, was
conducting him to something great and terrible which he shrank from
seeing: like one who, adrift on the enormous sea of fresh water which
dashes headlong in the Niagara Falls, perceives himself impelled by a
calm but invincible and mighty movement--whither? He will not, and he
dare not, think!
[Illustration]
[Illustration: II.--THE MICROSCOPE.]
[Illustration]