The Insect

THE PURSUIT.
See [page 158].

THE INSECT

BY

JULES MICHELET.

WITH 140 ILLUSTRATIONS BY GIACOMELLI,
ILLUSTRATOR OF "THE BIRD."

LONDON:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;
EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.
1875.

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."

[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.

DRAWN BY H. GIACOMELLI.

A HOME AMONG THE MOUNTAINS.

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.

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.

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.

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!"

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!

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The power of this locality does not lie in its historical, any more than in its artistic associations.[C]

[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.

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.

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.

[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]

[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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!"

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

METAMORPHOSIS.

1.—TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD.

CHAPTER I.

TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD.[F]

[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 woul 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.

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.

II.—COMPASSION.

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.

"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.

"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.

[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.