To love the child and the future; to toil in view of time and of that which as yet is not; to exhaust their vitality and die of work, that posterity may have less cause to labour,—a noble ideal, assuredly, of society, wherever it may be. One can well understand it in those who have time before them, and a life to make use of, like men and bees. But that this insect which has no time, which perishes in the evening, should love the time that will never be its own, should immolate its little life for the sake of the life that is to come, should devote to the child of to-morrow its solitary day, is a sacrifice peculiar to the wasp: it is original and sublime!There is not a minute to lose; and the mother incessantly increases the burden. Besides the female workers, she produces some few males who do not work, whose little and very brief function scarcely prevails as an excuse for their inactivity. Among those tragical and serious insect-races, Nature, as if to divert herself a moment by a comical distraction, has made the poor little males ordinarily squat and obese, innocent little Falstaffs, who are guarded like a seraglio of unimportant servants. The caricature is complete in the case of the male bee, which, alleging that it neither knows how to glean abroad nor to build at home, passes the time in humming before its bee-hive (like our young cigar-smoking idlers).Among the wasps life is so tense, burning, and keen, that the very males, slothful as they may be, dare not abandon themselves to completeindolence. Yonder ladies, who do not jest, and who have stings of which the males are deprived, might look upon their idleness sourly, and stir them up with dagger-thrusts. So they have conceived the idea of working without work; they have the air of doing something,—a small part of the domestic labour, cleaning, and sweeping. If any one dies, the ceremony of interment provides them with a pretence; with the effort of carrying a slight weight they sweat and groan, and several put their shoulders together. In a word, they are very ridiculous. And I am confident that their terrible companions laugh at them.Theirs truly is an onerous undertaking. Twenty or thirty thousand mouths to feed, is a very extensive household. If they were only gifted with the prudent activity of bees, their community would perish of famine. What they need is a violent, furious, murderous rapidity,—all the appearances of an immense gluttony,—all the love and devotion which Sparta had for the art of thieving. But the secret of their power, which is plainly discernible in them if we observe them but a moment, is their magnificent insolence, their superb contempt for all other beings, and their firm conviction that the whole world is their inheritance. If we consider, it is true, their wonderful energy, compared with which lions and tigers are mere races of sheep,—and their prodigious yearly effort of improvisation,—and, finally, their absolute devotion to the public welfare,—we shall not find in all nature creatures relatively of greater power, nor which possess a clearer right to value themselves highly.Our modern minds, however, find a difficulty in admiring the violence of the antique virtues. Their boundless love of the commonwealth is pushed to an almost criminal excess. Who has not marked with how ferocious an ardour they hunt the bees! Yet certain species of wasps can make honey; but only in fine climates, which, knowing no winter, allow the wasps an interval of peaceful labour. Here the case is different. Their life, cut short in six months, compels them to resort to measures of cruel simplicity. Honey is needed for their children. Thereupon they attack the bee, and take it prisoner; with their pliable body, whose waist is a mere thread, they so curve the extremity as to stab the prisoner underneath with their deadly sting;when thus stricken, the wasp saws it with three strokes of its teeth, and leaves the head and corselet to palpitate for some time longer, while the belly, filled with honey, the barbarian carries off as a gift for its young.It feels no remorse. The death of others apparently does not cause a pang to this creature, which knows that it too will die to-morrow.What do I say?Our virgins of Tauris do not wait until Nature lays upon them her heavy hand and the ignoble leaden shroud of winter. They have borne the sword; they will die by the sword. The republic ends in a general massacre. The children, recently, ay, and still, so dear, are slain; dilatory children whom cold and want would kill to-morrow; their sisters, aunts, and affectionate nurses securing them at least the advantage of dying by the hands of those who love them. This latter gift, a speedy death, is freely bestowed on numerous unfortunates who had no thought of soliciting it,—on little useless males, even on young workers who were born late, and cannot boast of a constitution sufficiently strong to resist the winter.Let it not be said that the heroic race of wasps is ever seen to request the humiliating hospitality of the smoky roofs of man, and, for the sake of living a little longer, to expose its melancholy remains in the shambles of a spider's web! No, children! No, sisters! Die! The republic is immortal. Some one of us, favoured by the yearly miracle and great lottery of Nature, will be called upon to recommence the entire work. And if but one remains, it is enough. Should the world perish, a single true heart would suffice to re-create it.VI.—THE BEES: A TOMB AT PÈRE-LACHAISE.CHAPTER VI."THE BEES" OF VIRGIL.All modern writers have triumphed over the ignorance displayed by the poet Virgil in his fable of Aristæus, who draws life out of the womb of death, and causes his bees to spring from the entrails of immolated bulls.[Q]But, for myself, I have never laughed at it. I know, I feel, that every word of this great sacred poet has a weighty value, an authority which I would designate as that of an augur and a pontiff. And the fourth book of theGeorgics, particularly, was a holy work, issuing from the inmost recesses of the heart. It was a pious homage rendered to sorrow and to friendship; an eulogium on the proscribed Gallus, Virgil's dearest friend. This eulogium, undoubtedly, was struck out by the prudent Mæcenas; and Virgil then substituted his Resurrection of the Bees: a song full of immortality, which, in the mystery of Nature's transformations, embodies our highest hope, that death is not a death, but the beginning of a new life.[Q]The passage to which Michelet refers is found in the fourth book of theGeorgics, and is thus translated by Dryden:—"The secret in an easy method lies:Select four brawny bulls for sacrifice,Which on Lycæus graze, without a guide;Add four fair heifers yet in yoke untried:For these, four altars in their temple rear,And then adore the woodland powers with prayer.From the slain victims pour the streaming blood,And leave their bodies in the shady wood:Nine mornings thence, Lethean poppy bring,T' appease the manes of the poet's king:And, to propitiate his offended pride,A fatted calf and a black ewe provide:This finished, to the former woods repair.His mother's precepts he performs with care;The temple visits, and adores with prayer.Four altars raises, from his herds he calls,For slaughter, four the fairest of his bulls;Four heifers from his female store he took,All fair, and all unknowing of the yoke.Nine mornings thence, with sacrifice and prayers,The powers atoned, he to the grove repairs.Behold a prodigy! for, from withinThe broken bowels, and the bloated skin,A buzzing noise of bees his ears alarms,Straight issue through the sides assaulting swarms;Dark as a cloud they make a wheeling flight,Then on a neighbouring tree, descending light:Like a large cluster of black grapes they show,And make a large dependence from the bough."Would he have descended to the empty pleasure of inserting a popular fable in that consecrated portion of his poem which had been occupied by his friend's name? I will never believe it. The fable, if it be one, must necessarily possess some serious foundation, and a truthful side. We are not dealing here with the worldly poet, the urbane singer, like Horace, the elegant favourite of Rome. It is not the charming improvisatore of the court of Augustus, the gay and indiscreet Ovid, who betrays the loves of the gods. Virgil is the child of Earth, the pure and noble figure of the old Italian peasant, the religious interrogator, the reverently simple interpreter of the secrets of Nature.But he may be mistaken in his words,—that he may have ill-applied the names,—this is not impossible; but so far as the facts are concerned, it is an entirely different matter: whatever he describes, I firmly believe he saw.An accident threw me into the way of understanding the poet's intention. On a certain memorable day, my wife and I repaired to the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, to visit before winter the burial-places of my family, the tomb which reunites my father and his grandson. This latter had been born to me in the very year which terminated the first half of the present century, and I had named him Lazarus in my devout hope of the Awakening of the Nations. I had imagined that I saw upon his countenance a gleam, as it were, of the strong and tender thoughts which throbbed in my heart at that last moment of my teaching. Oh, vanity of human hopes! This flower of my autumn, which I yearned to animate with the potent vitality that had been of too tardy development in myself, disappeared almost in the act of birth. And there was no help but to deposit my child at the feet of my father, who had already been four years dead. Two cypresses which I then planted in that ill-omened nook of clay have acquired in the brief interval an extraordinary growth. Two, nay, three times taller than myself, they clothe their vigorous branches with a young, rich foliage which ever points towards heaven. If, with an effort, you lower them, they rear themselves again, in all their pride and strength, flourishing with a marvellous pith, as if they had drank from the earth where I planted them the precious treasure of my past and my unconquerable aspiration.While revolving these thoughts I ascended the hill, and before arriving at the tomb, which is situated in the upper alley, I made this observation,—that though I had on so many occasions frequented this melancholy and beautiful spot, having been in earlier life the most assiduous visitor of the dead, I had scarcely ever seen any insects in the Père-Lachaise. Hardly even at the great epoch of the flowers, when everything is covered with bloom, and numbers of the old deserted sepulchres are embowered in roses, I had not remarked that animal life abounded there as it abounds elsewhere. Very few birds, and very few insects. Why? I could not say.While making this reflection, we had finished climbing the hill; we stood in front of the tomb. And there, with admiration, with a species of astonishment, I found a surprising contradiction of what I had just been saying.About a score of very brilliant bees hovered above the little garden-plot,—which was narrow as a shroud, stripped of bloom and bare of flowers, and saddened by the influence of the season. In the whole cemetery remained only the last autumnal flowers,—some withering and half-leafless Bengal roses. The spot where we stood, full of new buildings, masonry, and plaster, was an Arabia Deserta. Finally, on the tomb, towards the head of the grandfather, flourished only a few sickly white asters, and over my child the cypresses. It must needs have been that these asters, in their cold clayey soil, nourished either by the whispers of the air or the spirits of the earth, treasured up a modicum of honey, since the little gleaners resorted thither for their harvest.I am not superstitious. I believe in but one miracle, the constant miracle of the Providence of Nature. I experienced nevertheless how powerfully the mind may be affected by a lively surprise of the heart. I felt an emotion of gratefulness at the sight of the mysterious little creatures animating this solitude, whither, alas! I myself came but rarely. The increasing absorption of my work, in which day pressed upon day,—the palpitating flame of the forge where one forges more and more quickly, in the doubt whether one will be living to-morrow,—all this kept us further from the tombs than in the days of our dreamy youth. I was much affected by seeing my place supplied. In my absence the bees peopled and vivified the spot, consoled, and perhaps rejoiced my dead. My father may have smiled on them in his kindly indulgence; they may have been the happiness and first delight of my child.Selfish motives could not have led them thither; there was so little for them to take. Nevertheless, when we suspended to the cypress-boughs the garlands ofimmortelleswe had brought with us, they were curious enough to ascertain if there was any treasure in the newflowers. The hard, prickly corolla soon repulsed them, and sent them back to the faded asters. I felt very sad, and said to them:—"Late, very late, my friends, you come, and to the tomb of the poor! Why am I not able to recompense you with a banquet of friendship, which should sustain and warm you during the first cold breezes, already blowing on these icy heights, so exposed to the northern wind!"As if they had understood me, their movements afforded an exact reply. Some I saw, with their little limbs skilfully bent forward, rubbing their backs in the sun; they longed to absorb into every vein its genial radiance. They made the most of that brief hour when the sun revolves too quickly; one scarcely feels it before it has gone! Their significant gesture plainly said:—"Oh, what a cold morning we have had! Let us make haste! In less than an hour commences the equally inclement evening, the frozen night,—nay, who knows? the winter! and then our death is at hand."They were still full of life, however; marvellously trim and bright,—I may even say radiant,—under their illuminated wings, all shot with gold. I never saw more beautiful insects; insects more clearly inspired by a higher life. One thing embarrassed me; namely, that they were too handsome, and too shining, inasmuch as they did not wear their industrial attire, their velvety coat, their pincers, and their brushes. And, finally, I discovered another circumstance: that they had not the four wings of the bee, but only two.I perceived my mistake. It was these insects which had deceived Virgil. Like myself, he thought them bees, and so he erroneously called them. Réaumur confesses that for a moment even he was deceived by them.But the fact related by Virgil is not inaccurate. We can understand how keenly it would impress the minds of the ancients, and how they would see in it a type of resurrection. They seem the daughters of death. Of the three ages of their existence, they spend the first in morbid and deadly waters, fatal to all other creatures, which permit the escape of the residuum of life in dissolution; with ingenious tenderness, Nature there preserves them, maintains them alive, and enables them to breathe in the very midst of death.Their second period is passed under the earth,—in the shades,—where they sleep their chrysalis-like slumber.But when once they have quitted the place of sepulture, they are fully compensated for their previous abasement; a light aërial life, exempt from the bee's incessant toil, and glorified by golden wings, such as the latter never boasts of, is bestowed upon them, with the gift, moreover, of gentle manners. Innocent, and without stings, they live their season of love under the sun and among the flowers. Far from blushing at their origin,—these noble Virgilian bees!—they do not disdain the flowers of the cemetery, they keep company with the dead, and for the living collect that honey of the soul,—the hope of the future!VII.—THE BEE IN THE FIELDS.CHAPTER VII.THE BEE IN THE FIELDS."When the plant attains to the flower, the climax of its existence,—when it assumes its symmetrical outlines, its perfumes, its colours, and a certain degree of animal irritability,—it emerges from its condition of isolation, and connects itself more closely with the great Whole. But it remains fixed in one place, without any reciprocation of love. The animal, on the contrary, is movement itself, and manifests its joy in living by its capricious mobility. Then the captive plant casts a glance of amicable confidence on the animal's life of freedom, offers it the abundance of its substance, and for sole reward expects that it will achieve its fecundation.Then, too, as an elder brother might do, theanimal assists the plant, and affords it in its dependent state the succour of liberty. But, for this purpose, the animal must be completely free, I would say winged, bound up with the vegetable life which was its kindly nurse. Behold the insect, love's messenger and mediator to the plants, their propagator, and the zealous instrument of their fertilization."With a maternal care, the plant provides a place in its own body where the insect's egg may be developed. It nourishes the young larva which as yet is incapable of action, but which, in due time, emerging from its vegetation in the egg, will move freely to and fro, and seek its own sustenance. The creative fecundity of the plant easily replaces whatever the insect has extracted from it; and thus both animal and plant harmoniously attain to the climax of existence."The animal, from its low sphere of nutrition, rises to a more elevated sphere, the pure need of motion, and the pursuit of love. The plant, it is true, does not soar so high; but its flower is a bright dream of a higher state of being,—a dream which, though fugitive, proceeds, by means of its fruits, to secure the conservation of the species. The blossoming plant and the winged insect reach, as if by concert, an analogous development, manifested by their colours, their beautiful symmetrical forms, and their refinement of substance. Papilionaceous flowers, for instance, might almost be called insects-become-plants."This harmonic existence marches forward with the same rhythm as the moments of the day. Each flower to whose juice an insect is assigned expands at the hour when its life is most intense, and shuts at the hour of its repose. Thus they feel their unity; love attracts them one towards the other. Here the plant plays the part of the female, the fixed basis of creation, absorbed in nature. The insect resembles the tiny male who frees himself from earth and curvets in the air; recalled, nevertheless, by the plant to the oneness of the terrestrial whole. It is a winged anther, which diffuses life among the flowers."[R][R]Burdach, bk. ii., c. 3.What the wind accomplishes hap-hazard, flinging abroad in capricious showers the generative elements, the insect performs through love,—the direct love of its species, theindirect and confused love of the amiable auxiliary which welcomes and nourishes it, which will hereafter nourish also its eggs and continue its maternal work. Its action, therefore, is not external and superficial, like that of the wind; it is internal and penetrating. The ardent, curious insect will not suffer itself to be checked by the light and trivial obstacles with which vegetable modesty surrounds the threshold of its mysteries; it boldly dashes aside the veil, and enters into the inmost economy of the flower. It seizes, it pillages, and it carries away, assured that all it does will be approved. The flower, in its powerless expansion, rejoices only too keenly in the deeds of these thievish liberators, who will transport its desire whither it would fain transport itself. "Take," she says, "and take yet more!" The insect then exhausts its utmost effort; each of its hairs becomes a tiny magnetic dart, which attracts and wishes to attract. Would that it might be enveloped in these points, and over all its surface (like the lightning conductor) concentrate this treasure of vegetable electricity! Such is its aspiration. An aspiration realized in the higher insect, in the bee, which bristles everywhere with a magnetic apparatus,—the bee, predestined by the tools peculiar to it, both to its little individual industry of honey-making, and to the grand, general, universal industry of the fecundation, of plants.It is an admirable creature, and what the great physiologist has just said of the loves of the flower and the insect applies particularly to it; except with this notable distinction on the part of the bee, that it robs the flower only of that noble luxuriance of life which it lavishes upon love. The bee does not establish its cradle in the plant that the young may thence derive its sole sustenance, and gradually devour its nurse. Instead of depositing its egg, and exposing it to the hazards of the vegetable existence, as the butterfly does with its future caterpillar, the bee economizes the plant, and, without attacking it, borrows from it the precious materials which its art works up into palaces of alabaster, amber, or of gold, where its children will in due time repose.The innocency of the bee is one of its lofty attributes, no less than its miraculous art. Its sting is simply a defensive and indispensable weapon, not against man-with whom, of its own accord, it does not wage war—but against the cruel wasps, its terrible enemies. The bee, on the other hand, injures none. It does not live by death; its inoffensive life does not demand the sacrifice of other lives. It stimulates innumerable existences; it vivifies and fecundates them. There is no uncultivated desert, no wild, bare region which it does not animate,—where it does not infuse fresh vigour into the languishing vegetation, urging the plants to bud, watching over and inspecting them. It reproaches them with their slothfulness; and as soon as they open to the influence of love-these poor dumb virgins!—it establishes between them the requisite interpreters, carries off in its murmurs their pollen and perfume, and harmonizes the aromas which are their blossoms of thought.This process begins in the month of March. When an uncertain but already potent sun reawakes the sleeping sap, the tiny flowers of the fields, the wild violet, the Easter-daisy of the sward, the buttercup of the hedgerow, the precocious gillyflower, expanding, perfume the air. But their expansion lasts only for a moment. Barely open at noon, by three o'clock they fold themselves up again, and veil their shivering stamens. In this brief interval of gentle heat you may see a little wan-looking creature, completely clad but very chilly, which also ventures to unfurl its wings. The bee quits its city, in the knowledge that the manna is ready for it and its little ones.A little matter then, it is true, but most cradles are empty at this epoch. The great fecundity of the mother bee still lurks concealed in her bosom. The regular and rapid incubation, which might suffice to create a world, will not commence until a much later period,—the sunny time of May.How admirable is this agreement! Most of the shivering flowers, like the shivering bee, wait a more equable season before they bare to the sun their corolla, too delicate to endure the caprices of April.It is pleasant to watch the intercourse between these charming creatures. The docile flower inclines and yields to the insect's unquietmovements. The shrine which it had closed against the winds, and the inquisitive glance, it opens to the beloved bee, which, impregnated by it, speeds afar on her message of love. The delicious precautions which Nature has taken to veil from profane eyes the mysteries enacted therein, do not delay for a moment the audacious seeker, who is completely at home, so to speak, and has no fear of being considered an intruder. One flower, for example, is protected by a couple of petals which join together in the form of an arch (as, for instance, the iris on the border of the waters, which in this manner defends from the rain its delicate little lovers). Another, like the sweet-pea, dons a kind of helmet, whose vizor must be lifted by its suitor.The bee takes its stand at the bottom of these recesses worthy of the fairies, covered with the softest tapestry, under fantastic pavilions, with walls of topaz, and roofs of sapphire. Paltry comparisons these, for they are borrowed from dead gems, while the flowers live, and feel, and desire, and wait. And if the happy conqueror of the little hidden kingdoms,—if the imperious violator of their innocent barriers, the insect, mingles and confuses everything, they readily whisper its pardon, overwhelm it with their sweetnesses, and load it with their honey.There are favoured localities, and there are happy hours, where and when the bee, while gathering its harvest, accomplishes—chaste toiler!—myriads of marriages. On the coasts, for example, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the savage sea, where one wouldhardly expect to meet with such pacific idyls, should there be but one shadowy, secure, and warm recess, Nature never fails, in the warm and humid mildness of that maternal retreat, to create a little chosen world; and there the flower distils to the bee its sweetest nectar,—there the bee assuages the impetuous yearning of the flower.Genial, bland, and still is the hour which precedes the evening. Caressed by the last rays of the sun, whose warmth it preserves within its bosom, besprinkled in its corolla by the light and already radiant mist, the flower becomes conscious of two lives and a twofold electricity; it is urged to love, and it loves! The stamens blaze forth, and scatter abroad their cloud of incense. Then at that charming and sacred hour let the mediatrix come; let the Samaritan bee appear! Let her collect the sweet odours dispersed by the evening breeze; let her redivide them with wise forethought, giving here and taking there! The blossoms are no longer solitary; through the agency of the bee, the meadow has been converted into a society where all understand and all love each other, initiated into the hymeneal rites by their friendly little high-priest.It is not a less important duty for the bee to rise at an early hour and be present at the moment when the flower—which has slumbered under the penetrating dew (exhaled by its divine master, father, and lover, the sun)—awakes, and recovers its consciousness. Struck by the sympathetic beam, it no longer resists; it gives up the softened essence of its choicest sweetness; it becomes, as it were, a tiny fountain, which distils honey drop by drop. Opportunely comes the bee; its work here is very nearly completed: the sweet treasure, finely prepared in that hour of perfection, will entail but little labour. It bears it off to its children: "Eat; it is the soul of the blossom."But in the noonday heat will she remain inactive? The burning sun and dry air have withered up the blossoms of the plain. But those of the woods, sheltered by the fresh cool shades, present their cups brimming over; those of the murmurous brooks, and silent and deep marshes, are then instinct with vitality. The forget-me-not dreams, and weeps tiny tears of nectar. Even the white water-lily, in her pale virginity, yields a rare treasure of love."Night does not injure the bee, but cold is extremely harmful. Such is her conscientiousness, that, in order to avoid losing a day's labour in our brief summers, she takes too little heed of the sudden returns of winter, of the sharp caprices of the north wind, which sometimes visit us on the finest days. Insects of inferior intelligence, but also less industrious, perfectly understand the secret of escaping its influence. In their prudent idleness they say to one another, 'Tomorrow! Let us keep holiday!' And they patiently wait for one, or two, or more days, until the wicked spirit of the north has abandoned its evil mood. But those who have charge of souls, and a large family to maintain,—those who know that a mild winter may chance to keep their offering awake, and, accordingly, famished, will hesitate before they take a single day's repose."And, therefore, on the cold mornings of a June not less bleak than March, they do not fear to rush boldly into the fields. But they are more valiant than robust; the cold catches them, and I have known them drag their limbs to my windows, faltering and half-paralyzed. They have made no attempt to escape; they have suffered themselves to be taken prisoners. They were in a scared condition; still bearing the signs of their courageous and indefatigable work, impregnated with the dust of flowers, and their little, baskets loaded and overloaded with pollen. They seemed to say:—'We are no sluggards. On the contrary, in the cold hours of morning, when many are still asleep, we have already completed a day's work. But, alas, the times are so hard, and the north wind is so keen! Behold us half-frozen. A moment's hospitality, I pray you.'"Who would not respect the misfortune of such blameless and over-eager workers? I lent them not only a roof, and the warmth of an apartment closed to the wind and open to the sun, but immediately improvised for them a friendly repast. Where? At the bottom of a sugar-basin."The chilly creatures, having revived at a genial beam their lost warmth, and restored to a good condition all the little electric world of hairs with which they bristle, began the exploration of their temporary prison, and were agreeably surprised to find the crystal a dining-hall.With a good appetite, seating themselves at the table, they attacked a fragment of sugar, and sucked up with their proboscis all the sweetness they could find. When they had finished their repast, and were completely restored, were fluttering to and fro, demanding the way out, I set them free, without causing them to lose one moment of a day already far advanced. With a rapid flight, charmed by the noonday sun, they returned to their occupations, distinctly humming:—'Farewell, madam, and many thanks!'"VIII.—THE BEES AS ARCHITECTS.CHAPTER VIII.THE BEES AS ARCHITECTS: THE CITY.If the wasp's nest resemble Sparta, the bee-hive is the veritable Athens of the Insect World. There, all is art. The people—the artist-élite of the people—incessantly create two things; on the one hand, the City, the country,—on the other, the Universal Mother, whose task it is not only to perpetuate the race, but to become its idol, itsfetish, the living god of the community.The bees share with the wasps, the ants, and all the sociable insects, the disinterested life of aunts and sisters,—laborious virgins, who devote themselves entirely to an adoptive maternity.But from these analogous peoples the bee differs in the necessity it is under of creating a national idol, the love of which impels it to work.All this has been long misunderstood. It was at first supposed that this State was a monarchy,that it possessed a king. Not at all; the king is a female. Thereupon one is driven to say,This female is a queen. Another error. Not only does she not govern, or reign, or control, but in certain conjunctions she is governed, and sometimes even placed in private confinement. She is at once something more and something less than a queen. She is an object of legal and public adoration; I should say legal and constitutional, for this adoration is not so blind but that the idol, in some cases, as we shall see, may be treated very severely."Then, at bottom, the government will be democratic?" Yes; if we take into consideration the unanimous devotion of the people, the spontaneous labour of everybody. No one commands. But, nevertheless, you can clearly see that in every higher work an intelligent body of theélite, an aristocracy of artists, takes the lead. The city is not built or organized by the entire people, but by a special class, a kind of guild or corporation. While the mob of bees seeks the common nourishment abroad, certain much larger bees, the wax-makers, elaborate the wax, prepare it, shape it, and skilfully make use of it. Like the medieval freemasons, this respectable corporation of architects toils and builds on the principles of a profound geometry. Like those of the old days, they arethe masters of the living stone. But our worthy bees are far more deserving of the title! The materials which they employ they have made, have elaborated by their vital action, and vivified with their internal juices.Neither the honey nor the wax is a vegetable substance. Those little light bees which go in quest of the essence of the flowers bring it back already transformed and enriched by their virginal life. Sweet and pure, it passes from their mouth to the mouth of their elder sisters. These, the grave wax-makers, having received the aliment vivified and endowed with the charming sweetness which is, as it were, the soul of the race, elaborate it in their turn, and communicate to it their own peculiar life,—solidity. Wise and sedentary, they work up the liquid into a sedentary honey, a honey of the second quality, a kind of reflected honey. This is not all: the substance twice elaborated, and twice penetrated with animal juice, they incessantly moisten with their saliva, when using it so as to render it softer for working, but more tenacious afterwards.Was I wrong, then, in saying that this construction is truly one of "the living stones"? There is not an atom of the materials which is not three times impregnated with life. Who shall say of yonder hive whether the flower or the bee has furnished the greater part? The latter has certainly contributed an important share. Here, the home of the people is the people's substance and visible soul; from themselves they have extracted their city, and their city is, in truth, themselves. Bee and hive, it is one and the same thing.But let us observe them at work.Alone, in the centre of the still empty and to be created hive, the learned wax-maker advances. From beneath its wings it delicately extracts a thin slab of wax, and conveys it to its mouth, where it is well kneaded and pounded, and drawn out into the shape of a ribbon. Eight strips are in this wise furnished, wrought, and absorbed; and the result is eight little blocks, which the bee lays down as the first beams of the future edifice, the foundations of the new city.Others continue the work without moving too far from the place where it was begun. If any unintelligent labourer does not follow the prescribed plan, the mistress-bees, experienced and accomplished, are on the spot to detect any error, and immediately remedy it.In the solid mass, well placed and skilfully squared, where such numbers have harmoniously deposited their contribution of wax, an excavation must now be made, and some degree of form attained. A single bee again detaches herself from the crowd, and with her horny tongue, teeth, and paws, she contrives to hollow out the solid matter like a reversed vault. When fatigued she retires, and others take up the work of modelling. In couples they shape off and thin the walls. The only point to be remembered is a skilful management of their thickness. But how do they appreciate this? Who or what warns them the moment a stroke too much would break an opening in the partition? They never take the trouble to make a tour of their work and examine it from the other side. Their eyes are useless to them; they judge of everything by their antennæ, which are their plumb-line and compass. They feel about, and by an infinitely delicate touch recognize the elasticity of the wax, perhaps by the sound it renders, anddetermine whether it is safe to excavate it, or whether they must stop short, and not push their mining operations further.The building, as everybody knows, is destined to serve two ends. The cells are generally used in summer as cradles, in winter as magazines of pollen and honey,—a granary of abundance for the republic. Each vessel is closed and sealed with a waxen lid, aclôturereligiously respected by all the people, who take for their subsistence only a single comb,—and when that comb is finished pass on to another, but always with extreme reserve and sobriety.It has been said and repeated that the construction is absolutely uniform. Buffon goes so far as to pretend that the cell is but the identical form of the bee, which posts itself in the wax, and by the friction of its body, a blind manœuvre, obtains an impress of itself, a hollow, an identical cell. A baseless hypothesis, which the least reflection would show to be improbable, even if observation did not contradict it.In reality, their work is extremely various, and diversified in numerous different ways.In the first place, the combs are pierced in the centre by corridors or little tunnels, which do away with the necessity of traversing two sides. Economists in everything, the bees are specially economical of time.Secondly, the form of the cells is by no means identical. They prefer the hexagon,—the form which is best adapted to secure the greatest possible number of cells in the smallest area. But they do not slavishly bind themselves to this form. The first comb which they attach to the framework would cling to it very insecurely, and only by its projecting edges, if it were composed of six-sided cells. They therefore make it with five sides only; and fashion it of pentagonal cells with broad bases, which attach themselves solidly to the wood on a continuous line. The whole is agglutinated and sealed, not with wax, but with their gum, orpropolis, which, as it dries, becomes hard as iron.The great royal cellules, or cradles of the future mothers, which may be seen by the side of the combs, are not six-sided, but of the form of an oblong egg,—which secures the royal favourites considerable ease, and a great facility of development.Finally, you may, with a little attention, detect important differencesamong the ordinary hexagonal cells, though at the first glance they all seem alike. They are small for the industrious gleaners, larger for the artistic wax-makers, and largest for the males. This size is generally obtained by means of a little rounded fragment which is deposited in the bottom, and renders it slightly circular,—I was about to say pot-bellied (ventru). As the house, so the tenant; the male will come into the world a squat, obese figure,—predestined to this form by that of its cradle.Thus, of their own accord, they vary the configuration and extent of the cellules. And they vary them yet more, according to the obstacles they encounter. If room be denied them, they reduce the size of their hexagons in due proportion and with extreme address. This fact Huber verified by some ingenious experiments. He bethought himself of deranging their operations by placing, instead of wood, a plate of glass against the wall of the hive where they were building up their cells. From the distance they saw this smooth shining crystal, to which nothing could be fixed; and taking their measures accordingly, they curved their cake in such a manner that it went past the glass and joined on to the wood. But, to carry out the alteration, it became necessary to change the diameter of the cells; to enlarge that of the convex portion, and diminish that of the concave. A delicate problem! and yet it was readily solved by the skilful architects.In mid-winter, says Huber again, in their season of inertia, an over-heavy slab of wax fell away, but was checkeden routeby the cakes beneath. An avalanche seemed imminent! But the bees invented buttresses and barriers in strong mastic, which, supporting the fallen cake and propping up the sides of the hive, prevented the dangerous ruin from dragging down the inner edifice. Then, to prevent the occurrence of similar misfortunes, they created some novel architectural works in the shape of flying buttresses, bulwarks, pillars, cross-beams, and the like.Novel!Ay, this is a sufficient refutation of Buffon's theory. That machines or automata could invent, is a thing not easily explicable. Yet the sovereign authority of this great dictator of natural history would have prevailed, perhaps, over facts and over observation, if,towards the close of the last century, the bees themselves, by an unforeseen stroke, had not definitively cut the Gordian knot.It was about the epoch of the American, and shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution. An unknown creature then made its appearance over all Europe,—of a frightful figure,—a great strong nocturnal butterfly, marked very plainly in tawny-gray, with a hideous death's head. This sinister being, which none had seen before, alarmed every countryside, and seemed an omen of the most terrible misfortunes. Yet, in truth, those who were terrified by it had brought it into Europe. It had come in the grub condition with its natal plant, the American potato,—the fashionable vegetable which Parmentier extolled, Louis XVI. protected, and which spread in all directions. The savants baptized the insect with a somewhat horrifying name—theSphinx Atropos.And terrible indeedwasthis new creature, but only for the honey. Of this it was remorselessly greedy, and to attain it was capable of everything. A hive of thirty thousand bees could not daunt it. In the depths of night, the rapacious monster, profiting by the hour when the approaches to the city are less carefully guarded, with a gloomy but subdued sound, as if stifled by the soft down which covers it (and all other nocturnal insects), invaded the hive, swooped down on the combs, devoured and plundered, gutted and destroyed the magazines, and slew the infant bees. In vain they awoke, and flew to arms; their sting could not penetrate through the soft elastic padding which clothed the sphinx,—like the cotton armour worn by the Mexicans in the days of Cortez, and impenetrable by Spanish weapons.Huber meditated on the best means of protecting his bees against this shameless brigand. Should it be by gratings, or doors? And how? He could not determine. The most skilfully devised barriers have always the inconvenience of impeding the great movement of ingress and egress, which takes place at the threshold of the hive. Their impatience regarded as intolerable the obstructions, which could not fail to embarrass them, and against which they might break their wings.One morning, Huber's faithful assistant, who seconded him in his experiments, brought information that the bees themselves had already solved the problem. In different hives they had conceived and attemptedvarious systems of defence and fortification. Here they constructed a wall of wax, with narrow loopholes, through which thegreatenemy could not pass. There, by a more ingenious expedient, without creating a single impediment, they built up some inter-crossing arcades at the gates, or tiny cloisters one behind the other, but running in different directions,—that is to say, to the void left by the first corresponded the substance of the second. Thus was secured a number of openings for the impatient buzzing crowd, which might go in and out as usual, with no other difficulty than that of moving in a slightly zigzag fashion. At the same time, a complete barrier was obtained against the great andbigenemy, which could no longer enter with expanded wings, nor even glide uninjured through the narrow corridors.It was thecoup d'êtatof the brute creation, the revolution of the insects, executed by the bees, not only against their plunderers, but against the calumniators who had denied their intelligence. The theorists who had refused to believe in it, the Malebranches and the Buffons, were compelled to own themselves beaten. They had to adopt the reserve of eminent observers, like Swammerdam and Réaumur, who, far from questioning the genius of insects, furnish us with numerous facts in proof of its flexibility, of its rising to the measure of great dangers, of its scorn of routine, and of its power to make unexpected progress under certain circumstances.
To love the child and the future; to toil in view of time and of that which as yet is not; to exhaust their vitality and die of work, that posterity may have less cause to labour,—a noble ideal, assuredly, of society, wherever it may be. One can well understand it in those who have time before them, and a life to make use of, like men and bees. But that this insect which has no time, which perishes in the evening, should love the time that will never be its own, should immolate its little life for the sake of the life that is to come, should devote to the child of to-morrow its solitary day, is a sacrifice peculiar to the wasp: it is original and sublime!
There is not a minute to lose; and the mother incessantly increases the burden. Besides the female workers, she produces some few males who do not work, whose little and very brief function scarcely prevails as an excuse for their inactivity. Among those tragical and serious insect-races, Nature, as if to divert herself a moment by a comical distraction, has made the poor little males ordinarily squat and obese, innocent little Falstaffs, who are guarded like a seraglio of unimportant servants. The caricature is complete in the case of the male bee, which, alleging that it neither knows how to glean abroad nor to build at home, passes the time in humming before its bee-hive (like our young cigar-smoking idlers).
Among the wasps life is so tense, burning, and keen, that the very males, slothful as they may be, dare not abandon themselves to completeindolence. Yonder ladies, who do not jest, and who have stings of which the males are deprived, might look upon their idleness sourly, and stir them up with dagger-thrusts. So they have conceived the idea of working without work; they have the air of doing something,—a small part of the domestic labour, cleaning, and sweeping. If any one dies, the ceremony of interment provides them with a pretence; with the effort of carrying a slight weight they sweat and groan, and several put their shoulders together. In a word, they are very ridiculous. And I am confident that their terrible companions laugh at them.
Theirs truly is an onerous undertaking. Twenty or thirty thousand mouths to feed, is a very extensive household. If they were only gifted with the prudent activity of bees, their community would perish of famine. What they need is a violent, furious, murderous rapidity,—all the appearances of an immense gluttony,—all the love and devotion which Sparta had for the art of thieving. But the secret of their power, which is plainly discernible in them if we observe them but a moment, is their magnificent insolence, their superb contempt for all other beings, and their firm conviction that the whole world is their inheritance. If we consider, it is true, their wonderful energy, compared with which lions and tigers are mere races of sheep,—and their prodigious yearly effort of improvisation,—and, finally, their absolute devotion to the public welfare,—we shall not find in all nature creatures relatively of greater power, nor which possess a clearer right to value themselves highly.
Our modern minds, however, find a difficulty in admiring the violence of the antique virtues. Their boundless love of the commonwealth is pushed to an almost criminal excess. Who has not marked with how ferocious an ardour they hunt the bees! Yet certain species of wasps can make honey; but only in fine climates, which, knowing no winter, allow the wasps an interval of peaceful labour. Here the case is different. Their life, cut short in six months, compels them to resort to measures of cruel simplicity. Honey is needed for their children. Thereupon they attack the bee, and take it prisoner; with their pliable body, whose waist is a mere thread, they so curve the extremity as to stab the prisoner underneath with their deadly sting;when thus stricken, the wasp saws it with three strokes of its teeth, and leaves the head and corselet to palpitate for some time longer, while the belly, filled with honey, the barbarian carries off as a gift for its young.
It feels no remorse. The death of others apparently does not cause a pang to this creature, which knows that it too will die to-morrow.
What do I say?
Our virgins of Tauris do not wait until Nature lays upon them her heavy hand and the ignoble leaden shroud of winter. They have borne the sword; they will die by the sword. The republic ends in a general massacre. The children, recently, ay, and still, so dear, are slain; dilatory children whom cold and want would kill to-morrow; their sisters, aunts, and affectionate nurses securing them at least the advantage of dying by the hands of those who love them. This latter gift, a speedy death, is freely bestowed on numerous unfortunates who had no thought of soliciting it,—on little useless males, even on young workers who were born late, and cannot boast of a constitution sufficiently strong to resist the winter.
Let it not be said that the heroic race of wasps is ever seen to request the humiliating hospitality of the smoky roofs of man, and, for the sake of living a little longer, to expose its melancholy remains in the shambles of a spider's web! No, children! No, sisters! Die! The republic is immortal. Some one of us, favoured by the yearly miracle and great lottery of Nature, will be called upon to recommence the entire work. And if but one remains, it is enough. Should the world perish, a single true heart would suffice to re-create it.
VI.—THE BEES: A TOMB AT PÈRE-LACHAISE.
VI.—THE BEES: A TOMB AT PÈRE-LACHAISE.
CHAPTER VI."THE BEES" OF VIRGIL.All modern writers have triumphed over the ignorance displayed by the poet Virgil in his fable of Aristæus, who draws life out of the womb of death, and causes his bees to spring from the entrails of immolated bulls.[Q]But, for myself, I have never laughed at it. I know, I feel, that every word of this great sacred poet has a weighty value, an authority which I would designate as that of an augur and a pontiff. And the fourth book of theGeorgics, particularly, was a holy work, issuing from the inmost recesses of the heart. It was a pious homage rendered to sorrow and to friendship; an eulogium on the proscribed Gallus, Virgil's dearest friend. This eulogium, undoubtedly, was struck out by the prudent Mæcenas; and Virgil then substituted his Resurrection of the Bees: a song full of immortality, which, in the mystery of Nature's transformations, embodies our highest hope, that death is not a death, but the beginning of a new life.
CHAPTER VI.
"THE BEES" OF VIRGIL.
All modern writers have triumphed over the ignorance displayed by the poet Virgil in his fable of Aristæus, who draws life out of the womb of death, and causes his bees to spring from the entrails of immolated bulls.[Q]But, for myself, I have never laughed at it. I know, I feel, that every word of this great sacred poet has a weighty value, an authority which I would designate as that of an augur and a pontiff. And the fourth book of theGeorgics, particularly, was a holy work, issuing from the inmost recesses of the heart. It was a pious homage rendered to sorrow and to friendship; an eulogium on the proscribed Gallus, Virgil's dearest friend. This eulogium, undoubtedly, was struck out by the prudent Mæcenas; and Virgil then substituted his Resurrection of the Bees: a song full of immortality, which, in the mystery of Nature's transformations, embodies our highest hope, that death is not a death, but the beginning of a new life.
[Q]The passage to which Michelet refers is found in the fourth book of theGeorgics, and is thus translated by Dryden:—"The secret in an easy method lies:Select four brawny bulls for sacrifice,Which on Lycæus graze, without a guide;Add four fair heifers yet in yoke untried:For these, four altars in their temple rear,And then adore the woodland powers with prayer.From the slain victims pour the streaming blood,And leave their bodies in the shady wood:Nine mornings thence, Lethean poppy bring,T' appease the manes of the poet's king:And, to propitiate his offended pride,A fatted calf and a black ewe provide:This finished, to the former woods repair.His mother's precepts he performs with care;The temple visits, and adores with prayer.Four altars raises, from his herds he calls,For slaughter, four the fairest of his bulls;Four heifers from his female store he took,All fair, and all unknowing of the yoke.Nine mornings thence, with sacrifice and prayers,The powers atoned, he to the grove repairs.Behold a prodigy! for, from withinThe broken bowels, and the bloated skin,A buzzing noise of bees his ears alarms,Straight issue through the sides assaulting swarms;Dark as a cloud they make a wheeling flight,Then on a neighbouring tree, descending light:Like a large cluster of black grapes they show,And make a large dependence from the bough."
[Q]The passage to which Michelet refers is found in the fourth book of theGeorgics, and is thus translated by Dryden:—
"The secret in an easy method lies:Select four brawny bulls for sacrifice,Which on Lycæus graze, without a guide;Add four fair heifers yet in yoke untried:For these, four altars in their temple rear,And then adore the woodland powers with prayer.From the slain victims pour the streaming blood,And leave their bodies in the shady wood:Nine mornings thence, Lethean poppy bring,T' appease the manes of the poet's king:And, to propitiate his offended pride,A fatted calf and a black ewe provide:This finished, to the former woods repair.His mother's precepts he performs with care;The temple visits, and adores with prayer.Four altars raises, from his herds he calls,For slaughter, four the fairest of his bulls;Four heifers from his female store he took,All fair, and all unknowing of the yoke.Nine mornings thence, with sacrifice and prayers,The powers atoned, he to the grove repairs.Behold a prodigy! for, from withinThe broken bowels, and the bloated skin,A buzzing noise of bees his ears alarms,Straight issue through the sides assaulting swarms;Dark as a cloud they make a wheeling flight,Then on a neighbouring tree, descending light:Like a large cluster of black grapes they show,And make a large dependence from the bough."
Would he have descended to the empty pleasure of inserting a popular fable in that consecrated portion of his poem which had been occupied by his friend's name? I will never believe it. The fable, if it be one, must necessarily possess some serious foundation, and a truthful side. We are not dealing here with the worldly poet, the urbane singer, like Horace, the elegant favourite of Rome. It is not the charming improvisatore of the court of Augustus, the gay and indiscreet Ovid, who betrays the loves of the gods. Virgil is the child of Earth, the pure and noble figure of the old Italian peasant, the religious interrogator, the reverently simple interpreter of the secrets of Nature.But he may be mistaken in his words,—that he may have ill-applied the names,—this is not impossible; but so far as the facts are concerned, it is an entirely different matter: whatever he describes, I firmly believe he saw.
An accident threw me into the way of understanding the poet's intention. On a certain memorable day, my wife and I repaired to the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, to visit before winter the burial-places of my family, the tomb which reunites my father and his grandson. This latter had been born to me in the very year which terminated the first half of the present century, and I had named him Lazarus in my devout hope of the Awakening of the Nations. I had imagined that I saw upon his countenance a gleam, as it were, of the strong and tender thoughts which throbbed in my heart at that last moment of my teaching. Oh, vanity of human hopes! This flower of my autumn, which I yearned to animate with the potent vitality that had been of too tardy development in myself, disappeared almost in the act of birth. And there was no help but to deposit my child at the feet of my father, who had already been four years dead. Two cypresses which I then planted in that ill-omened nook of clay have acquired in the brief interval an extraordinary growth. Two, nay, three times taller than myself, they clothe their vigorous branches with a young, rich foliage which ever points towards heaven. If, with an effort, you lower them, they rear themselves again, in all their pride and strength, flourishing with a marvellous pith, as if they had drank from the earth where I planted them the precious treasure of my past and my unconquerable aspiration.
While revolving these thoughts I ascended the hill, and before arriving at the tomb, which is situated in the upper alley, I made this observation,—that though I had on so many occasions frequented this melancholy and beautiful spot, having been in earlier life the most assiduous visitor of the dead, I had scarcely ever seen any insects in the Père-Lachaise. Hardly even at the great epoch of the flowers, when everything is covered with bloom, and numbers of the old deserted sepulchres are embowered in roses, I had not remarked that animal life abounded there as it abounds elsewhere. Very few birds, and very few insects. Why? I could not say.
While making this reflection, we had finished climbing the hill; we stood in front of the tomb. And there, with admiration, with a species of astonishment, I found a surprising contradiction of what I had just been saying.
About a score of very brilliant bees hovered above the little garden-plot,—which was narrow as a shroud, stripped of bloom and bare of flowers, and saddened by the influence of the season. In the whole cemetery remained only the last autumnal flowers,—some withering and half-leafless Bengal roses. The spot where we stood, full of new buildings, masonry, and plaster, was an Arabia Deserta. Finally, on the tomb, towards the head of the grandfather, flourished only a few sickly white asters, and over my child the cypresses. It must needs have been that these asters, in their cold clayey soil, nourished either by the whispers of the air or the spirits of the earth, treasured up a modicum of honey, since the little gleaners resorted thither for their harvest.
I am not superstitious. I believe in but one miracle, the constant miracle of the Providence of Nature. I experienced nevertheless how powerfully the mind may be affected by a lively surprise of the heart. I felt an emotion of gratefulness at the sight of the mysterious little creatures animating this solitude, whither, alas! I myself came but rarely. The increasing absorption of my work, in which day pressed upon day,—the palpitating flame of the forge where one forges more and more quickly, in the doubt whether one will be living to-morrow,—all this kept us further from the tombs than in the days of our dreamy youth. I was much affected by seeing my place supplied. In my absence the bees peopled and vivified the spot, consoled, and perhaps rejoiced my dead. My father may have smiled on them in his kindly indulgence; they may have been the happiness and first delight of my child.
Selfish motives could not have led them thither; there was so little for them to take. Nevertheless, when we suspended to the cypress-boughs the garlands ofimmortelleswe had brought with us, they were curious enough to ascertain if there was any treasure in the newflowers. The hard, prickly corolla soon repulsed them, and sent them back to the faded asters. I felt very sad, and said to them:—"Late, very late, my friends, you come, and to the tomb of the poor! Why am I not able to recompense you with a banquet of friendship, which should sustain and warm you during the first cold breezes, already blowing on these icy heights, so exposed to the northern wind!"
As if they had understood me, their movements afforded an exact reply. Some I saw, with their little limbs skilfully bent forward, rubbing their backs in the sun; they longed to absorb into every vein its genial radiance. They made the most of that brief hour when the sun revolves too quickly; one scarcely feels it before it has gone! Their significant gesture plainly said:—"Oh, what a cold morning we have had! Let us make haste! In less than an hour commences the equally inclement evening, the frozen night,—nay, who knows? the winter! and then our death is at hand."
They were still full of life, however; marvellously trim and bright,—I may even say radiant,—under their illuminated wings, all shot with gold. I never saw more beautiful insects; insects more clearly inspired by a higher life. One thing embarrassed me; namely, that they were too handsome, and too shining, inasmuch as they did not wear their industrial attire, their velvety coat, their pincers, and their brushes. And, finally, I discovered another circumstance: that they had not the four wings of the bee, but only two.
I perceived my mistake. It was these insects which had deceived Virgil. Like myself, he thought them bees, and so he erroneously called them. Réaumur confesses that for a moment even he was deceived by them.
But the fact related by Virgil is not inaccurate. We can understand how keenly it would impress the minds of the ancients, and how they would see in it a type of resurrection. They seem the daughters of death. Of the three ages of their existence, they spend the first in morbid and deadly waters, fatal to all other creatures, which permit the escape of the residuum of life in dissolution; with ingenious tenderness, Nature there preserves them, maintains them alive, and enables them to breathe in the very midst of death.
Their second period is passed under the earth,—in the shades,—where they sleep their chrysalis-like slumber.
But when once they have quitted the place of sepulture, they are fully compensated for their previous abasement; a light aërial life, exempt from the bee's incessant toil, and glorified by golden wings, such as the latter never boasts of, is bestowed upon them, with the gift, moreover, of gentle manners. Innocent, and without stings, they live their season of love under the sun and among the flowers. Far from blushing at their origin,—these noble Virgilian bees!—they do not disdain the flowers of the cemetery, they keep company with the dead, and for the living collect that honey of the soul,—the hope of the future!
VII.—THE BEE IN THE FIELDS.
VII.—THE BEE IN THE FIELDS.
CHAPTER VII.THE BEE IN THE FIELDS."When the plant attains to the flower, the climax of its existence,—when it assumes its symmetrical outlines, its perfumes, its colours, and a certain degree of animal irritability,—it emerges from its condition of isolation, and connects itself more closely with the great Whole. But it remains fixed in one place, without any reciprocation of love. The animal, on the contrary, is movement itself, and manifests its joy in living by its capricious mobility. Then the captive plant casts a glance of amicable confidence on the animal's life of freedom, offers it the abundance of its substance, and for sole reward expects that it will achieve its fecundation.
CHAPTER VII.
THE BEE IN THE FIELDS.
"When the plant attains to the flower, the climax of its existence,—when it assumes its symmetrical outlines, its perfumes, its colours, and a certain degree of animal irritability,—it emerges from its condition of isolation, and connects itself more closely with the great Whole. But it remains fixed in one place, without any reciprocation of love. The animal, on the contrary, is movement itself, and manifests its joy in living by its capricious mobility. Then the captive plant casts a glance of amicable confidence on the animal's life of freedom, offers it the abundance of its substance, and for sole reward expects that it will achieve its fecundation.
Then, too, as an elder brother might do, theanimal assists the plant, and affords it in its dependent state the succour of liberty. But, for this purpose, the animal must be completely free, I would say winged, bound up with the vegetable life which was its kindly nurse. Behold the insect, love's messenger and mediator to the plants, their propagator, and the zealous instrument of their fertilization.
"With a maternal care, the plant provides a place in its own body where the insect's egg may be developed. It nourishes the young larva which as yet is incapable of action, but which, in due time, emerging from its vegetation in the egg, will move freely to and fro, and seek its own sustenance. The creative fecundity of the plant easily replaces whatever the insect has extracted from it; and thus both animal and plant harmoniously attain to the climax of existence.
"The animal, from its low sphere of nutrition, rises to a more elevated sphere, the pure need of motion, and the pursuit of love. The plant, it is true, does not soar so high; but its flower is a bright dream of a higher state of being,—a dream which, though fugitive, proceeds, by means of its fruits, to secure the conservation of the species. The blossoming plant and the winged insect reach, as if by concert, an analogous development, manifested by their colours, their beautiful symmetrical forms, and their refinement of substance. Papilionaceous flowers, for instance, might almost be called insects-become-plants.
"This harmonic existence marches forward with the same rhythm as the moments of the day. Each flower to whose juice an insect is assigned expands at the hour when its life is most intense, and shuts at the hour of its repose. Thus they feel their unity; love attracts them one towards the other. Here the plant plays the part of the female, the fixed basis of creation, absorbed in nature. The insect resembles the tiny male who frees himself from earth and curvets in the air; recalled, nevertheless, by the plant to the oneness of the terrestrial whole. It is a winged anther, which diffuses life among the flowers."[R]
[R]Burdach, bk. ii., c. 3.
[R]Burdach, bk. ii., c. 3.
What the wind accomplishes hap-hazard, flinging abroad in capricious showers the generative elements, the insect performs through love,—the direct love of its species, theindirect and confused love of the amiable auxiliary which welcomes and nourishes it, which will hereafter nourish also its eggs and continue its maternal work. Its action, therefore, is not external and superficial, like that of the wind; it is internal and penetrating. The ardent, curious insect will not suffer itself to be checked by the light and trivial obstacles with which vegetable modesty surrounds the threshold of its mysteries; it boldly dashes aside the veil, and enters into the inmost economy of the flower. It seizes, it pillages, and it carries away, assured that all it does will be approved. The flower, in its powerless expansion, rejoices only too keenly in the deeds of these thievish liberators, who will transport its desire whither it would fain transport itself. "Take," she says, "and take yet more!" The insect then exhausts its utmost effort; each of its hairs becomes a tiny magnetic dart, which attracts and wishes to attract. Would that it might be enveloped in these points, and over all its surface (like the lightning conductor) concentrate this treasure of vegetable electricity! Such is its aspiration. An aspiration realized in the higher insect, in the bee, which bristles everywhere with a magnetic apparatus,—the bee, predestined by the tools peculiar to it, both to its little individual industry of honey-making, and to the grand, general, universal industry of the fecundation, of plants.
It is an admirable creature, and what the great physiologist has just said of the loves of the flower and the insect applies particularly to it; except with this notable distinction on the part of the bee, that it robs the flower only of that noble luxuriance of life which it lavishes upon love. The bee does not establish its cradle in the plant that the young may thence derive its sole sustenance, and gradually devour its nurse. Instead of depositing its egg, and exposing it to the hazards of the vegetable existence, as the butterfly does with its future caterpillar, the bee economizes the plant, and, without attacking it, borrows from it the precious materials which its art works up into palaces of alabaster, amber, or of gold, where its children will in due time repose.
The innocency of the bee is one of its lofty attributes, no less than its miraculous art. Its sting is simply a defensive and indispensable weapon, not against man-with whom, of its own accord, it does not wage war—but against the cruel wasps, its terrible enemies. The bee, on the other hand, injures none. It does not live by death; its inoffensive life does not demand the sacrifice of other lives. It stimulates innumerable existences; it vivifies and fecundates them. There is no uncultivated desert, no wild, bare region which it does not animate,—where it does not infuse fresh vigour into the languishing vegetation, urging the plants to bud, watching over and inspecting them. It reproaches them with their slothfulness; and as soon as they open to the influence of love-these poor dumb virgins!—it establishes between them the requisite interpreters, carries off in its murmurs their pollen and perfume, and harmonizes the aromas which are their blossoms of thought.
This process begins in the month of March. When an uncertain but already potent sun reawakes the sleeping sap, the tiny flowers of the fields, the wild violet, the Easter-daisy of the sward, the buttercup of the hedgerow, the precocious gillyflower, expanding, perfume the air. But their expansion lasts only for a moment. Barely open at noon, by three o'clock they fold themselves up again, and veil their shivering stamens. In this brief interval of gentle heat you may see a little wan-looking creature, completely clad but very chilly, which also ventures to unfurl its wings. The bee quits its city, in the knowledge that the manna is ready for it and its little ones.
A little matter then, it is true, but most cradles are empty at this epoch. The great fecundity of the mother bee still lurks concealed in her bosom. The regular and rapid incubation, which might suffice to create a world, will not commence until a much later period,—the sunny time of May.
How admirable is this agreement! Most of the shivering flowers, like the shivering bee, wait a more equable season before they bare to the sun their corolla, too delicate to endure the caprices of April.
It is pleasant to watch the intercourse between these charming creatures. The docile flower inclines and yields to the insect's unquietmovements. The shrine which it had closed against the winds, and the inquisitive glance, it opens to the beloved bee, which, impregnated by it, speeds afar on her message of love. The delicious precautions which Nature has taken to veil from profane eyes the mysteries enacted therein, do not delay for a moment the audacious seeker, who is completely at home, so to speak, and has no fear of being considered an intruder. One flower, for example, is protected by a couple of petals which join together in the form of an arch (as, for instance, the iris on the border of the waters, which in this manner defends from the rain its delicate little lovers). Another, like the sweet-pea, dons a kind of helmet, whose vizor must be lifted by its suitor.
The bee takes its stand at the bottom of these recesses worthy of the fairies, covered with the softest tapestry, under fantastic pavilions, with walls of topaz, and roofs of sapphire. Paltry comparisons these, for they are borrowed from dead gems, while the flowers live, and feel, and desire, and wait. And if the happy conqueror of the little hidden kingdoms,—if the imperious violator of their innocent barriers, the insect, mingles and confuses everything, they readily whisper its pardon, overwhelm it with their sweetnesses, and load it with their honey.
There are favoured localities, and there are happy hours, where and when the bee, while gathering its harvest, accomplishes—chaste toiler!—myriads of marriages. On the coasts, for example, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the savage sea, where one wouldhardly expect to meet with such pacific idyls, should there be but one shadowy, secure, and warm recess, Nature never fails, in the warm and humid mildness of that maternal retreat, to create a little chosen world; and there the flower distils to the bee its sweetest nectar,—there the bee assuages the impetuous yearning of the flower.
Genial, bland, and still is the hour which precedes the evening. Caressed by the last rays of the sun, whose warmth it preserves within its bosom, besprinkled in its corolla by the light and already radiant mist, the flower becomes conscious of two lives and a twofold electricity; it is urged to love, and it loves! The stamens blaze forth, and scatter abroad their cloud of incense. Then at that charming and sacred hour let the mediatrix come; let the Samaritan bee appear! Let her collect the sweet odours dispersed by the evening breeze; let her redivide them with wise forethought, giving here and taking there! The blossoms are no longer solitary; through the agency of the bee, the meadow has been converted into a society where all understand and all love each other, initiated into the hymeneal rites by their friendly little high-priest.
It is not a less important duty for the bee to rise at an early hour and be present at the moment when the flower—which has slumbered under the penetrating dew (exhaled by its divine master, father, and lover, the sun)—awakes, and recovers its consciousness. Struck by the sympathetic beam, it no longer resists; it gives up the softened essence of its choicest sweetness; it becomes, as it were, a tiny fountain, which distils honey drop by drop. Opportunely comes the bee; its work here is very nearly completed: the sweet treasure, finely prepared in that hour of perfection, will entail but little labour. It bears it off to its children: "Eat; it is the soul of the blossom."
But in the noonday heat will she remain inactive? The burning sun and dry air have withered up the blossoms of the plain. But those of the woods, sheltered by the fresh cool shades, present their cups brimming over; those of the murmurous brooks, and silent and deep marshes, are then instinct with vitality. The forget-me-not dreams, and weeps tiny tears of nectar. Even the white water-lily, in her pale virginity, yields a rare treasure of love.
"Night does not injure the bee, but cold is extremely harmful. Such is her conscientiousness, that, in order to avoid losing a day's labour in our brief summers, she takes too little heed of the sudden returns of winter, of the sharp caprices of the north wind, which sometimes visit us on the finest days. Insects of inferior intelligence, but also less industrious, perfectly understand the secret of escaping its influence. In their prudent idleness they say to one another, 'Tomorrow! Let us keep holiday!' And they patiently wait for one, or two, or more days, until the wicked spirit of the north has abandoned its evil mood. But those who have charge of souls, and a large family to maintain,—those who know that a mild winter may chance to keep their offering awake, and, accordingly, famished, will hesitate before they take a single day's repose.
"And, therefore, on the cold mornings of a June not less bleak than March, they do not fear to rush boldly into the fields. But they are more valiant than robust; the cold catches them, and I have known them drag their limbs to my windows, faltering and half-paralyzed. They have made no attempt to escape; they have suffered themselves to be taken prisoners. They were in a scared condition; still bearing the signs of their courageous and indefatigable work, impregnated with the dust of flowers, and their little, baskets loaded and overloaded with pollen. They seemed to say:—'We are no sluggards. On the contrary, in the cold hours of morning, when many are still asleep, we have already completed a day's work. But, alas, the times are so hard, and the north wind is so keen! Behold us half-frozen. A moment's hospitality, I pray you.'
"Who would not respect the misfortune of such blameless and over-eager workers? I lent them not only a roof, and the warmth of an apartment closed to the wind and open to the sun, but immediately improvised for them a friendly repast. Where? At the bottom of a sugar-basin.
"The chilly creatures, having revived at a genial beam their lost warmth, and restored to a good condition all the little electric world of hairs with which they bristle, began the exploration of their temporary prison, and were agreeably surprised to find the crystal a dining-hall.With a good appetite, seating themselves at the table, they attacked a fragment of sugar, and sucked up with their proboscis all the sweetness they could find. When they had finished their repast, and were completely restored, were fluttering to and fro, demanding the way out, I set them free, without causing them to lose one moment of a day already far advanced. With a rapid flight, charmed by the noonday sun, they returned to their occupations, distinctly humming:—'Farewell, madam, and many thanks!'"
VIII.—THE BEES AS ARCHITECTS.
VIII.—THE BEES AS ARCHITECTS.
CHAPTER VIII.THE BEES AS ARCHITECTS: THE CITY.If the wasp's nest resemble Sparta, the bee-hive is the veritable Athens of the Insect World. There, all is art. The people—the artist-élite of the people—incessantly create two things; on the one hand, the City, the country,—on the other, the Universal Mother, whose task it is not only to perpetuate the race, but to become its idol, itsfetish, the living god of the community.The bees share with the wasps, the ants, and all the sociable insects, the disinterested life of aunts and sisters,—laborious virgins, who devote themselves entirely to an adoptive maternity.But from these analogous peoples the bee differs in the necessity it is under of creating a national idol, the love of which impels it to work.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BEES AS ARCHITECTS: THE CITY.
If the wasp's nest resemble Sparta, the bee-hive is the veritable Athens of the Insect World. There, all is art. The people—the artist-élite of the people—incessantly create two things; on the one hand, the City, the country,—on the other, the Universal Mother, whose task it is not only to perpetuate the race, but to become its idol, itsfetish, the living god of the community.
The bees share with the wasps, the ants, and all the sociable insects, the disinterested life of aunts and sisters,—laborious virgins, who devote themselves entirely to an adoptive maternity.
But from these analogous peoples the bee differs in the necessity it is under of creating a national idol, the love of which impels it to work.
All this has been long misunderstood. It was at first supposed that this State was a monarchy,that it possessed a king. Not at all; the king is a female. Thereupon one is driven to say,This female is a queen. Another error. Not only does she not govern, or reign, or control, but in certain conjunctions she is governed, and sometimes even placed in private confinement. She is at once something more and something less than a queen. She is an object of legal and public adoration; I should say legal and constitutional, for this adoration is not so blind but that the idol, in some cases, as we shall see, may be treated very severely.
"Then, at bottom, the government will be democratic?" Yes; if we take into consideration the unanimous devotion of the people, the spontaneous labour of everybody. No one commands. But, nevertheless, you can clearly see that in every higher work an intelligent body of theélite, an aristocracy of artists, takes the lead. The city is not built or organized by the entire people, but by a special class, a kind of guild or corporation. While the mob of bees seeks the common nourishment abroad, certain much larger bees, the wax-makers, elaborate the wax, prepare it, shape it, and skilfully make use of it. Like the medieval freemasons, this respectable corporation of architects toils and builds on the principles of a profound geometry. Like those of the old days, they arethe masters of the living stone. But our worthy bees are far more deserving of the title! The materials which they employ they have made, have elaborated by their vital action, and vivified with their internal juices.
Neither the honey nor the wax is a vegetable substance. Those little light bees which go in quest of the essence of the flowers bring it back already transformed and enriched by their virginal life. Sweet and pure, it passes from their mouth to the mouth of their elder sisters. These, the grave wax-makers, having received the aliment vivified and endowed with the charming sweetness which is, as it were, the soul of the race, elaborate it in their turn, and communicate to it their own peculiar life,—solidity. Wise and sedentary, they work up the liquid into a sedentary honey, a honey of the second quality, a kind of reflected honey. This is not all: the substance twice elaborated, and twice penetrated with animal juice, they incessantly moisten with their saliva, when using it so as to render it softer for working, but more tenacious afterwards.
Was I wrong, then, in saying that this construction is truly one of "the living stones"? There is not an atom of the materials which is not three times impregnated with life. Who shall say of yonder hive whether the flower or the bee has furnished the greater part? The latter has certainly contributed an important share. Here, the home of the people is the people's substance and visible soul; from themselves they have extracted their city, and their city is, in truth, themselves. Bee and hive, it is one and the same thing.
But let us observe them at work.
Alone, in the centre of the still empty and to be created hive, the learned wax-maker advances. From beneath its wings it delicately extracts a thin slab of wax, and conveys it to its mouth, where it is well kneaded and pounded, and drawn out into the shape of a ribbon. Eight strips are in this wise furnished, wrought, and absorbed; and the result is eight little blocks, which the bee lays down as the first beams of the future edifice, the foundations of the new city.
Others continue the work without moving too far from the place where it was begun. If any unintelligent labourer does not follow the prescribed plan, the mistress-bees, experienced and accomplished, are on the spot to detect any error, and immediately remedy it.
In the solid mass, well placed and skilfully squared, where such numbers have harmoniously deposited their contribution of wax, an excavation must now be made, and some degree of form attained. A single bee again detaches herself from the crowd, and with her horny tongue, teeth, and paws, she contrives to hollow out the solid matter like a reversed vault. When fatigued she retires, and others take up the work of modelling. In couples they shape off and thin the walls. The only point to be remembered is a skilful management of their thickness. But how do they appreciate this? Who or what warns them the moment a stroke too much would break an opening in the partition? They never take the trouble to make a tour of their work and examine it from the other side. Their eyes are useless to them; they judge of everything by their antennæ, which are their plumb-line and compass. They feel about, and by an infinitely delicate touch recognize the elasticity of the wax, perhaps by the sound it renders, anddetermine whether it is safe to excavate it, or whether they must stop short, and not push their mining operations further.
The building, as everybody knows, is destined to serve two ends. The cells are generally used in summer as cradles, in winter as magazines of pollen and honey,—a granary of abundance for the republic. Each vessel is closed and sealed with a waxen lid, aclôturereligiously respected by all the people, who take for their subsistence only a single comb,—and when that comb is finished pass on to another, but always with extreme reserve and sobriety.
It has been said and repeated that the construction is absolutely uniform. Buffon goes so far as to pretend that the cell is but the identical form of the bee, which posts itself in the wax, and by the friction of its body, a blind manœuvre, obtains an impress of itself, a hollow, an identical cell. A baseless hypothesis, which the least reflection would show to be improbable, even if observation did not contradict it.
In reality, their work is extremely various, and diversified in numerous different ways.
In the first place, the combs are pierced in the centre by corridors or little tunnels, which do away with the necessity of traversing two sides. Economists in everything, the bees are specially economical of time.
Secondly, the form of the cells is by no means identical. They prefer the hexagon,—the form which is best adapted to secure the greatest possible number of cells in the smallest area. But they do not slavishly bind themselves to this form. The first comb which they attach to the framework would cling to it very insecurely, and only by its projecting edges, if it were composed of six-sided cells. They therefore make it with five sides only; and fashion it of pentagonal cells with broad bases, which attach themselves solidly to the wood on a continuous line. The whole is agglutinated and sealed, not with wax, but with their gum, orpropolis, which, as it dries, becomes hard as iron.
The great royal cellules, or cradles of the future mothers, which may be seen by the side of the combs, are not six-sided, but of the form of an oblong egg,—which secures the royal favourites considerable ease, and a great facility of development.
Finally, you may, with a little attention, detect important differencesamong the ordinary hexagonal cells, though at the first glance they all seem alike. They are small for the industrious gleaners, larger for the artistic wax-makers, and largest for the males. This size is generally obtained by means of a little rounded fragment which is deposited in the bottom, and renders it slightly circular,—I was about to say pot-bellied (ventru). As the house, so the tenant; the male will come into the world a squat, obese figure,—predestined to this form by that of its cradle.
Thus, of their own accord, they vary the configuration and extent of the cellules. And they vary them yet more, according to the obstacles they encounter. If room be denied them, they reduce the size of their hexagons in due proportion and with extreme address. This fact Huber verified by some ingenious experiments. He bethought himself of deranging their operations by placing, instead of wood, a plate of glass against the wall of the hive where they were building up their cells. From the distance they saw this smooth shining crystal, to which nothing could be fixed; and taking their measures accordingly, they curved their cake in such a manner that it went past the glass and joined on to the wood. But, to carry out the alteration, it became necessary to change the diameter of the cells; to enlarge that of the convex portion, and diminish that of the concave. A delicate problem! and yet it was readily solved by the skilful architects.
In mid-winter, says Huber again, in their season of inertia, an over-heavy slab of wax fell away, but was checkeden routeby the cakes beneath. An avalanche seemed imminent! But the bees invented buttresses and barriers in strong mastic, which, supporting the fallen cake and propping up the sides of the hive, prevented the dangerous ruin from dragging down the inner edifice. Then, to prevent the occurrence of similar misfortunes, they created some novel architectural works in the shape of flying buttresses, bulwarks, pillars, cross-beams, and the like.
Novel!Ay, this is a sufficient refutation of Buffon's theory. That machines or automata could invent, is a thing not easily explicable. Yet the sovereign authority of this great dictator of natural history would have prevailed, perhaps, over facts and over observation, if,towards the close of the last century, the bees themselves, by an unforeseen stroke, had not definitively cut the Gordian knot.
It was about the epoch of the American, and shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution. An unknown creature then made its appearance over all Europe,—of a frightful figure,—a great strong nocturnal butterfly, marked very plainly in tawny-gray, with a hideous death's head. This sinister being, which none had seen before, alarmed every countryside, and seemed an omen of the most terrible misfortunes. Yet, in truth, those who were terrified by it had brought it into Europe. It had come in the grub condition with its natal plant, the American potato,—the fashionable vegetable which Parmentier extolled, Louis XVI. protected, and which spread in all directions. The savants baptized the insect with a somewhat horrifying name—theSphinx Atropos.
And terrible indeedwasthis new creature, but only for the honey. Of this it was remorselessly greedy, and to attain it was capable of everything. A hive of thirty thousand bees could not daunt it. In the depths of night, the rapacious monster, profiting by the hour when the approaches to the city are less carefully guarded, with a gloomy but subdued sound, as if stifled by the soft down which covers it (and all other nocturnal insects), invaded the hive, swooped down on the combs, devoured and plundered, gutted and destroyed the magazines, and slew the infant bees. In vain they awoke, and flew to arms; their sting could not penetrate through the soft elastic padding which clothed the sphinx,—like the cotton armour worn by the Mexicans in the days of Cortez, and impenetrable by Spanish weapons.
Huber meditated on the best means of protecting his bees against this shameless brigand. Should it be by gratings, or doors? And how? He could not determine. The most skilfully devised barriers have always the inconvenience of impeding the great movement of ingress and egress, which takes place at the threshold of the hive. Their impatience regarded as intolerable the obstructions, which could not fail to embarrass them, and against which they might break their wings.
One morning, Huber's faithful assistant, who seconded him in his experiments, brought information that the bees themselves had already solved the problem. In different hives they had conceived and attemptedvarious systems of defence and fortification. Here they constructed a wall of wax, with narrow loopholes, through which thegreatenemy could not pass. There, by a more ingenious expedient, without creating a single impediment, they built up some inter-crossing arcades at the gates, or tiny cloisters one behind the other, but running in different directions,—that is to say, to the void left by the first corresponded the substance of the second. Thus was secured a number of openings for the impatient buzzing crowd, which might go in and out as usual, with no other difficulty than that of moving in a slightly zigzag fashion. At the same time, a complete barrier was obtained against the great andbigenemy, which could no longer enter with expanded wings, nor even glide uninjured through the narrow corridors.
It was thecoup d'êtatof the brute creation, the revolution of the insects, executed by the bees, not only against their plunderers, but against the calumniators who had denied their intelligence. The theorists who had refused to believe in it, the Malebranches and the Buffons, were compelled to own themselves beaten. They had to adopt the reserve of eminent observers, like Swammerdam and Réaumur, who, far from questioning the genius of insects, furnish us with numerous facts in proof of its flexibility, of its rising to the measure of great dangers, of its scorn of routine, and of its power to make unexpected progress under certain circumstances.