It is an admirable place to cure you of the great malady of the day—its shiftiness, its empty agitation. The time does not know its own disease; men say that they are clogged and cloyed, when they have scarcely skimmed the surface. They set out with the delusive notion that the best of everything is superficial and external, and that it is sufficient to put their lips to the cup. But the surface is frequently froth. Lower down, and within, lies the elixir of life. We must penetrate deeper, and mingle more intimately with things, willingly and by habit, so as to discover their harmony, in which lies true happiness and strength. The real misfortune, the moral misery, is our want of concentration.I love those spots which confine and limit the field of thought. Here, in this narrow circle of hill and wood, every change is purely external and wholly optical. With so many points of shelter, the winds, necessarily, do not greatly vary. The fixity of the atmosphere furnishes us with a moral basis. I am not certain that our ideas would here be strongly stimulated; but he who comes with them fully aroused may long preserve and cherish them, without any interruption of his dream; may seize and relish all the outer accidents, as well as the inner mysteries. The soul may here put forth its roots, and find that the true, the exquisite sense of life, is not to skim the surface, but to study, and probe, and enjoy the depth.This spot admonishes thought. The sandstone, fixed and motionless beneath the mobility of the leaves, is eloquent enough in its very silence. Since when has it been planted here? Ah, what ages ago, since, despite its hardness, the rain has succeeded in excavating it! No other force has prevailed against it. Such as it was, even so it is; and thus it seems to say to the heart, "Persevere!"Apparently it should be strong enough to exclude all vegetable life. But the heroic oaks will not be denied, and, being condemned to live there, have succeeded in defiance of every obstacle. With their twisted roots, and with their strong talons that have seized upon the rock, they too, after their fashion, eloquently exclaim, "Persevere!" The invincible trees, struggling all the more bravely the greater the resistance they meet with, have, on the unimpeded side, plunged so much the more deeply into the bowels of the earth, and drawn from it incalculable forces. One of them, the poor old giant namedCharlemagne, worn-out, undermined, thunder-stricken, after so many centuries and so many trials, is still so vigorous in its loins, that in a solitary branch it has all the appearance of carrying a great oak with outstretched arms.Between this sandstone and these oaks one may profit largely. Nor is man, if you find him here at work, a less useful teacher. The valiant quarrymen whom I encountered battling against the rock with monstrous hammers which seem never made for the hand of man, I could willingly believe to possess the resistant force of the sandstone and the iron heart of the oak. And this is undoubtedly true, so far as concerns the soul and the will. But the body has less power of endurance. Few quarrymen live beyond forty years of age; and those first carried off are invariably the most skilful and ardent at their work.All the life of the forest centres in the quarrymen and the ants. Formerly it had the bees also. They were very numerous, and may still be met with in the direction of Franchart. But they have greatly decreased in numbers since the planting of so many pines and Northern trees, which kill everything with their shade, and in many places have exterminated the heather and the flowers. On the other hand, the yellow ants, which prefer for their materials the prickles and catkins of the pines, appear to prosper. No forest, perhaps, is richer in every species of ants.These, then, are the true inhabitants, the true soul of the desert; the ants toiling in the sand, the quarrymen working in the sandstone. Both are of the same race; the men are ants on the surface, and the ants are men below.I admired the resemblance in their destiny, in their laborious patience, in their admirable perseverance. The sandstone is a very refractory and rebellious substance, and often splitting badly, subjects the poor workmen to severe disappointments. Those especially who are forced by a protracted winter to return to the quarry before the end of the bad weather, find the hard and yet porous blocks excessively damp and half frozen. As a result, they have numerous ill-wrought stones, and a mass of waste. However, they do not lose their courage; and without murmuring recommence their painful toil.The ants teach us a similar lesson of patience. The breeders of birds and game incessantly damage, overthrow, and carry away the immense works which have occupied them for a whole season. Incessantly they begin them anew with heroic ardour.We constantly paid them a visit, and learned to sympathize with them more and more. Their patient procedures, their active and concentrated life, is, in truth, more like that of the artisan than the winged existence of the bird which formerly occupied our attention. That free inheritor of the day, that favourite of Nature, soars so high above man! To what may I compare my long laborious career? I have, indeed, caught glimpses of the sky, and sometimes heard the songs of the birds above; but, on the whole, my existence, the indefatigable labour which chains me to my task, much more nearly resembles the modest communities of the ant and the bee.At first sight, the labours of their comrades, the quarrymen, are not very agreeable to contemplate. So many spoiled and badly quarried stones, so many fragments, so much dust and sand, have in them nothing attractive. It is but a field of ruin which is displayed before you. But what does Nature think of it? To judge by the eagerness with which the plants take possession of the sand, mingle with it, and convert it into a soil for their use, Nature is happy enough to see all this substance, which, while for thousands of years retained in the sandstone, did not enter into circulation, returning into the mobility of the Universal Life. That fortunate battle between man and the rock draws, at length, the captive element from its long enchantment. The grass seizes upon it; the tree seizes upon it; the animals seize upon it. All this sand, in which the rock never fails to end eventually, becomes permeable to the activity of a vast subterranean world.Nothing aroused in my mind a greater number of dreams, no spectacle threw me back more directly upon myself. For I, too, through some degree of poverty or sluggishness, I have long been rebellious like this sandstone, upon which, frequently, nothing can make an impression, or which, splitting cross-wise, yields but irregular, shapeless fragments and useless refuse. It needed History, with its weighty iron hammer, to disengage me from myself, to separate me from my own obstacles, to shatter and release me.A severe enfranchisement! What have I not lost of myself, in return for the few stones I have contributed to the great monument of the future! Sometimes, doubly stricken by the past and the present, I have felt as if I were crumbling into pieces—what say I?—into powder, into dust; and at times I have seen myself, as I see the bottom of yonder quarry, a mass of sand and rubbish.Nevertheless, it is through these elements, through an undefinable sap hidden in the bosom of the flint, that all-powerful Nature has worked out my renovation. With a little grass and heather binding up what History and the world had crushed, she has said, smilingly: "You creature, you are Time. I am Nature, the everlasting."Thus, then, observe the rough quarry, bristling with thedébrisof ages, which grows green, once more reproduces, and attires itself in a garb of such foliage as it never knew before man applied the iron to it. "A wild winter vegetation! Black firs! Melancholy birch-trees!" But with all the gloominess mingles the white hawthorn blossom.What I have so eagerly craved, and yearned for, in my long years of silence, when I was as an arid block and a man of stone, was the fluid nature of the sap and its capacity of expansion. My tardy youth longed to dilate my lingering soul. Yesterday, I gave to the world "The Bird," an impulse of the heart towards light. To-day, the same force compels me, on the other hand, to descend below the earth, and embark along with you on the great living sea of metamorphoses. A world of mysteries and gloom, it is true; but where, nevertheless, the most penetrating light is thrown on the two cherished treasures of the soul—Immortality and Love.Book the first.METAMORPHOSIS.1.—TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD.CHAPTER I.TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD.[F][F]This fragment of a domestic journal was originally intended for insertion in "The Bird." [It is from the pen of Madame Michelet.]"Winter, summer, and nearly all the fine days of the year, had passed since the departure of my father for Louisiana, from which he was not fated to return. Our country-house had remained deserted. My mother, full of sad presentiments, and fearing herself to revisit it, sent me there, one afternoon, with my brothers, to gather some fruit."And I went,—cherishing, I must own, a kind of illusion, and almost believing I should be received on the paternal threshold by the beloved arms."Deeply agitated, I crossed the approach to the domain, and with a spring arrived opposite the door which my father had so often opened with that ineffable smile I still can see."A child, and yet already a young girl, at that age of the imagination when dreams are so powerful, I opposed the obstinate need of my heart to the certain fact. I waited a moment on the threshold with a strange anxiety; the strength of my faith woul fain have conquered the sad reality. But the door remained closed."Then, with a trembling hand, I opened it myself to find at least his shadow within. But that, too, had disappeared. An obscure world, hostile to the light, had glided into that asylum, and I was, so to speak, enveloped in it."His little black table—a poor family relic—and the shelves of his bookcase creaked at intervals beneath the teeth of the worm. The chamber had already put on an air of antiquity. Great motionless spiders,—guardians, as it were, of the place,—had threaded and tapestried the empty alcove. Woodlice and millipeds ran and clambered hither and thither, seeking a refuge under the panelings."The strange and unforeseen physiognomy of the place afflicted me so keenly that I fell back upon myself, and exclaimed, as the tears flowed down my cheeks,—'O my father! where are you?'"From that moment I could perceive nothing but the desolateness of the scene; and everywhere, in the court, in the garden, I found the new and silent guests who had taken possession of our places."Already the gathering mist of evening mingled with the last rays of the sun, and the slugs, tempted by the warm damp air, emerged in crowds from the leaves which strewed the garden-walks. They fared forth, slowly but surely, to feast on the fallen fruit. Clouds of wasps revelled in audacious pillage, tearing to pieces with their keen teeth our finest peaches and most luscious grapes."Our apple-trees, formerly so productive, were covered with network woven by the caterpillars, and offered us nothing but yellow foliage. In less than a year they had grown aged.THE CHILDHOOD'S HOME OF MADAME MICHELET."I had never before been brought in contact with a world like this. My father's vigilance, and still more successfully, the assistance of the little birds, had preserved us from it. So, in my experience, and with a heart overcome by the spectacle of so much ruin, I cursed those whom one ought not to curse, because all creatures are from God."Later in life, but much later, I understood the designs of Providence. When man is absent the insect ought to take his place, so that everything may pass through the great crucible, to be renewed or purified."Such is the fear, such the instinctive repugnance of the child. But we are all children, and even Philosophy, despite its longing after universal sympathy, cannot guard against similar impressions. The apparatus of fantastic weapons with which the insect is usually armed seems to it a menace against man.Living in a world of strife, it is imperative that the insect should be born in mail of proof, and the insects of the Tropics are frequently terrible to the eye.Yet a considerable number of these terrifying weapons, pincers, hooks, saws, pikes, augers, screws, rollers, and dentilated teeth,—the formidable arsenal which gives them the appearance of veterans setting out for the battle-field,—prove, if we examine them rightly, to be the pacific tools with which they gain their livelihood, the implements with which they do their regular work. Here the artisan carries his workshop with him. He is at once the workman and the manufacturer. What should we say of our human operatives, if they marched ever bristling with the steel and old iron they make use of in their labours? They would appear to us very strange and monstrous, and would even fill our minds with fear.The insect, as we shall hereafter see, is a warrior through circumstances, through the necessities of self-defence or appetite, but generally he is before all and above all industrial. There is not a single species which may not be classified according to its work, and ranged under the banner of a guild of trades.The great achievement of the artist, or, to use the language of ourancient corporations, the test-work of this workman, by which he proves himself to be a master, is the cradle. In the Insect World, as the mother generally dies in giving birth to her child, it is important to provide an ingenious asylum which shall protect and support the orphan, and supply the mother's place. So difficult a work requires tools and implements which seem to us inexplicable. This, which you compare to a medieval poignard, to the subtly treacherous weapon of the Italian bravo, is, on the contrary, an instrument of love and maternity.For the rest, Nature is so far from sharing our prejudices, dislikes, and childish apprehensions, that she seems specially to care for and protect the gnawing species which injuriously interfere with the economy of our small farms and plantations, but which, on the other hand, lend valuable assistance in maintaining the balance of species and keeping down the vegetable accumulation of certain climates. She preserves with watchful anxiety the caterpillars which we destroy. In the case of the oak-grub, she is mindful to glaze over or varnish its eggs, so that, concealed under the withered leaf, and beaten by winds and rains, they may safely brave the winter. The crawling worms make their appearance clothed in and defended by a thick furry garb, which deceives their enemies, until, transformed into moths, they fly to and fro in happy freedom under cover of the night.For some she invents still greater precautions. Essential agents, undoubtedly, in the transformation of life, they possess, beyond all others, the guarantees of existence which secure them, infallibly, an immortality of race.The grubs, for instance, alternately viviparous and oviparous, spring into full life in the summer, that they may the more quickly set to work, but are produced in autumn in the shape of an egg, that they may the better endure the cold of winter. Finally, their generous mother reserves for this beloved species an unheard-of gift,—that a moment of love shall give them the fecundity of forty generations!Creatures so highly privileged have evidently some task to execute, some great and important mission which renders them indispensable, and makes them an essential part of the harmony of the world. Suns are necessary, but so also are gnats. Grand is the order of the MilkyWay, and no less so that of the bee-hive. Who knows but that the life of the stars may be of minor importance? I see that some of them vanish, and God dispenses with them. But no genus of the Insect World ever fails to answer to the summons. If a single species of ants should disappear, their loss would be serious, and cause a dangerous gap in the universal economy.II.—COMPASSION.CHAPTER II.COMPASSION.One day, into the studio of the painter Gros entered a pupil of his, a handsome and careless young man, who had thought it clever to pin to his hat a beautiful butterfly, which, having just been captured, was still struggling painfully. The artist, indignant, broke out into a violent passion. "What, wretch!" he cried, "is this your feeling for the Beautiful? You find an exquisite creature, and can make no better use of it than to crucify and kill it barbarously! Begone, begone, and return here no more! Never again make your appearance in my presence!"This speech will not surprise those who are acquainted with the great master's vivid sensibility, and his reverence for the Beautiful. What is more astonishing is that an anatomist, a man living with the scalpel always in his hand—Lyonnet—should speak in the same sense, and so speak in reference to insects which are to ordinary observers the least interesting. That able and patient man has opened up, as we know, an entirely new channel for science by his colossal investigation of the willow-grub, from which we learn that the muscular development of the insect is identical with that of the higher animals. Lyonnet congratulates himself that he was able to bring his prolonged labours to a conclusion without killing more than eight or nine individuals of the species he wished to describe.A noble result of study! In fathoming life by this persevering toil, far from growing coldly indifferent, he became more intensely sympathetic. The minute details of the infinitely little had revealed to him the sources of the keen sensibility which Nature has hidden everywhere. He had found it existing at the bottom of the animal scale, and thus he acquired a due reverence for every form of life.We are sometimes disquieted, repelled, and dismayed by insects exactly in proportion to our ignorance. Nevertheless almost every species, especially in our European climates, is perfectly harmless. But we suspect the unknown; and we are apt to kill those with which we are not acquainted, by way of acquiring knowledge.I remember that, one morning in June, about four o'clock, when the sun was already high in the heavens, I was aroused somewhat abruptly, though still much fatigued and very sleepy. I was living in the country, and my chamber, which faced the east, having neither curtain nor shutter, the sun's rays fell full upon my bed. A magnificent drone, I do not know how, had made its way into the room, and joyously fluttered and buzzed in the sunshine. I grew weary of the noise. I arose, and thinking he wished to sally forth, threw open the window. But no; such was not his intention. The morning, though beautiful, was very fresh and damp: he preferred to remain indoors, in a more genial temperature, which dried and warmed him. Without, it was fourA.M.; within, it was already noon. He acted precisely as I shouldhave done, and would not depart. Willing to give him time, I left the window open, and returned to my bed; but I could not sleep. The fresh air from without entering into the room, my drone entered further and further, and buzzed about and around. The obstinate and importunate guest excited in me an angry feeling, and I started up, determined to expel him by main force. A handkerchief was my weapon, but undoubtedly I made use of it very unskilfully. I stunned, confused, and frightened the drone; he whirled round and round in a dizzy fit, but thought less than ever of quitting the chamber. My impatience increased: I pursued him with greater, with too great impetuosity. He fell on the window-sill, and rose no more.Was he dead, or stunned? I would not close the window, thinking that in the latter case the air might revive him, and he would fly away. Meanwhile, by no means satisfied with what I had done, I threw myself on my bed. On the whole, it was his own fault. Why did he not escape? Such was my first reflection; but afterwards I grew more severe in self-judgment, and accused my impatience. So great is the tyranny of man, he can endure nothing. Like all kings, this lord of creation is impetuous, and at the slightest contradiction breaks out into a fury, and kills.Very beautiful was the morning; fresh, and yet, by degrees, growing almost warm; a happy mixture of temperature, proper to that delightful country and that season of the year: it was Normandy, and the month of June. The peculiar characteristic of this month, distinguishing it from all those that follow, is, that it gives birth to the innocent species which live on vegetable food, but to none of the murderous races which need a living prey,—that it breeds flies, but not spiders. Death has not yet begun, and love reigns everywhere. All these ideas occurred to me, but proved by no means agreeable; for at this blessed, sacred time, when a universal confidence prevails, I had alreadykilled: man alone had broken the peace of God. The thought was very bitter. Whether the victim was great or small, mattered but little; the dead was always the dead. And it was without any serious occasion, without provocation, that I hadbrutally disturbed the sweet harmony of Spring, and spoiled the universal idyl.While revolving all these thoughts, I glanced occasionally from my bed towards the window, and watched if the drone did not stir a little, if he were really dead. Unhappily he gave not a sign: his immobility was complete.This lasted for half-an-hour, or about three-quarters; then suddenly—without, so far as I could see, the slightest preliminary movement—my drone arose with a strong and steady flight, and without the slightest hesitancy, as if nothing had befallen him. He passed out into the garden, which by that time was thoroughly warmed and filled with sunshine.I confess that I found in his escape a happiness and a relief; but as for my drone, he had never lost heart. I perceived that he had thought in his tiny prudence that if, by the least sign, he had betrayed his returning vitality, his executioner would have finished him. Accordingly, he imitated death with wonderful fidelity, waiting until he had quite recovered his strength and breath,—until his wings, dry and warm, were fully ready to carry him away; and then, at one leap, he was off, without sayingadieu.It was during a journey in Switzerland,—in the land of the Hallers, the Hubers, and the Bonnets,—that we began to study seriously; no longer contenting ourselves with collections which only displayed the exterior, but determined on examining the inner organs with microscope and scalpel. Then also we committed our first crimes.I have no need to say that this preoccupation, this emotion—far more dramatic than one would have supposed—interfered with our journey. The sublime, enchanting, and solemn scenes of Switzerland lost, no doubt, their due power over us. But life—suffering life (and we were compelled to make it suffer)—diverted our thoughts. The hymn or eternal epopea of these infinitely great could scarcely vie with the drama of our infinitely little organisms. A fly hid from us the Alps; the agony of a beetle, which was ten days dying, veiled Mont Blanc from our gaze; in the anatomy of an ant we forgot the Jungfrau.It matters not; for who shall rightly determine what is really great or little? Everything is great, everything important, everything equal in the bosom of nature and the impartiality of universal love. And where is it more perceptible than in the infinite travail of the little organic world on which our eyes were fixed? To lift them towards the mountains, or lower them towards the insects, was one and the same thing.EXTRACT FROM MADAME MICHELET'S JOURNAL."On the 20th of July, a very hot day, but freshened nevertheless by the morning breeze which disported on the lake between Chillon and Clarens, I went out for a walk alone, my husband remaining indoors to write. The sun shot athwart our valleys of the Pays de Vaud, and poured his full splendour on the opposite mountains of Savoy. The lake, already illumined, reflected the sharp ridges of the rocks, whose base, clothed in pastures, lends life and freshness to its borders."By-and-by the sun turned, and the scene changed. A warm ray of light penetrated beyond Chillon, the long defile of the Valais, illuminated the pointed Dent du Midi, and coloured in vapour the summit of the remote St. Bernard. But to this scene of glory I preferred the morning hour, when our Montreux reposed in shadow. It was the hour of divine service at its little church, whose terrace, half-way down the slope, propped up by sharp acclivities, wooded, and therefore obscure, pours out the crystal waters on the thirsty vineyards lying below. Beneath the terrace a beautiful mossy grot, glittering with stalactites, preservesa delightful feeling of freshness. The fane above, surrounded by hospitable wooden seats; a small library (a second temple), whence the vine-dressers borrow books; and, finally, a pretty fountain, combine in a graceful little picture, austerely charming. At morning especially, in the half-misty veil which foretokens a day of heat, this beautiful spot has all the effect of a religious thought, concentrating in itself, and yet extended over that immense panorama which the mind embraces, admires, and blesses."I frequently resorted thither, ascending the first slope of the mountain, solitary, and enriched with flowers. I took with me a book, and yet I never read. The prospect was too absorbing. Whether the eye ranged afar over the level mirror of the lake, and the rocks of Meillerie, with their forests, meadows, and precipices; or hovered close at hand about the nest of Clarens and the low towers of Chillon; or, finally, returned to the pretty villas, with their green lattices, of our friends the physician and the pastor,[G]in whose company my husband laboured;—I remained there in a kind of dream, and my heart, deeply moved, felt the sweetness of a holy harmony.[G]It was our good fortune to reside, while at Montreux—the most beautiful spot on the wide earth—with a very estimable and rare individual, whom I should have thought of Italian or Spanish birth, if I had not known her to be a Genevese, and the sister of the able and enthusiastic historian of Geneva. Next door lived an eminent physician, of simple character, but all the more learned in natural studies."But soon I discovered that I was not utterly alone. Bees, or drones, which had also risen early, were already at work, seeking inthe cups of the flowers the honey distilled beneath the dew, penetrating into the depths of the campanulas, or skilfully gliding into the mysterious corolla of the charming Venus's Slipper. Brilliant cicindelas opened the hunt after the gnats, while more unwieldy tribes sought their livelihood at the bottom of the herbage."On this day, then, the 20th of July, allowing my glance to fall mechanically at my feet, and withdrawing my eyes for a moment from the too luminous picture, I saw with astonishment a scene which vividly contrasted with this attractive and holy spot,—an atrocious warlike struggle. The insect-giant which we call the stag-beetle, one of the largest of European species, a black shining mass, whose horns bristle with superb crescent-wise pincers, had seized upon a beetle of far inferior size. Nevertheless, the two enemies being equally provided with admirable defensive arms, after the fashion of the corselets, armlets, and cuisses of our ancient knights, the struggle was long and fierce. Both belonged to the murderous race which prey on little insects,—were powerful lords in the habit of devouring their vassals. Whichever had fallen victim in the fray, the Lilliputian people had certainly applauded. However, the blind instinctive movement which leads us, in such cases, to separate the combatants, induced me to interfere; and with the point of my umbrella, skilfully, delicately, and without wounding the two antagonists, I compelled the stronger of the two to release its grasp."The captive thus secured was, without form of trial, adjudged to undergo our investigations as a punishment for his fratricidal voracity. Our system, however, is not to impale the insect,—a horrible punishment and a pitiful spectacle which has no end; for a month afterwards, ay, and more, you will see the poor transfixed wretches writhing in agony. Ether generally kills them rapidly, and apparently painlessly. Well, then, weetherizedour prisoner largely. In a moment he spun round and fell: we thought him finished. An hour or two passed, and lo! he was once more alive, once more upright on trembling feet, and attempting to walk; he fell, and again he rose. But, to tell the truth, his gait was like that of a drunken man. A child would have laughed at it. We had no desire to laugh, being obliged to poison him a second time.A stronger dose was accordingly administered; but in vain,—he came again to himself. It was a curious circumstance; but it certainly seemed as if this kind of intoxication, while weakening and almost paralyzing the faculties of motion, had all the more keenly excited the nerves, and what we may call the amorous faculties. The use he sought to make of his vacillating step and last efforts was to join a female of his species which we had found lying dead, and placed upon the table. He felt her with his palpi and trembling arms. He contrived to turn her over, and tumbled about (very probably he could not see) to assure himself whether she was alive. He would not part from her: one would have sworn that he had undertaken, though dying, to resuscitate the dead. It was a fantastic, a gloomy, and yet, for one who knows at heart that all nature is identical, a touching spectacle.It afflicted us greatly; we attempted to shorten it by the help of the ether, and to separate this Juliet from her Romeo. But the indomitable male laughed at all our poisons, and dismally dragged himself along. We shut him up in a large box, where he did not die until after a considerable period, and incredibly large doses. His punishment—and, reader, you may justly call itours—endured for fully fifteen days.This robust, enduring being, with his inextinguishable flame of life, threw us into a prolonged reverie.On our first dabbling in bloodshed, Nature had wished to show us, and with a master's hand, the strange and unconquerable energy with which she has endowed life. "Love is strong as death." Where do we find this saying? In the Bible. Yes; and it is also the eternal Bible. For what more powerfully consecrates existence, and renders it sympathetic, reverend, and sacred? And how great a pity it is, then, to cut it short at the divine moment when every being has its share of God!We excused ourselves by saying that this insect, which lives six years in a single night, could have spread its wings beneath the sky but two months longer,—just long enough to perpetuate its race. We deprived it, therefore, of a very little time—a month out of six or seven years.Yes; but that month was the epoch to which all its life had tended.Previously it had only vegetated; but then, it could really have lived and reigned, powerful and joyous. Long an insect, in that hour it would have become almost a bird, a son of the flower-enamelled earth and the genial light. We had acted like the Parcæ, which delight in cutting the thread of our lives at the very moment of happiness!III.—WORLD-BUILDERS.CHAPTER III.WORLD-BUILDERS.There is a world under this world, above, below, and all around it, of which we have no suspicion.Occasionally, indeed, we catch a faint murmur, a sound, and thereupon we say, "It is a trifle, it is nothing." But this nothing is the Infinite.The Infinite of the invisible life, the silent life, the world of night and of the inner earth, of the shadowy ocean,—the unseen creatures of the air which we breathe, or which, mingling in the fluids we drink, circulate within us unperceived.An immensely powerful world, which in its details we scorn, but which at intervals affrights us, when it stands revealed before our eyes in one of its grand unforeseen manifestations.The navigator, for example, who at night sees the ocean shimmering with lustre and wreathing garlands of fire, is at first diverted by the spectacle. He sails ten leagues; the garland is indefinitely prolonged; it stirs, and twists, and knots itself in harmony with the motions of the wave; it becomesa monstrous serpent ever extending its sinuous length to thirty, ay, and forty leagues. Yet all this is but a dance of imperceptible animalcules! What are their numbers? At this question the imagination starts back aghast; it perceives in the distance a nature of gigantic force, of terrific wealth, but possessing little relation to the other, the well-ordered, and, in a certain degree, economical nature, of the higher life.It is impossible to speak of insects or molluscs without naming these animalcules, which seem to be their rough outline, and in the extreme simplicity of their organism already foretoken, indicate, and prepare for them. With a good microscope you can discern these miniatures of the insect, which simulate their organism, and mimic their movements. When you are able to distinguish theRotifers, you think that in the aggregations and in the tentacles of their mouth you recognize them as little polypes. TheRhizopods, though almost imperceptible, are furnished, nevertheless, with good solid carapaces, which are equally as good a protection for them as their great shells are for the molluscs, the oyster and the snail. The microscopicTardigradæare, in fact, closely connected with insects, and theAcarinawith worms.What are these least of the little? Simply the architects or builders of the globe which we inhabit. With their bodies and their remains they have prepared the soil now echoing under our feet. Whether their tiny shells be still distinguishable, or whether they have been decomposed into chalk, they are not the less the foundation of immense portions of our earth. A single bed of this chalk stretches from Paris to Tours; that is, for fifty miles. Another, of enormous breadth, spreads over all Champagne. Pure chalk, or Spanish white, which we find everywhere, is composed of pounded shells.And it is these most minute of organisms which have wrought the grandest of works. The imperceptible rhizopod has built for itself a nobler monument than the Pyramids; nothing less than Central Italy, a notable portion of the chain of the Apennines. But even this was too insignificant: the colossal masses of Chili, the prodigious Cordilleras, which look down upon the world at their feet, are the funeral monumentwherein this impalpable—I had almost said invisible-organism has interred the remains of its vanished race.A bygone world, hidden beneath the present and upper world in the profundities of life or the obscurity of time!What might it not tell us, if God would give it speech, and permit it to recall all that it has done or is doing for us! What just demands might not the elementary plants, the imperfect animals whose dust has fashioned for our use the fertile crust of the globe, that noble theatre of life, address to us! "While you were still asleep," might say the ferns, "we alone, by transforming and purifying the previously irrespirable air, created after thousands upon thousands of years the earth now blooming with the corn and the rose! We accumulated that subterranean treasure of enormous coal-beds which warms your hearth; and that one mass, among others, a hundred leagues in length, which feeds the great forge of the world from London to Newcastle.""We," the imperceptibles might say,—the obscure and unnamed animalcules despised or ignored by man,—"we are thy guardians, have laid out thy fields, and built thy dwelling-places. It is not the great fossil rhinoceros or mastodon whose bones have made thy soil; it isourwork—or rather, it is ourselves. Thy cities, thy Louvres, and thy Capitols are constructed with ourdébris. Life itself in its essence, in that sparkling beverage by which France diffuses joy over all the earth, whence comes it? From arid hills where the vine thrives in the white dust that once waswe, and absorbs the concealed warmth of our prior existences."The demand made upon us would be a lengthened one; restitution impossible. These dead myriads, having nourished with their lime the various articles that form our sustenance, have passed into our very being. Others also would put forth a claim. The very pebble, the hard flint, once lived, and now nourishes life.Great was the astonishment in Europe when a Berlin professor—Ehrenberg—informed us that the silicious stone, so sharp, rough, and brittle, thetripoliwith which metals are polished, is neither more nor less than an aggregation of dead animalcules, an accumulation of the shells of infusoria of a terrible diminutiveness. So small is the creature I speak of, that it takes one hundred and eighty-seven millions to weigh a grain.The labours of the unseen architects of the globe, admired by our men of science in extinct species, travellers have discovered revived in living species. They have surprised, in our own day, immense laboratories in permanent activity, of beings invisible in themselves, or apparently powerless, but really of boundless capacity of toil, if we judge by its results. What death accomplishes for life, life itself relates. Numbers of tiny organisms become by their present works the interpreters and historians of their vanished predecessors.These, like the latter, with their structures, or theirdébris, build up islands in the sea, and construct immense banks of reefs, which, gradually joining together, will become new lands. Without going further than Sicily, we find among the madrepores, that cover its coasts torn by volcanic fires, a little animal, the zoophyte, which has accomplished a task man would never have dared to undertake. He contrives to move forward by protecting his soft body with a shield of stone which he incessantly secretes. Continuously developing the tubes which in succession afford him shelter, he entirely fills up the empty spaces left by the madrepores or corals, bridges over the intervals between the reefs, and connects them with one another; finally, he creates a passage in defiles previouslyimpassable. In due time this builder will have accomplished the colossal task of a causeway all around the island in its circumference of a hundred and eighty leagues.But it is more particularly in the vast Southern Ocean that these works are prosecuted on a grand scale by the polypes of the lime, the corallines, and madrepores of every kind; an animal vegetation worthy of comparison with the labour of the mosses in a peat-moor, which continue to flourish in their upper growth while the lower are transformed and decomposed. Exactly like these vegetables, the polypes, and even their production, the coral, while still soft and tender, frequently become the nourishment of worms and fishes which feed and browse upon them like our cattle, derive their sustenance from them, and return them in the shape of chalk, without the slightest indication of a previous existence! Recently English seamen have discovered at the bottom of the sea this manufacture of chalk, which is incessantly passing from the living into the inorganic condition.But these destructive causes do not prevent the polypes from imperturbably carrying on their gigantic labours, incessantly elevating the islands and solid barriers which are so skilfully adapted to resist the oceanic action. They divide the work among themselves according to their species. The idlest execute their share in the quiet waters, or in the great depths, remotest from the light; others, under the sunshine, among the very breakers of which they eventually become the masters.Soft, gelatinous, elastic, adhering to their support, the stony and porous mass; they deaden the fury of the boiling waters which would wear out the granite, and split the rock into fragments.Under the mild trade-winds which prevail in the tropic climates, the sea would uniformly flow with a tranquil tide if it did not encounter these living ramparts, which force it back upon itself, scatter its waves in spray, and vex it with everlasting torment.That the waters should assault them is their fate. But they inflict no injury upon them; and in truth it is on their behalf they toil. Their violence does not wearthem, but it wears the reef, and detaches in atoms the lime on which they live and with which they build. This lime, absorbed by them andanimalized, changes into a hundred sparkling,living, active flowers, which are identical with our polypes, and form quite an analogous world enamelling the ocean-bed.On the margin of these islands,—which are generally circular, like a ring,—accumulates a layer of vegetable wealth, which speedily grows green, and embellishes itself with the only tree that can endure salt-water, the cocoa-nut palm. This, then, is thehumus; the life which will for ever continue to develop. The fresh springs and fountains will next make their appearance, invited and fed by the vegetation.
It is an admirable place to cure you of the great malady of the day—its shiftiness, its empty agitation. The time does not know its own disease; men say that they are clogged and cloyed, when they have scarcely skimmed the surface. They set out with the delusive notion that the best of everything is superficial and external, and that it is sufficient to put their lips to the cup. But the surface is frequently froth. Lower down, and within, lies the elixir of life. We must penetrate deeper, and mingle more intimately with things, willingly and by habit, so as to discover their harmony, in which lies true happiness and strength. The real misfortune, the moral misery, is our want of concentration.I love those spots which confine and limit the field of thought. Here, in this narrow circle of hill and wood, every change is purely external and wholly optical. With so many points of shelter, the winds, necessarily, do not greatly vary. The fixity of the atmosphere furnishes us with a moral basis. I am not certain that our ideas would here be strongly stimulated; but he who comes with them fully aroused may long preserve and cherish them, without any interruption of his dream; may seize and relish all the outer accidents, as well as the inner mysteries. The soul may here put forth its roots, and find that the true, the exquisite sense of life, is not to skim the surface, but to study, and probe, and enjoy the depth.This spot admonishes thought. The sandstone, fixed and motionless beneath the mobility of the leaves, is eloquent enough in its very silence. Since when has it been planted here? Ah, what ages ago, since, despite its hardness, the rain has succeeded in excavating it! No other force has prevailed against it. Such as it was, even so it is; and thus it seems to say to the heart, "Persevere!"
It is an admirable place to cure you of the great malady of the day—its shiftiness, its empty agitation. The time does not know its own disease; men say that they are clogged and cloyed, when they have scarcely skimmed the surface. They set out with the delusive notion that the best of everything is superficial and external, and that it is sufficient to put their lips to the cup. But the surface is frequently froth. Lower down, and within, lies the elixir of life. We must penetrate deeper, and mingle more intimately with things, willingly and by habit, so as to discover their harmony, in which lies true happiness and strength. The real misfortune, the moral misery, is our want of concentration.
I love those spots which confine and limit the field of thought. Here, in this narrow circle of hill and wood, every change is purely external and wholly optical. With so many points of shelter, the winds, necessarily, do not greatly vary. The fixity of the atmosphere furnishes us with a moral basis. I am not certain that our ideas would here be strongly stimulated; but he who comes with them fully aroused may long preserve and cherish them, without any interruption of his dream; may seize and relish all the outer accidents, as well as the inner mysteries. The soul may here put forth its roots, and find that the true, the exquisite sense of life, is not to skim the surface, but to study, and probe, and enjoy the depth.
This spot admonishes thought. The sandstone, fixed and motionless beneath the mobility of the leaves, is eloquent enough in its very silence. Since when has it been planted here? Ah, what ages ago, since, despite its hardness, the rain has succeeded in excavating it! No other force has prevailed against it. Such as it was, even so it is; and thus it seems to say to the heart, "Persevere!"
Apparently it should be strong enough to exclude all vegetable life. But the heroic oaks will not be denied, and, being condemned to live there, have succeeded in defiance of every obstacle. With their twisted roots, and with their strong talons that have seized upon the rock, they too, after their fashion, eloquently exclaim, "Persevere!" The invincible trees, struggling all the more bravely the greater the resistance they meet with, have, on the unimpeded side, plunged so much the more deeply into the bowels of the earth, and drawn from it incalculable forces. One of them, the poor old giant namedCharlemagne, worn-out, undermined, thunder-stricken, after so many centuries and so many trials, is still so vigorous in its loins, that in a solitary branch it has all the appearance of carrying a great oak with outstretched arms.Between this sandstone and these oaks one may profit largely. Nor is man, if you find him here at work, a less useful teacher. The valiant quarrymen whom I encountered battling against the rock with monstrous hammers which seem never made for the hand of man, I could willingly believe to possess the resistant force of the sandstone and the iron heart of the oak. And this is undoubtedly true, so far as concerns the soul and the will. But the body has less power of endurance. Few quarrymen live beyond forty years of age; and those first carried off are invariably the most skilful and ardent at their work.
Apparently it should be strong enough to exclude all vegetable life. But the heroic oaks will not be denied, and, being condemned to live there, have succeeded in defiance of every obstacle. With their twisted roots, and with their strong talons that have seized upon the rock, they too, after their fashion, eloquently exclaim, "Persevere!" The invincible trees, struggling all the more bravely the greater the resistance they meet with, have, on the unimpeded side, plunged so much the more deeply into the bowels of the earth, and drawn from it incalculable forces. One of them, the poor old giant namedCharlemagne, worn-out, undermined, thunder-stricken, after so many centuries and so many trials, is still so vigorous in its loins, that in a solitary branch it has all the appearance of carrying a great oak with outstretched arms.
Between this sandstone and these oaks one may profit largely. Nor is man, if you find him here at work, a less useful teacher. The valiant quarrymen whom I encountered battling against the rock with monstrous hammers which seem never made for the hand of man, I could willingly believe to possess the resistant force of the sandstone and the iron heart of the oak. And this is undoubtedly true, so far as concerns the soul and the will. But the body has less power of endurance. Few quarrymen live beyond forty years of age; and those first carried off are invariably the most skilful and ardent at their work.
All the life of the forest centres in the quarrymen and the ants. Formerly it had the bees also. They were very numerous, and may still be met with in the direction of Franchart. But they have greatly decreased in numbers since the planting of so many pines and Northern trees, which kill everything with their shade, and in many places have exterminated the heather and the flowers. On the other hand, the yellow ants, which prefer for their materials the prickles and catkins of the pines, appear to prosper. No forest, perhaps, is richer in every species of ants.These, then, are the true inhabitants, the true soul of the desert; the ants toiling in the sand, the quarrymen working in the sandstone. Both are of the same race; the men are ants on the surface, and the ants are men below.I admired the resemblance in their destiny, in their laborious patience, in their admirable perseverance. The sandstone is a very refractory and rebellious substance, and often splitting badly, subjects the poor workmen to severe disappointments. Those especially who are forced by a protracted winter to return to the quarry before the end of the bad weather, find the hard and yet porous blocks excessively damp and half frozen. As a result, they have numerous ill-wrought stones, and a mass of waste. However, they do not lose their courage; and without murmuring recommence their painful toil.
All the life of the forest centres in the quarrymen and the ants. Formerly it had the bees also. They were very numerous, and may still be met with in the direction of Franchart. But they have greatly decreased in numbers since the planting of so many pines and Northern trees, which kill everything with their shade, and in many places have exterminated the heather and the flowers. On the other hand, the yellow ants, which prefer for their materials the prickles and catkins of the pines, appear to prosper. No forest, perhaps, is richer in every species of ants.
These, then, are the true inhabitants, the true soul of the desert; the ants toiling in the sand, the quarrymen working in the sandstone. Both are of the same race; the men are ants on the surface, and the ants are men below.
I admired the resemblance in their destiny, in their laborious patience, in their admirable perseverance. The sandstone is a very refractory and rebellious substance, and often splitting badly, subjects the poor workmen to severe disappointments. Those especially who are forced by a protracted winter to return to the quarry before the end of the bad weather, find the hard and yet porous blocks excessively damp and half frozen. As a result, they have numerous ill-wrought stones, and a mass of waste. However, they do not lose their courage; and without murmuring recommence their painful toil.
The ants teach us a similar lesson of patience. The breeders of birds and game incessantly damage, overthrow, and carry away the immense works which have occupied them for a whole season. Incessantly they begin them anew with heroic ardour.We constantly paid them a visit, and learned to sympathize with them more and more. Their patient procedures, their active and concentrated life, is, in truth, more like that of the artisan than the winged existence of the bird which formerly occupied our attention. That free inheritor of the day, that favourite of Nature, soars so high above man! To what may I compare my long laborious career? I have, indeed, caught glimpses of the sky, and sometimes heard the songs of the birds above; but, on the whole, my existence, the indefatigable labour which chains me to my task, much more nearly resembles the modest communities of the ant and the bee.At first sight, the labours of their comrades, the quarrymen, are not very agreeable to contemplate. So many spoiled and badly quarried stones, so many fragments, so much dust and sand, have in them nothing attractive. It is but a field of ruin which is displayed before you. But what does Nature think of it? To judge by the eagerness with which the plants take possession of the sand, mingle with it, and convert it into a soil for their use, Nature is happy enough to see all this substance, which, while for thousands of years retained in the sandstone, did not enter into circulation, returning into the mobility of the Universal Life. That fortunate battle between man and the rock draws, at length, the captive element from its long enchantment. The grass seizes upon it; the tree seizes upon it; the animals seize upon it. All this sand, in which the rock never fails to end eventually, becomes permeable to the activity of a vast subterranean world.
The ants teach us a similar lesson of patience. The breeders of birds and game incessantly damage, overthrow, and carry away the immense works which have occupied them for a whole season. Incessantly they begin them anew with heroic ardour.
We constantly paid them a visit, and learned to sympathize with them more and more. Their patient procedures, their active and concentrated life, is, in truth, more like that of the artisan than the winged existence of the bird which formerly occupied our attention. That free inheritor of the day, that favourite of Nature, soars so high above man! To what may I compare my long laborious career? I have, indeed, caught glimpses of the sky, and sometimes heard the songs of the birds above; but, on the whole, my existence, the indefatigable labour which chains me to my task, much more nearly resembles the modest communities of the ant and the bee.
At first sight, the labours of their comrades, the quarrymen, are not very agreeable to contemplate. So many spoiled and badly quarried stones, so many fragments, so much dust and sand, have in them nothing attractive. It is but a field of ruin which is displayed before you. But what does Nature think of it? To judge by the eagerness with which the plants take possession of the sand, mingle with it, and convert it into a soil for their use, Nature is happy enough to see all this substance, which, while for thousands of years retained in the sandstone, did not enter into circulation, returning into the mobility of the Universal Life. That fortunate battle between man and the rock draws, at length, the captive element from its long enchantment. The grass seizes upon it; the tree seizes upon it; the animals seize upon it. All this sand, in which the rock never fails to end eventually, becomes permeable to the activity of a vast subterranean world.
Nothing aroused in my mind a greater number of dreams, no spectacle threw me back more directly upon myself. For I, too, through some degree of poverty or sluggishness, I have long been rebellious like this sandstone, upon which, frequently, nothing can make an impression, or which, splitting cross-wise, yields but irregular, shapeless fragments and useless refuse. It needed History, with its weighty iron hammer, to disengage me from myself, to separate me from my own obstacles, to shatter and release me.A severe enfranchisement! What have I not lost of myself, in return for the few stones I have contributed to the great monument of the future! Sometimes, doubly stricken by the past and the present, I have felt as if I were crumbling into pieces—what say I?—into powder, into dust; and at times I have seen myself, as I see the bottom of yonder quarry, a mass of sand and rubbish.Nevertheless, it is through these elements, through an undefinable sap hidden in the bosom of the flint, that all-powerful Nature has worked out my renovation. With a little grass and heather binding up what History and the world had crushed, she has said, smilingly: "You creature, you are Time. I am Nature, the everlasting."
Nothing aroused in my mind a greater number of dreams, no spectacle threw me back more directly upon myself. For I, too, through some degree of poverty or sluggishness, I have long been rebellious like this sandstone, upon which, frequently, nothing can make an impression, or which, splitting cross-wise, yields but irregular, shapeless fragments and useless refuse. It needed History, with its weighty iron hammer, to disengage me from myself, to separate me from my own obstacles, to shatter and release me.
A severe enfranchisement! What have I not lost of myself, in return for the few stones I have contributed to the great monument of the future! Sometimes, doubly stricken by the past and the present, I have felt as if I were crumbling into pieces—what say I?—into powder, into dust; and at times I have seen myself, as I see the bottom of yonder quarry, a mass of sand and rubbish.
Nevertheless, it is through these elements, through an undefinable sap hidden in the bosom of the flint, that all-powerful Nature has worked out my renovation. With a little grass and heather binding up what History and the world had crushed, she has said, smilingly: "You creature, you are Time. I am Nature, the everlasting."
Thus, then, observe the rough quarry, bristling with thedébrisof ages, which grows green, once more reproduces, and attires itself in a garb of such foliage as it never knew before man applied the iron to it. "A wild winter vegetation! Black firs! Melancholy birch-trees!" But with all the gloominess mingles the white hawthorn blossom.What I have so eagerly craved, and yearned for, in my long years of silence, when I was as an arid block and a man of stone, was the fluid nature of the sap and its capacity of expansion. My tardy youth longed to dilate my lingering soul. Yesterday, I gave to the world "The Bird," an impulse of the heart towards light. To-day, the same force compels me, on the other hand, to descend below the earth, and embark along with you on the great living sea of metamorphoses. A world of mysteries and gloom, it is true; but where, nevertheless, the most penetrating light is thrown on the two cherished treasures of the soul—Immortality and Love.
Thus, then, observe the rough quarry, bristling with thedébrisof ages, which grows green, once more reproduces, and attires itself in a garb of such foliage as it never knew before man applied the iron to it. "A wild winter vegetation! Black firs! Melancholy birch-trees!" But with all the gloominess mingles the white hawthorn blossom.
What I have so eagerly craved, and yearned for, in my long years of silence, when I was as an arid block and a man of stone, was the fluid nature of the sap and its capacity of expansion. My tardy youth longed to dilate my lingering soul. Yesterday, I gave to the world "The Bird," an impulse of the heart towards light. To-day, the same force compels me, on the other hand, to descend below the earth, and embark along with you on the great living sea of metamorphoses. A world of mysteries and gloom, it is true; but where, nevertheless, the most penetrating light is thrown on the two cherished treasures of the soul—Immortality and Love.
Book the first.METAMORPHOSIS.
METAMORPHOSIS.
1.—TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD.
1.—TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD.
CHAPTER I.TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD.[F][F]This fragment of a domestic journal was originally intended for insertion in "The Bird." [It is from the pen of Madame Michelet.]"Winter, summer, and nearly all the fine days of the year, had passed since the departure of my father for Louisiana, from which he was not fated to return. Our country-house had remained deserted. My mother, full of sad presentiments, and fearing herself to revisit it, sent me there, one afternoon, with my brothers, to gather some fruit."And I went,—cherishing, I must own, a kind of illusion, and almost believing I should be received on the paternal threshold by the beloved arms.
CHAPTER I.
TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD.[F]
[F]This fragment of a domestic journal was originally intended for insertion in "The Bird." [It is from the pen of Madame Michelet.]
[F]This fragment of a domestic journal was originally intended for insertion in "The Bird." [It is from the pen of Madame Michelet.]
"Winter, summer, and nearly all the fine days of the year, had passed since the departure of my father for Louisiana, from which he was not fated to return. Our country-house had remained deserted. My mother, full of sad presentiments, and fearing herself to revisit it, sent me there, one afternoon, with my brothers, to gather some fruit.
"And I went,—cherishing, I must own, a kind of illusion, and almost believing I should be received on the paternal threshold by the beloved arms.
"Deeply agitated, I crossed the approach to the domain, and with a spring arrived opposite the door which my father had so often opened with that ineffable smile I still can see.
"A child, and yet already a young girl, at that age of the imagination when dreams are so powerful, I opposed the obstinate need of my heart to the certain fact. I waited a moment on the threshold with a strange anxiety; the strength of my faith woul fain have conquered the sad reality. But the door remained closed.
"Then, with a trembling hand, I opened it myself to find at least his shadow within. But that, too, had disappeared. An obscure world, hostile to the light, had glided into that asylum, and I was, so to speak, enveloped in it.
"His little black table—a poor family relic—and the shelves of his bookcase creaked at intervals beneath the teeth of the worm. The chamber had already put on an air of antiquity. Great motionless spiders,—guardians, as it were, of the place,—had threaded and tapestried the empty alcove. Woodlice and millipeds ran and clambered hither and thither, seeking a refuge under the panelings.
"The strange and unforeseen physiognomy of the place afflicted me so keenly that I fell back upon myself, and exclaimed, as the tears flowed down my cheeks,—'O my father! where are you?'
"From that moment I could perceive nothing but the desolateness of the scene; and everywhere, in the court, in the garden, I found the new and silent guests who had taken possession of our places.
"Already the gathering mist of evening mingled with the last rays of the sun, and the slugs, tempted by the warm damp air, emerged in crowds from the leaves which strewed the garden-walks. They fared forth, slowly but surely, to feast on the fallen fruit. Clouds of wasps revelled in audacious pillage, tearing to pieces with their keen teeth our finest peaches and most luscious grapes.
"Our apple-trees, formerly so productive, were covered with network woven by the caterpillars, and offered us nothing but yellow foliage. In less than a year they had grown aged.
THE CHILDHOOD'S HOME OF MADAME MICHELET.
THE CHILDHOOD'S HOME OF MADAME MICHELET.
"I had never before been brought in contact with a world like this. My father's vigilance, and still more successfully, the assistance of the little birds, had preserved us from it. So, in my experience, and with a heart overcome by the spectacle of so much ruin, I cursed those whom one ought not to curse, because all creatures are from God.
"Later in life, but much later, I understood the designs of Providence. When man is absent the insect ought to take his place, so that everything may pass through the great crucible, to be renewed or purified."
Such is the fear, such the instinctive repugnance of the child. But we are all children, and even Philosophy, despite its longing after universal sympathy, cannot guard against similar impressions. The apparatus of fantastic weapons with which the insect is usually armed seems to it a menace against man.
Living in a world of strife, it is imperative that the insect should be born in mail of proof, and the insects of the Tropics are frequently terrible to the eye.
Yet a considerable number of these terrifying weapons, pincers, hooks, saws, pikes, augers, screws, rollers, and dentilated teeth,—the formidable arsenal which gives them the appearance of veterans setting out for the battle-field,—prove, if we examine them rightly, to be the pacific tools with which they gain their livelihood, the implements with which they do their regular work. Here the artisan carries his workshop with him. He is at once the workman and the manufacturer. What should we say of our human operatives, if they marched ever bristling with the steel and old iron they make use of in their labours? They would appear to us very strange and monstrous, and would even fill our minds with fear.
The insect, as we shall hereafter see, is a warrior through circumstances, through the necessities of self-defence or appetite, but generally he is before all and above all industrial. There is not a single species which may not be classified according to its work, and ranged under the banner of a guild of trades.
The great achievement of the artist, or, to use the language of ourancient corporations, the test-work of this workman, by which he proves himself to be a master, is the cradle. In the Insect World, as the mother generally dies in giving birth to her child, it is important to provide an ingenious asylum which shall protect and support the orphan, and supply the mother's place. So difficult a work requires tools and implements which seem to us inexplicable. This, which you compare to a medieval poignard, to the subtly treacherous weapon of the Italian bravo, is, on the contrary, an instrument of love and maternity.
For the rest, Nature is so far from sharing our prejudices, dislikes, and childish apprehensions, that she seems specially to care for and protect the gnawing species which injuriously interfere with the economy of our small farms and plantations, but which, on the other hand, lend valuable assistance in maintaining the balance of species and keeping down the vegetable accumulation of certain climates. She preserves with watchful anxiety the caterpillars which we destroy. In the case of the oak-grub, she is mindful to glaze over or varnish its eggs, so that, concealed under the withered leaf, and beaten by winds and rains, they may safely brave the winter. The crawling worms make their appearance clothed in and defended by a thick furry garb, which deceives their enemies, until, transformed into moths, they fly to and fro in happy freedom under cover of the night.
For some she invents still greater precautions. Essential agents, undoubtedly, in the transformation of life, they possess, beyond all others, the guarantees of existence which secure them, infallibly, an immortality of race.
The grubs, for instance, alternately viviparous and oviparous, spring into full life in the summer, that they may the more quickly set to work, but are produced in autumn in the shape of an egg, that they may the better endure the cold of winter. Finally, their generous mother reserves for this beloved species an unheard-of gift,—that a moment of love shall give them the fecundity of forty generations!
Creatures so highly privileged have evidently some task to execute, some great and important mission which renders them indispensable, and makes them an essential part of the harmony of the world. Suns are necessary, but so also are gnats. Grand is the order of the MilkyWay, and no less so that of the bee-hive. Who knows but that the life of the stars may be of minor importance? I see that some of them vanish, and God dispenses with them. But no genus of the Insect World ever fails to answer to the summons. If a single species of ants should disappear, their loss would be serious, and cause a dangerous gap in the universal economy.
II.—COMPASSION.
II.—COMPASSION.
CHAPTER II.COMPASSION.One day, into the studio of the painter Gros entered a pupil of his, a handsome and careless young man, who had thought it clever to pin to his hat a beautiful butterfly, which, having just been captured, was still struggling painfully. The artist, indignant, broke out into a violent passion. "What, wretch!" he cried, "is this your feeling for the Beautiful? You find an exquisite creature, and can make no better use of it than to crucify and kill it barbarously! Begone, begone, and return here no more! Never again make your appearance in my presence!"
CHAPTER II.
COMPASSION.
One day, into the studio of the painter Gros entered a pupil of his, a handsome and careless young man, who had thought it clever to pin to his hat a beautiful butterfly, which, having just been captured, was still struggling painfully. The artist, indignant, broke out into a violent passion. "What, wretch!" he cried, "is this your feeling for the Beautiful? You find an exquisite creature, and can make no better use of it than to crucify and kill it barbarously! Begone, begone, and return here no more! Never again make your appearance in my presence!"
This speech will not surprise those who are acquainted with the great master's vivid sensibility, and his reverence for the Beautiful. What is more astonishing is that an anatomist, a man living with the scalpel always in his hand—Lyonnet—should speak in the same sense, and so speak in reference to insects which are to ordinary observers the least interesting. That able and patient man has opened up, as we know, an entirely new channel for science by his colossal investigation of the willow-grub, from which we learn that the muscular development of the insect is identical with that of the higher animals. Lyonnet congratulates himself that he was able to bring his prolonged labours to a conclusion without killing more than eight or nine individuals of the species he wished to describe.
A noble result of study! In fathoming life by this persevering toil, far from growing coldly indifferent, he became more intensely sympathetic. The minute details of the infinitely little had revealed to him the sources of the keen sensibility which Nature has hidden everywhere. He had found it existing at the bottom of the animal scale, and thus he acquired a due reverence for every form of life.
We are sometimes disquieted, repelled, and dismayed by insects exactly in proportion to our ignorance. Nevertheless almost every species, especially in our European climates, is perfectly harmless. But we suspect the unknown; and we are apt to kill those with which we are not acquainted, by way of acquiring knowledge.
I remember that, one morning in June, about four o'clock, when the sun was already high in the heavens, I was aroused somewhat abruptly, though still much fatigued and very sleepy. I was living in the country, and my chamber, which faced the east, having neither curtain nor shutter, the sun's rays fell full upon my bed. A magnificent drone, I do not know how, had made its way into the room, and joyously fluttered and buzzed in the sunshine. I grew weary of the noise. I arose, and thinking he wished to sally forth, threw open the window. But no; such was not his intention. The morning, though beautiful, was very fresh and damp: he preferred to remain indoors, in a more genial temperature, which dried and warmed him. Without, it was fourA.M.; within, it was already noon. He acted precisely as I shouldhave done, and would not depart. Willing to give him time, I left the window open, and returned to my bed; but I could not sleep. The fresh air from without entering into the room, my drone entered further and further, and buzzed about and around. The obstinate and importunate guest excited in me an angry feeling, and I started up, determined to expel him by main force. A handkerchief was my weapon, but undoubtedly I made use of it very unskilfully. I stunned, confused, and frightened the drone; he whirled round and round in a dizzy fit, but thought less than ever of quitting the chamber. My impatience increased: I pursued him with greater, with too great impetuosity. He fell on the window-sill, and rose no more.
Was he dead, or stunned? I would not close the window, thinking that in the latter case the air might revive him, and he would fly away. Meanwhile, by no means satisfied with what I had done, I threw myself on my bed. On the whole, it was his own fault. Why did he not escape? Such was my first reflection; but afterwards I grew more severe in self-judgment, and accused my impatience. So great is the tyranny of man, he can endure nothing. Like all kings, this lord of creation is impetuous, and at the slightest contradiction breaks out into a fury, and kills.
Very beautiful was the morning; fresh, and yet, by degrees, growing almost warm; a happy mixture of temperature, proper to that delightful country and that season of the year: it was Normandy, and the month of June. The peculiar characteristic of this month, distinguishing it from all those that follow, is, that it gives birth to the innocent species which live on vegetable food, but to none of the murderous races which need a living prey,—that it breeds flies, but not spiders. Death has not yet begun, and love reigns everywhere. All these ideas occurred to me, but proved by no means agreeable; for at this blessed, sacred time, when a universal confidence prevails, I had alreadykilled: man alone had broken the peace of God. The thought was very bitter. Whether the victim was great or small, mattered but little; the dead was always the dead. And it was without any serious occasion, without provocation, that I hadbrutally disturbed the sweet harmony of Spring, and spoiled the universal idyl.
While revolving all these thoughts, I glanced occasionally from my bed towards the window, and watched if the drone did not stir a little, if he were really dead. Unhappily he gave not a sign: his immobility was complete.
This lasted for half-an-hour, or about three-quarters; then suddenly—without, so far as I could see, the slightest preliminary movement—my drone arose with a strong and steady flight, and without the slightest hesitancy, as if nothing had befallen him. He passed out into the garden, which by that time was thoroughly warmed and filled with sunshine.
I confess that I found in his escape a happiness and a relief; but as for my drone, he had never lost heart. I perceived that he had thought in his tiny prudence that if, by the least sign, he had betrayed his returning vitality, his executioner would have finished him. Accordingly, he imitated death with wonderful fidelity, waiting until he had quite recovered his strength and breath,—until his wings, dry and warm, were fully ready to carry him away; and then, at one leap, he was off, without sayingadieu.
It was during a journey in Switzerland,—in the land of the Hallers, the Hubers, and the Bonnets,—that we began to study seriously; no longer contenting ourselves with collections which only displayed the exterior, but determined on examining the inner organs with microscope and scalpel. Then also we committed our first crimes.
I have no need to say that this preoccupation, this emotion—far more dramatic than one would have supposed—interfered with our journey. The sublime, enchanting, and solemn scenes of Switzerland lost, no doubt, their due power over us. But life—suffering life (and we were compelled to make it suffer)—diverted our thoughts. The hymn or eternal epopea of these infinitely great could scarcely vie with the drama of our infinitely little organisms. A fly hid from us the Alps; the agony of a beetle, which was ten days dying, veiled Mont Blanc from our gaze; in the anatomy of an ant we forgot the Jungfrau.
It matters not; for who shall rightly determine what is really great or little? Everything is great, everything important, everything equal in the bosom of nature and the impartiality of universal love. And where is it more perceptible than in the infinite travail of the little organic world on which our eyes were fixed? To lift them towards the mountains, or lower them towards the insects, was one and the same thing.
EXTRACT FROM MADAME MICHELET'S JOURNAL.
"On the 20th of July, a very hot day, but freshened nevertheless by the morning breeze which disported on the lake between Chillon and Clarens, I went out for a walk alone, my husband remaining indoors to write. The sun shot athwart our valleys of the Pays de Vaud, and poured his full splendour on the opposite mountains of Savoy. The lake, already illumined, reflected the sharp ridges of the rocks, whose base, clothed in pastures, lends life and freshness to its borders.
"By-and-by the sun turned, and the scene changed. A warm ray of light penetrated beyond Chillon, the long defile of the Valais, illuminated the pointed Dent du Midi, and coloured in vapour the summit of the remote St. Bernard. But to this scene of glory I preferred the morning hour, when our Montreux reposed in shadow. It was the hour of divine service at its little church, whose terrace, half-way down the slope, propped up by sharp acclivities, wooded, and therefore obscure, pours out the crystal waters on the thirsty vineyards lying below. Beneath the terrace a beautiful mossy grot, glittering with stalactites, preservesa delightful feeling of freshness. The fane above, surrounded by hospitable wooden seats; a small library (a second temple), whence the vine-dressers borrow books; and, finally, a pretty fountain, combine in a graceful little picture, austerely charming. At morning especially, in the half-misty veil which foretokens a day of heat, this beautiful spot has all the effect of a religious thought, concentrating in itself, and yet extended over that immense panorama which the mind embraces, admires, and blesses.
"I frequently resorted thither, ascending the first slope of the mountain, solitary, and enriched with flowers. I took with me a book, and yet I never read. The prospect was too absorbing. Whether the eye ranged afar over the level mirror of the lake, and the rocks of Meillerie, with their forests, meadows, and precipices; or hovered close at hand about the nest of Clarens and the low towers of Chillon; or, finally, returned to the pretty villas, with their green lattices, of our friends the physician and the pastor,[G]in whose company my husband laboured;—I remained there in a kind of dream, and my heart, deeply moved, felt the sweetness of a holy harmony.
[G]It was our good fortune to reside, while at Montreux—the most beautiful spot on the wide earth—with a very estimable and rare individual, whom I should have thought of Italian or Spanish birth, if I had not known her to be a Genevese, and the sister of the able and enthusiastic historian of Geneva. Next door lived an eminent physician, of simple character, but all the more learned in natural studies.
[G]It was our good fortune to reside, while at Montreux—the most beautiful spot on the wide earth—with a very estimable and rare individual, whom I should have thought of Italian or Spanish birth, if I had not known her to be a Genevese, and the sister of the able and enthusiastic historian of Geneva. Next door lived an eminent physician, of simple character, but all the more learned in natural studies.
"But soon I discovered that I was not utterly alone. Bees, or drones, which had also risen early, were already at work, seeking inthe cups of the flowers the honey distilled beneath the dew, penetrating into the depths of the campanulas, or skilfully gliding into the mysterious corolla of the charming Venus's Slipper. Brilliant cicindelas opened the hunt after the gnats, while more unwieldy tribes sought their livelihood at the bottom of the herbage.
"On this day, then, the 20th of July, allowing my glance to fall mechanically at my feet, and withdrawing my eyes for a moment from the too luminous picture, I saw with astonishment a scene which vividly contrasted with this attractive and holy spot,—an atrocious warlike struggle. The insect-giant which we call the stag-beetle, one of the largest of European species, a black shining mass, whose horns bristle with superb crescent-wise pincers, had seized upon a beetle of far inferior size. Nevertheless, the two enemies being equally provided with admirable defensive arms, after the fashion of the corselets, armlets, and cuisses of our ancient knights, the struggle was long and fierce. Both belonged to the murderous race which prey on little insects,—were powerful lords in the habit of devouring their vassals. Whichever had fallen victim in the fray, the Lilliputian people had certainly applauded. However, the blind instinctive movement which leads us, in such cases, to separate the combatants, induced me to interfere; and with the point of my umbrella, skilfully, delicately, and without wounding the two antagonists, I compelled the stronger of the two to release its grasp."
The captive thus secured was, without form of trial, adjudged to undergo our investigations as a punishment for his fratricidal voracity. Our system, however, is not to impale the insect,—a horrible punishment and a pitiful spectacle which has no end; for a month afterwards, ay, and more, you will see the poor transfixed wretches writhing in agony. Ether generally kills them rapidly, and apparently painlessly. Well, then, weetherizedour prisoner largely. In a moment he spun round and fell: we thought him finished. An hour or two passed, and lo! he was once more alive, once more upright on trembling feet, and attempting to walk; he fell, and again he rose. But, to tell the truth, his gait was like that of a drunken man. A child would have laughed at it. We had no desire to laugh, being obliged to poison him a second time.A stronger dose was accordingly administered; but in vain,—he came again to himself. It was a curious circumstance; but it certainly seemed as if this kind of intoxication, while weakening and almost paralyzing the faculties of motion, had all the more keenly excited the nerves, and what we may call the amorous faculties. The use he sought to make of his vacillating step and last efforts was to join a female of his species which we had found lying dead, and placed upon the table. He felt her with his palpi and trembling arms. He contrived to turn her over, and tumbled about (very probably he could not see) to assure himself whether she was alive. He would not part from her: one would have sworn that he had undertaken, though dying, to resuscitate the dead. It was a fantastic, a gloomy, and yet, for one who knows at heart that all nature is identical, a touching spectacle.
It afflicted us greatly; we attempted to shorten it by the help of the ether, and to separate this Juliet from her Romeo. But the indomitable male laughed at all our poisons, and dismally dragged himself along. We shut him up in a large box, where he did not die until after a considerable period, and incredibly large doses. His punishment—and, reader, you may justly call itours—endured for fully fifteen days.
This robust, enduring being, with his inextinguishable flame of life, threw us into a prolonged reverie.
On our first dabbling in bloodshed, Nature had wished to show us, and with a master's hand, the strange and unconquerable energy with which she has endowed life. "Love is strong as death." Where do we find this saying? In the Bible. Yes; and it is also the eternal Bible. For what more powerfully consecrates existence, and renders it sympathetic, reverend, and sacred? And how great a pity it is, then, to cut it short at the divine moment when every being has its share of God!
We excused ourselves by saying that this insect, which lives six years in a single night, could have spread its wings beneath the sky but two months longer,—just long enough to perpetuate its race. We deprived it, therefore, of a very little time—a month out of six or seven years.
Yes; but that month was the epoch to which all its life had tended.Previously it had only vegetated; but then, it could really have lived and reigned, powerful and joyous. Long an insect, in that hour it would have become almost a bird, a son of the flower-enamelled earth and the genial light. We had acted like the Parcæ, which delight in cutting the thread of our lives at the very moment of happiness!
III.—WORLD-BUILDERS.
III.—WORLD-BUILDERS.
CHAPTER III.WORLD-BUILDERS.There is a world under this world, above, below, and all around it, of which we have no suspicion.Occasionally, indeed, we catch a faint murmur, a sound, and thereupon we say, "It is a trifle, it is nothing." But this nothing is the Infinite.The Infinite of the invisible life, the silent life, the world of night and of the inner earth, of the shadowy ocean,—the unseen creatures of the air which we breathe, or which, mingling in the fluids we drink, circulate within us unperceived.An immensely powerful world, which in its details we scorn, but which at intervals affrights us, when it stands revealed before our eyes in one of its grand unforeseen manifestations.The navigator, for example, who at night sees the ocean shimmering with lustre and wreathing garlands of fire, is at first diverted by the spectacle. He sails ten leagues; the garland is indefinitely prolonged; it stirs, and twists, and knots itself in harmony with the motions of the wave; it becomesa monstrous serpent ever extending its sinuous length to thirty, ay, and forty leagues. Yet all this is but a dance of imperceptible animalcules! What are their numbers? At this question the imagination starts back aghast; it perceives in the distance a nature of gigantic force, of terrific wealth, but possessing little relation to the other, the well-ordered, and, in a certain degree, economical nature, of the higher life.
CHAPTER III.
WORLD-BUILDERS.
There is a world under this world, above, below, and all around it, of which we have no suspicion.
Occasionally, indeed, we catch a faint murmur, a sound, and thereupon we say, "It is a trifle, it is nothing." But this nothing is the Infinite.
The Infinite of the invisible life, the silent life, the world of night and of the inner earth, of the shadowy ocean,—the unseen creatures of the air which we breathe, or which, mingling in the fluids we drink, circulate within us unperceived.
An immensely powerful world, which in its details we scorn, but which at intervals affrights us, when it stands revealed before our eyes in one of its grand unforeseen manifestations.
The navigator, for example, who at night sees the ocean shimmering with lustre and wreathing garlands of fire, is at first diverted by the spectacle. He sails ten leagues; the garland is indefinitely prolonged; it stirs, and twists, and knots itself in harmony with the motions of the wave; it becomesa monstrous serpent ever extending its sinuous length to thirty, ay, and forty leagues. Yet all this is but a dance of imperceptible animalcules! What are their numbers? At this question the imagination starts back aghast; it perceives in the distance a nature of gigantic force, of terrific wealth, but possessing little relation to the other, the well-ordered, and, in a certain degree, economical nature, of the higher life.
It is impossible to speak of insects or molluscs without naming these animalcules, which seem to be their rough outline, and in the extreme simplicity of their organism already foretoken, indicate, and prepare for them. With a good microscope you can discern these miniatures of the insect, which simulate their organism, and mimic their movements. When you are able to distinguish theRotifers, you think that in the aggregations and in the tentacles of their mouth you recognize them as little polypes. TheRhizopods, though almost imperceptible, are furnished, nevertheless, with good solid carapaces, which are equally as good a protection for them as their great shells are for the molluscs, the oyster and the snail. The microscopicTardigradæare, in fact, closely connected with insects, and theAcarinawith worms.
What are these least of the little? Simply the architects or builders of the globe which we inhabit. With their bodies and their remains they have prepared the soil now echoing under our feet. Whether their tiny shells be still distinguishable, or whether they have been decomposed into chalk, they are not the less the foundation of immense portions of our earth. A single bed of this chalk stretches from Paris to Tours; that is, for fifty miles. Another, of enormous breadth, spreads over all Champagne. Pure chalk, or Spanish white, which we find everywhere, is composed of pounded shells.
And it is these most minute of organisms which have wrought the grandest of works. The imperceptible rhizopod has built for itself a nobler monument than the Pyramids; nothing less than Central Italy, a notable portion of the chain of the Apennines. But even this was too insignificant: the colossal masses of Chili, the prodigious Cordilleras, which look down upon the world at their feet, are the funeral monumentwherein this impalpable—I had almost said invisible-organism has interred the remains of its vanished race.
A bygone world, hidden beneath the present and upper world in the profundities of life or the obscurity of time!
What might it not tell us, if God would give it speech, and permit it to recall all that it has done or is doing for us! What just demands might not the elementary plants, the imperfect animals whose dust has fashioned for our use the fertile crust of the globe, that noble theatre of life, address to us! "While you were still asleep," might say the ferns, "we alone, by transforming and purifying the previously irrespirable air, created after thousands upon thousands of years the earth now blooming with the corn and the rose! We accumulated that subterranean treasure of enormous coal-beds which warms your hearth; and that one mass, among others, a hundred leagues in length, which feeds the great forge of the world from London to Newcastle."
"We," the imperceptibles might say,—the obscure and unnamed animalcules despised or ignored by man,—"we are thy guardians, have laid out thy fields, and built thy dwelling-places. It is not the great fossil rhinoceros or mastodon whose bones have made thy soil; it isourwork—or rather, it is ourselves. Thy cities, thy Louvres, and thy Capitols are constructed with ourdébris. Life itself in its essence, in that sparkling beverage by which France diffuses joy over all the earth, whence comes it? From arid hills where the vine thrives in the white dust that once waswe, and absorbs the concealed warmth of our prior existences."
The demand made upon us would be a lengthened one; restitution impossible. These dead myriads, having nourished with their lime the various articles that form our sustenance, have passed into our very being. Others also would put forth a claim. The very pebble, the hard flint, once lived, and now nourishes life.
Great was the astonishment in Europe when a Berlin professor—Ehrenberg—informed us that the silicious stone, so sharp, rough, and brittle, thetripoliwith which metals are polished, is neither more nor less than an aggregation of dead animalcules, an accumulation of the shells of infusoria of a terrible diminutiveness. So small is the creature I speak of, that it takes one hundred and eighty-seven millions to weigh a grain.
The labours of the unseen architects of the globe, admired by our men of science in extinct species, travellers have discovered revived in living species. They have surprised, in our own day, immense laboratories in permanent activity, of beings invisible in themselves, or apparently powerless, but really of boundless capacity of toil, if we judge by its results. What death accomplishes for life, life itself relates. Numbers of tiny organisms become by their present works the interpreters and historians of their vanished predecessors.
These, like the latter, with their structures, or theirdébris, build up islands in the sea, and construct immense banks of reefs, which, gradually joining together, will become new lands. Without going further than Sicily, we find among the madrepores, that cover its coasts torn by volcanic fires, a little animal, the zoophyte, which has accomplished a task man would never have dared to undertake. He contrives to move forward by protecting his soft body with a shield of stone which he incessantly secretes. Continuously developing the tubes which in succession afford him shelter, he entirely fills up the empty spaces left by the madrepores or corals, bridges over the intervals between the reefs, and connects them with one another; finally, he creates a passage in defiles previouslyimpassable. In due time this builder will have accomplished the colossal task of a causeway all around the island in its circumference of a hundred and eighty leagues.
But it is more particularly in the vast Southern Ocean that these works are prosecuted on a grand scale by the polypes of the lime, the corallines, and madrepores of every kind; an animal vegetation worthy of comparison with the labour of the mosses in a peat-moor, which continue to flourish in their upper growth while the lower are transformed and decomposed. Exactly like these vegetables, the polypes, and even their production, the coral, while still soft and tender, frequently become the nourishment of worms and fishes which feed and browse upon them like our cattle, derive their sustenance from them, and return them in the shape of chalk, without the slightest indication of a previous existence! Recently English seamen have discovered at the bottom of the sea this manufacture of chalk, which is incessantly passing from the living into the inorganic condition.
But these destructive causes do not prevent the polypes from imperturbably carrying on their gigantic labours, incessantly elevating the islands and solid barriers which are so skilfully adapted to resist the oceanic action. They divide the work among themselves according to their species. The idlest execute their share in the quiet waters, or in the great depths, remotest from the light; others, under the sunshine, among the very breakers of which they eventually become the masters.
Soft, gelatinous, elastic, adhering to their support, the stony and porous mass; they deaden the fury of the boiling waters which would wear out the granite, and split the rock into fragments.
Under the mild trade-winds which prevail in the tropic climates, the sea would uniformly flow with a tranquil tide if it did not encounter these living ramparts, which force it back upon itself, scatter its waves in spray, and vex it with everlasting torment.
That the waters should assault them is their fate. But they inflict no injury upon them; and in truth it is on their behalf they toil. Their violence does not wearthem, but it wears the reef, and detaches in atoms the lime on which they live and with which they build. This lime, absorbed by them andanimalized, changes into a hundred sparkling,living, active flowers, which are identical with our polypes, and form quite an analogous world enamelling the ocean-bed.
On the margin of these islands,—which are generally circular, like a ring,—accumulates a layer of vegetable wealth, which speedily grows green, and embellishes itself with the only tree that can endure salt-water, the cocoa-nut palm. This, then, is thehumus; the life which will for ever continue to develop. The fresh springs and fountains will next make their appearance, invited and fed by the vegetation.