II Our Studies at Paris and in Switzerland
In the prolonged perusal of naturalists and travellers by which we prepared ourselves for writing “The Bird,” and for which nothing less was required than the patience of a solitary woman, we gathered on the way a number of facts and details which presented the Insect to our eyes under the most varied aspects. The Insect appeared to us incessantly in company with the Bird,—here like a harmony, there as an antagonism,—but too often in profile, and as a subordinate being.
I was in the middle of the sixteenth century, and while engaged for about three years in historical studies, my knowledge on this point was collected only by means of extracts, readings, and conversations every evening. The various elements of this grand study I acquired through the medium of a soul eminently gentle towards the things of nature, and generously given to love the weak; whose loyal and patient affection, indefinitely extending curiosity, picked up, so to speak, like the ant, and as so many grains of sand, the materials which we found less frequently in the more important works than in an infinity of memoirs and scattered dissertations.
To live long, steadfastly, for ever,—this it is which renders weak spirits strong. Such a perseverance of taste and affection is not less necessary when one wishes to put aside one’s books, and enter upon a course of observation, of long and delicate studies of life. I am not surprised that Mademoiselle Jurine contributed so largely to her father’s astonishing discoveries respecting bees, nor that Madame Mérian, as the fruit of her far-off wanderings, has bequeathed to us her wise and beautiful book of drawings of the Insects of Guiana. The eyes and hands of women, so delicate and well adapted for dealing with tiny objects, are eminently appropriate for such pursuits as these. They have also a greater respect for, attention to, and condescension towards trifling existences, than man exhibits. Though poetical, they are less poets, and impose less upon the Real the tyranny of their thought. They are more docile towards it, do not dominate over it, submit themselves to it, and do not bestow on these little beings the rapid and often disdainful glance of the higher life. And when, with all this, they are patient also, they may well become excellent observers, and miniature Réaumurs.
Feminine qualities are specially needful in microscopical studies. To succeed in these, one must become somewhat of a woman. The microscope is amusing at a first hasty glance; but if one would make a serious use of it, it demands a certain amount of dexterity, patient tact, and especially leisure,—considerable leisure,—full liberty of time,—in order that one may indefinitely repeat the same observations, and examine the same object on different days, in the pure light of morning, in the warm ray of noon, and occasionally even at a later hour. For certain objects which we must regard as a whole are best seen through a single lens; others only through a transparency, by illuminating them beneath the mirror of the microscope. Others, insignificant or commonplace by day, grow marvellous in the evening, when the focus of the instrument concentrates the light. To conclude: their study demands—what in the present age one least possesses—an isolation from the world, a point beyond time; the support of a blameless curiosity, and of a constant and reverent love of these imperceptible existences. Theirs is a kind of virginal and solitary maternity.
I was not released from my absorption in that terrible sixteenth century until the spring of 1856. “The Bird” had also made its appearance. I sought an interval of rest, and established myself at Montreux, near Clarens, on the Lake of Geneva. But this most delightful locality, awakening in me a keen perception of Nature, did not restore my tranquillity. I was still too much affected by the bloody story I had been narrating. A flame burned within me which nothing could extinguish. I rambled along the roads, with my cup of fir-wood, tasting the water at every fountain—all so fresh and so pure!—and demanding of them if any possessed the property of effacing the bitternesses of the Past and Present, and which, out of so many springs, might prove to me a Lethe.
At length I found, at about half a league from Lucerne, an old convent transformed into a hostelry, where I selected for my study the parlour, a very spacious apartment, which, through its seven windows opening on the mountains, the lake, and the town—a threefold prospect—afforded me a magnificent light at all hours. From morning to evening the sun remained faithful to me, and revolved around my microscope, set in the middle of the chamber. The beautiful lake, shining in front and on every side, is not that which afterwards, when hemmed in by the heights, and furious and violent, will be called the Lake of Uri. But the firs which everywhere overhang the landscape warn you not to place too much reliance on the season,—inform you that you are residing in a cold country. In numerous things, moreover, you find a certain barbarous savagery prevailing. It is from the very south the breath of winter blows. In front of me, and my constant companion, arose, on the farther shore, the gloomy Pilatus, a barren mountain with keen razor-like edges; and over its black shoulder gleamed, at ten leagues distant, the snow-white Virgin and the Silver Peak (the Jungfrau and the Silberhorn).
The country is very beautiful and very fresh in July, but frequently, in September, is already cold. You perceive above and behind you, at an enormous elevation, an ocean of water suspended. This is the main reservoir whence issue the great European reservoirs; the mass of St. Gothard, a table-land measuring ten leagues in every direction, which from one extremity pours out the Rhine, from another the Rhone, from a third the Reuss, and towards the south the Ticino. You do not see this reservoir—except a little of its outline—but you feel it. Do you wish for water? Come hither. Drink; it is the grandest cup which quenches the thirst of humanity.
I began to feel less athirst. In the middle of summer the nights were cold, the mornings and evenings fresh. Those spotless snows, which I gazed at so eagerly and with insatiable eyes, purified me, it seemed, from the long, dusty, sun-burned, blood-besprinkled, and sublime, but also sometimes miry, revolutions of history. I recovered a little my equilibrium between the drama of the world and the eternal epopea.
What can be more divine than these Alps? Elsewhere I have called them “the common altar of Europe.” And wherefore? Not on account of their height,—a little higher, or a little lower, one is no nearer heaven,—but because the grand harmony, elsewhere vague, is palpable here. The solidarity of life, the circulation of nature, the beneficent concord of the elements,—all is visible. It kindles a glorious illumination.
Each chain filters from its glacier, as a revelation of the inaccessible zone, a torrent which, concentrated, tranquillized and purified in an ample lake,—translated into pure and azure water,—emerges as a great river, and diffuses everywhere the soul of the Alps. From these innumerable waters reascend to the mountains the mists which renew the treasure of their glaciers.
All is in such perfect sympathy, and the perspectives are so noble, that the lakes and their rivers still reflect or survey, as they wander afar, the grave assemblage of the mountains, the upper snows, the sublime virgin peaks of which they are an emanation.
They face, they explain one another, harmonize with and love one another. But in what austerity! In their mutual love we recognize an identity of the strongest contrasts,—fixity and fluidity, rapidity and eternity, the snows above the verdure, forebodings of winter in summer.
Hence results a prudent nature, a general sagacity in the things themselves. One enjoys without forgetting that one’s enjoyment will not be of long duration. But the heart is not the less moved by a world of such seriousness and purity. This brevity attracts, and this austerity takes one captive. From the gleaming snows to the lakes, from the woods to the rivers and to the fresh emerald meads, a sovereign virginity predominates over the whole country.
Such localities are for all the seasons of life. Old age grows strengthened by its association with nature, and greets without melancholy the grand shadows falling from the mountains. And hearts still young, which feel only the morning and the dawn, expand to the charming joys of religious tenderness,—tenderness for the Soul of the world, tenderness for its smallest infants.
The favourite place for our walks, and our usual studio, was a small grove of firs situated at a tolerable elevation above the lake, in the rear of the rock of Seeberg. We ascended thither by two routes doubly illuminated by the mighty radiance of the splendid mirror in which the four cantons are reflected. No landscape can be more gentle, if we look towards Lucerne; none more serious or solemn, in the direction of St. Gothard and the amphitheatre of mountains. But all this grandeur and brightness terminated suddenly at the first step we took beneath our firs. It was as if one had reached the end of the world. The light lessened; sounds seemed subdued; life itself appeared absent.
Such, at the first glance, is the customary effect of the woods. But at the second all is changed. The suffocation, or at least subordination, imposed by the fir upon all those plants which would fain grow in its shade, lets light into the depths; and when the eyes have become accustomed to this kind of gloaming, we see considerably further, and distinguish much more clearly, than in the inextricable labyrinth of ordinary forests where everything acts as an obstruction.
The spectacle first presented to us under the noble funereal pillars—the pillars, may we not say? of a stately temple—was a spectacle of death; not of a saddening death, but of a death rich, adorned, and graceful, such as Nature frequently vouchsafes to plants. At every step the old trunks of trees, felled but not uprooted, were clothed in an incomparable velvety green,—a tissue superbly woven of fine mosses soft to the touch, which delighted the eye by their changing aspects, their reflexes, and their shifting gleams.
But where was the animal life of the forest? Our ears soon grew accustomed to recognize and divine its presence. I do not refer to the whistle of the tomtits, or the strange laughter of the woodpecker, the evident lord of the place. I am thinking of a different people, against whom the birds wage war.
A great hum and murmur, sufficiently loud to drown the noise of a brook, warned us that the forest was haunted by wasps. Already we had discovered their fort, whence more than one endeavoured to lead us astray, suspecting our steps, and obviously ill-disposed towards us.
In the very localities least frequented by the wasps, light, hoarse, internal rustlings seemed to issue from the trees. Were these the voices of their genii, their Dryads? No, indeed; but of their mysterious enemies, the mighty populace of the shadows, which, following up the veins of the trunk and penetrating its entire extent, work out for themselves, with patient teeth, innumerable ways and channels and galleries. Sometimes nearly a hundred thousand scolytiB (for such is their name) are found in a single tree. The sickly fir is at length reduced by their teeth to the condition of a piece of delicate lace-work. Yet the bark remains intact, and deludes us with the phantom of life.
How does the tree defend itself? Sometimes by its sap, which, while preserving its strength, asphyxiates the enemy; but more frequently it is assisted by a friend, a physician, from without—the woodpecker—which carefully auscultates it, taps and strikes it with its strong hammer, and with persevering ardour watches for and pursues the nibbling colony.
Is this internal combat between the two lives, the animal and the vegetable, really understood? Of this I cannot be sure, and there are times when I think myself deceived.
In that silence which was not silence, a something—I know not what—assured us that the dead forest was in truth alive, and on the point of breaking forth into speech. We entered it full of hope, and believing that we should discover some secret. We felt certain that to our inquiring spirit a great manifold Spirit was about to reply. Though fatigued by the walk, and in an infirm state of health, I felt great pleasure in the search I had undertaken in these pallid glooms. I loved to see before me a person deeply moved, and enthusiastically smitten by their great mysteries. Stick in hand, she advanced into this fantastic twilight, interrogating the sombre forest, and seeking, as it were, the Virgilian “golden bough.”
I was about to quit the scene, and seat myself in a sunny opening, when at length a more successful sounding in one of the ancient trunks brought to light a world whose existence no one would have suspected.
At the summit of this trunk, cut off within a foot of the ground, you could very easily distinguish the works wrought by the scolyti and weevils, the former inhabitants of the tree, in conformity to the concentric arrangement of the sap. But all this belonged to ancient history; a different condition of things now existed. These miserable scolyti had perished, having undergone, like their tree, the energetic action of a great chemical transformation which excluded all life.
All life, except one, and that the keenest—a consuming and burned-up life, it seems—the life of those beings powerful under an infinitely little form, in which one might have readily concluded that a black flame, shining fitfully, had consumed all that was material, and reserved only what was spiritual.
The coup de théâtre was violent, and the immense swarming had its effect. A vivid and unwonted joy agitated the much-moved hand that had made the happy discovery; and in proportion to the full revelation of its greatness, a wild vertigo passed from the distracted people to the author of this great ruin. The walls of the city fell down, and revealed the interior of the edifice; innumerable halls and galleries were laid bare; generally four to five inches in length, and about half an inch in height,—a height certainly quite sufficient, and even majestic, if we take into account the size of the members of the community.
A true palace, or rather a vast and superb city; limited in breadth, but to what depth may it not penetrate the earth? It is said that some have been found which, perseveringly excavated, have numbered no fewer than seven hundred stories. Thebes and Nineveh were insignificant! Babylon and Babel alone might have sustained, in their audaciously towering piles, a comparison with these shadowy Babels which continually expanded in the abyss.
But more astonishing than the grandeur is the interior aspect of these habitations: without, all damp, and mossy, and overgrown with tiny cryptogams; within, an astonishing dryness, and an admirable cleanliness—every partition firm though soft, just as if it had been tapestried with cotton velvet, very heavy and lustreless. Is this black velvet produced from the wood itself, after undergoing powerful modification, or by an extremely delicate layer of microscopic fungi which may have been established in the tree while it was still moist, and before it received its all-powerful necromancers? The agent of the transformation betrayed itself directly: each separate cell, if closely smelt, betrayed the pungent odour of formic acid, by means of which the busy race had effected the metamorphosis of its abode, had burned it and purified it with its flame, had dried it and rendered it wholesome with its useful poison.
It is this acid also which, undoubtedly, had accelerated and assisted the enormous and colossal labour, had opened the way to the tiny efforts of those indefatigable sculptors whose chisels are their teeth. Yet even in this case there can be no question but that it must have occupied a considerable time. Successive generations had very probably passed their lives in the tree, working always on the same plan and in the same direction. The image of the projected and longed-for city—the hope of creating a secure fortress, a noble and massive acropolis—had for long years sustained the hearts of the courageous citizens. Ah, what would life be worth if one laboured only for one’s-self! Let us look forward to the future. The first-comers who spent their lives in the tree, and from their internal reservoir drew and exhausted the juices that excavated it, could have enjoyed but for a very brief time a habitation so melancholy, and so steeped, as yet, in pestiferous damps and protracted rains; but they thought of future generations, and reverenced posterity.
Alas, I am much afraid that the sanguine dream is ended! It is not that a child’s stick, held by a young and womanly hand, has penetrated to the very bottom of the structure carried so deeply into the earth; but that the exterior defences, which protected and closed up the whole, and kept off the rains, have been removed and scattered abroad. And lo! the great autumnal floods pouring down from the Rhigi, Mont Pilate, and the St. Gothard, the father of rivers,—floating above the forests in heavy mists or descending in torrents,—will swamp for ever the internal recesses. And what flame, or what burning life, can the inhabitants oppose to these repeated invasions of the waters, to rebuild their palace and purify it again?
Seated on a fir, I eyed it steadfastly, and as I gazed I dreamed. Though accustomed to the fall of empires and republics, its ruins flung me into an ocean of thought. A wave, and then another wave rose, and throbbed in my heart. The verse of Homer hung upon my lips,—
“And even Troy shall see its day of doom.”
What could I do for this ravaged world, this half-ruined city? What for this great laborious insect race, which all living tribes pursue, or devour, or despise, and which nevertheless reveals to us the strongest images of unselfish love, of public devotion, and the social sense in its keenest energy? One thing: to comprehend it,—to explain it, if I could,—to pour light upon it, and supply it with a generous interpretation.
Notes
B A genus of Coleoptera.