Chapter V: Part 5

Many would remain, but a goad impels them forward. The slowest are the most ardent. The French quail will traverse the Mediterranean, will cross the range of Atlas; sweeping over the Sahara, it will plunge into the kingdoms of the negro; these, too, it will leave behind; and, finally, if it pauses at the Cape, it is because there the infinite Austral ocean commences, which promises it no nearer shelter than the icy wastes of the Pole, and the very winter which exiled it from Egypt.

What gives them confidence for such enterprises? Some may trust to their arms, the weakest to their numbers, and abandon themselves to fate. The stock-dove says: "Out of ten or a hundred thousand the assassin cannot slay more than ten, and doubtlessly I shall not be one of the victims." They seize their opportunity; the flying cloud passes at night; if the moon rise, against her silver radiance the black wings stand out clear and distinct; they escape, confused, in her pale lustre. The valiant lark, the national bird of our ancient Gaul and of the invincible hope, also trusts to his numbers; he sets out in the day-time, or rather, he wanders from province to province; decimated, hunted, he does not the less give utterance to his song.

But the lonely bird, which has neither the support of numbers nor of strength, what will become of him? What wilt thou do, poor solitary nightingale, which, like others of thy race, must confront this great adventure, but without assistance, without comrades? Thou, what art thou, friend? A voice! The very power which is in thee will be thy betrayal. In thy sombre attire, thou might well pass unseen by blending with the tints of the discoloured woods of autumn. But see now! The leaf is still purple; it wears not the dull dead brown of the later months.

Ah, why dost thou not remain? why not imitate the timorousness of those birds which in such myriads fly no further than Provence? There, sheltered behind a rock, thou shalt find, I assure thee, an Asiatic or African winter. The gorge of Ollioules is worth all the valleys of Syria.

"No; I must depart. Others may tarry; for _they_ have only to gain the East. But me, my cradle summons _me_: I must see again that glowing heaven, those luminous and sumptuous ruins where my ancestors lived and sang; I must plant my foot once more on my earliest love, the rose of Asia; I must bathe myself in the sunshine. _There_ is the mystery of life, there quickens the flame in which my song shall be renewed; my voice, my muse is the light."

Thus, then, he takes wing; but I think his heart must throb as he draws near the Alps, when their snowy peaks announce his approach to the terror-haunted gate on whose rocks are posted the cruel children of day and night, the vulture, the eagle--all the hooked and talon-armed robbers, athirst for the warm blood of life--the accursed species which inspire the senseless poetry of man--some, _noble_ murderers, which bleed quickly and drain the flowing tide; others, _ignoble_ murderers, which choke and destroy;--in a word, all the hideous forms of murder and death.

I imagine to myself, then, that the poor little musician whose voice is silenced--not his _ingegno_, nor his delicate thought--having no friend to consult, will halt to consider well before entering upon the long ambush of the pass of Savoy. He pauses at the threshold, on a friendly roof, well known to myself, or in the hallowed groves of the Charmettes,[23] deliberates and says: "If I pass during the day, they will all be there; they know the season; the eagle will pounce upon me; I die. If I pass by night, the great horn-owl (_duc_), the common owl (_hibou_), the entire host of horrible phantoms, with eyes enlarged in the darkness, will seize me, and carry me off to their young. Alas! what shall I do? I must endeavour to avoid both night and day. At the gloomy hour of dawn, when the cold, raw air chills in his eyrie the great fierce beast, which knows not how to build a nest, I may fly unperceived. And even if he see me, I shall be leagues away before he can put into motion the cumbrous machinery of his frozen wings."

The calculation is judicious, but nevertheless a score of accidents may disturb it. Starting at midnight, he may encounter in the face, during his long flight across Savoy, the east wind, which engulfs and delays him, neutralizes his exertions, and fetters his pinions. Heavens! it is morning now. Those sombre giants, already clothed in October in their snowy mantles, reveal upon their vast expanse of glittering white a black spot, which moves with terrible rapidity. How gloomy are they already, these mountains, and of what evil augury, draped in the long folds of their winter shrouds! Motionless as are their peaks, they create beneath them and around them an everlasting agitation of violent and antagonistic currents, which struggle with one another so furiously that at times they compel the bird to tarry. "If I fly in the lower air, the torrents which hurl through the shadows with their clanging floods, will snare me in their whirling vapours. And if I mount to the cold and lofty realms, which kindle with a light of their own, I give myself up to death; the frost will seize and slacken my wings."

An effort has saved him. With head bent low, he plunges, he falls into Italy. At Susa or towards Turin he builds a nest, and strengthens his pinions. He recovers himself in the depth of the gigantic Lombard _corbeille_, that great nursery of fruits and flowers where Virgil listened to his song. The land has in nowise changed; now, as then, the Italian, an exile from his home, the sad cultivator of another's fields,[24] the _durus arator_, pursues the nightingale. The useful insect-devourer is proscribed as an eater of grain. Let him cross then, if he can, the Adriatic, from isle to isle, despite the winged corsairs, which keep watch on the very rocks; he will arrive perhaps in the land ever consecrated to birds--in genial, hospitable, bountiful Egypt--where all are spared, nourished, blessed, and kindly welcomed.

Still happier land, if in its blind hospitality it did not also shelter the murderer. The nightingale and dove are gladly entertained, it is true, but no less so the eagle. On the terraces of sultans, on the balconies of minarets, ah, poor traveller, I see those flashing dreadful eyes which dart their gaze this way. And I see that they have already marked thee!

Do not remain here long. Thy season will not last. The destructive wind of the desert will dry up, and destroy, and sweep away thy meagre nourishment. Not a gnat will be left to sustain thy wing and thy voice. Bethink thyself of the nest which thou hast left in our woods, remember thy European loves. The sky was gloomy, but there thou madest for thyself a sky of thine own. Love was around thee; every soul thrilled at thy voice; the purest throbbed for thee. There is the real sun, there the fairest Orient. True light is where one loves.

MIGRATIONS: CONTINUED.

THE SWALLOW.

Undoubtedly the swallow has seized upon our dwellings without ceremony; she lodges under our windows, under our eaves, in our chimneys. She does not hold us in the slightest fear.

It might have been said that she trusted to her unrivalled wing, had she not placed her nest and her children within our reach. The true reason why she has become the mistress of our house is, that she has taken possession not only of our house, but of our heart.

In the rural mansion where my father-in-law educated his children, he would hold his class during summer in a greenhouse in which the swallows rested without disturbing themselves about the movements of the family, quite unconstrained in their behaviour, wholly occupied with their brood, passing out at the windows and returning through the roof, chattering very loudly with one another, and still more loudly when the master would make a pretence of saying, as St. Francis said, "Sister swallows, can you not be silent?"

Theirs is the hearth. Where the mother has built her nest, the daughter and the grand-daughter build. They return there every year; their generations succeed to it more regularly than do our own. A family dies out or is dispersed, the mansion passes into other hands; but the swallow constantly returns to it, and maintains its right of occupation.

It is thus that our traveller has come to be accepted as a symbol of the permanency of home. She clings to it with such fidelity, that though the house may be repaired, or partially demolished, or long disturbed by masons, it is still retaken possession of, re-occupied by these faithful birds of persevering memory.

She is the _bird of return_. And if I bestow this title upon her, it is not alone on account of her annual return, but on account of her general conduct, and the direction of her flight, so varied, yet nevertheless circular, and always returning upon itself.

She incessantly wheels and _veers_, indefatigably hovers about the same area and the same locality, describing an infinity of graceful curves, which, however varied, are never far distant from one another. Is it to pursue her prey, the gnat which dances and floats in the air? Is it to exercise her power, her unwearying wing, without going too far from her nest? It matters not; this revolving flight, this incessantly returning movement, has always attracted our eyes and heart, throwing us into a reverie, into a world of thought.

We see her flight clearly, but never, or scarcely ever, her little black face. Who, then, art thou, thou who always concealest thyself, who never showest me aught but thy trenchant wings--scythes rapid as that of Time? But Time goes forward without pause; thou, thou always returnest. Thou drawest close to my side; it seems as if thou wouldst graze me, wouldst touch me?--So nearly dost thou caress me, that I feel in my face the wind, almost the whirr of thy wings. Is it a bird? Is it a spirit? Ah, if thou art a soul, tell me so frankly, and reveal to me the barrier which separates the living from the dead.

But let us not anticipate, nor let loose the waters of bitterness. Rather let us trace this bird in the people's thoughts, in the good old popular wisdom, close akin, undoubtedly, to the wisdom of Nature.

The people have seen in her only the natural dial, the division of the seasons, of the two great _hours of the year_. At Easter and at Michaelmas, at the epochs of family gatherings, of fairs and markets, of leases and rent-paying, the black and white swallow appears, and tells us the time. She comes to separate and define the past and the coming seasons. At these epochs families and friends meet together, but not always to find the circle complete; in the last six months this friend has disappeared, and that. The swallow returns, but not for all; many have gone a very long journey, longer than _the tour of France_. To Germany? No; further, further still.

Our _companions_, industrious travellers, followed the swallow's life, except that on their return they frequently could no longer find their nest. Of this the pendant bird warns them in an old German saying, wherein the narrow popular wisdom would fain retain them round the roof-tree of home. On this proverb, the great poet Rückert, metamorphosing himself into a swallow, reproducing her rhythmical and circular flight, her constant turns and returns, has founded a lyric at which many will laugh, but more than one will weep:--

"De la jeunesse, de la jeunesse,
Un chant me revient toujours--
Oh! que c'est loin! Oh! que c'est loin
Tout ce qui fut autrefois;

"Ce que chantait, ce que chantait
Celle qui ramène le printemps,
Rasant le village de l'aile, rasant le village de l'aile.
Est-ce bien ce qu'elle chante encore?

"'Quand je partis, quand je partis,
Etaient pleins l'armoire et le coffre.
Quand je revins, quand je revins,
Je ne trouvai plus que le vide.'

"O mon foyer de famille,
Laisse-moi seulement une fois
M'asseoir à la place sacrée
Et m'envoler dans les songes!

"Elle revient bien l'hirondelle,
Et l'armoire vidée se remplit.
Mais le vide du coeur reste, mais reste le vide du coeur,
Et rien ne le remplira.

"Elle rase pourtant le village,
Elle chante comme autrefois--
'Quand je partis, quand je partis,
Coffre, armoire, tout était plein.
Quand je revins, quand je revins
Je ne trouvai plus que le vide.'"

_Imitated_:--

From childhood gay, from childhood gay,
E'er breathes to me a strain,
How far the day, how far the day
Which ne'er may come again!

And is her song, and is her song--
She who brings back the spring,
The hamlet touching with her wing, the hamlet touching with her wing--
Is it true what she doth sing?

"When I set forth, when I set forth,
Both barn and chest were brimming o'er;
When I came back, when I came back,
I found a piteous lack of store."

Oh, my own home, so dearly loved,
Kind Heaven grant that I may kneel
Again upon thy sacred hearth,
While dreams the happy past reveal!

The swallow surely will return,
Coffer and barn will brim once more;
But blank remains the heart, empty the heart remains,
And none may the lost restore!

The swallow skims through the hamlet,
She sings as she sang of yore:--
"When I set out, when I set out,
Both barn and chest were brimming o'er;
When I came back, when I came back,
I found a piteous lack of store."

The swallow, caught in the morning, and closely examined, is seen to be a strange and ugly bird, we confess; but this fact perfectly well agrees with what is, _par excellence_, the _bird_--the being among all beings born for flight. To this object Nature has sacrificed everything; she has laughed at _form_, thinking only of _movement_; and has succeeded so well that this bird, ugly in repose, is, when flying, the most beautiful of all.

Scythe-like wings; projecting eyes; no neck (in order to treble her strength); feet, scarcely any, or none: all is wing. These are her great general features. Add a very large beak, always open, which, in flight, snaps at its prey without stopping, closes, and again re-opens. Thus she feeds while flying; she drinks, she bathes while flying; while flying, she feeds her young.

If she does not equal in accuracy of line the thunderous swoop of the falcon, by way of compensation she is freer; she wheels, makes a hundred circles, a labyrinth of undefined figures, a maze of varied curves, which she crosses and re-crosses, _ad infinitum_. Her enemy is dazzled, lost, confused, and knows not what to do. She wearies and exhausts him; he gives up the chase, but leaves her unfatigued. She is the true queen of the air; the incomparable agility of her motions makes all space her own. Who, like her, can change in the very moment of springing, and turn abruptly? No one. The infinitely varied and capricious pursuit of a prey which is ever fluttering--of the gnat, the fly, the beetle, the thousand insects that waver to and fro and never keep in the same direction--is, undoubtedly, the best training school for flight, and renders the swallow superior to all other birds.

Nature, to attain this end, to achieve this unique wing, has adopted an extreme resolution, that of suppressing the foot. In the large church-haunting swallow, which we call the martin, the foot is reduced to a mere nothing. The wing gains in proportion; the martin, it is said, accomplishes eighty leagues in an hour. This astounding swiftness equals even that of the frigate-bird. The foot, remarkably short in the latter, is but a stump in the martin; if he rests, it is on his belly; so that he never perches. With him it is the reverse of all other beings; movement alone affords him repose. When he darts from the church-towers, and commits himself to the air, the air cradles him amorously, supports, and refreshes him. If he would cling to any object, he has only his own small and feeble claws. But when he rests, he is infirm, and, as it were, paralyzed; he feels every roughness; the hard fatality of gravitation has resumed possession of him; the chief among birds seems sunk to a reptile.

To take the range of a place is a great difficulty for him: so, if he fixes his nest aloft, at his departure from it he is constrained to let himself fall into his natural element. Afloat in the air he is free, he is sovereign; but until then he is a slave, dependent on everything, at the disposal of any one who lays hand upon him.

The true name of the genus, which is a full explanation in itself, is the Greek _A-pode_, "Without feet." The great race of swallows, with its sixty species which fill the earth, charms and delights us with its gracefulness, its flight, and its soft chirping, owes all its agreeable qualities to the deformity of a very little foot; it is at once the foremost among the winged tribes by the gift of the perfect art of flight, and the most sedentary and attached to its nest.

Among this peculiar genus, the foot not supplying the place of the wing, the training of the young being confined to the wing alone and a protracted apprenticeship in flying, the brood keep the nest for a long time, demanding the cares and developing the foresight and tenderness of the mother. The most mobile of birds is found fettered by her affections. Her nest is not a transient nuptial bed, but a home, a dwelling-place, the interesting theatre of a difficult education and of mutual sacrifices. It has possessed a loving mother, a faithful mate,--what do I say?--rather, young sisters, which eagerly hasten to assist the mother, are themselves little mothers, and the nurses of a still younger brood. It has developed maternal tenderness, the anxieties and mutual teaching of the young to the younger.

The finest thing is, that this sentiment of kinship expands. In danger, every swallow is a sister; at the cry of one, all rush to her aid; if one be captured, all lament her, and torture their bosoms in the attempt to release her.

That these charming birds extend their sympathy to birds foreign to their own species one easily conceives. They have less cause than any others to dread the beasts of prey, from their lightness of wing, and they are the first to warn the poultry-coops of their appearance. Hen and pigeon cower and seek an asylum as soon as they hear the swallow's warning voice.

No; man does not err in considering the swallow the best of the winged world.

And why? She is the happiest, because the freest.

Free by her admirable flight.

Free by her facility of nourishment.

Free by her choice of climate.

Also, whatever attention I have paid to her language (she speaks amicably to her sisters, rather than sings), I have never heard her do aught but bless life and praise God.

_Libertà! molto e desiato bene!_ I revolved these words in my heart on the great piazza of Turin, where we never wearied of watching the flight of innumerous swallows, hearing a thousand little joyous cries. On their descent from the Alps they found there convenient habitations all prepared for their reception, in the apertures left by the scaffold-beams in the very walls of the palaces. At times, and frequently in the evening, they chattered very loudly and cried shrilly, to prevent us from understanding them. Often they darted down headlong, just skimming the ground, but rising again so quickly that one might have thought them loosened from a spring or shot from a bow. Unlike man, who is incessantly called back to earth, they seem to gravitate above. Never have I seen the image of a more sovereign liberty. Their tricks, their sports, were infinite.

We travellers regarded with pleased eyes these other travellers, which bore their pilgrimage so gaily and so lightly. The horizon, nevertheless, was heavy, and ringed by the Alps, which at that hour seemed close at hand. The black pine-woods were already darkened and overshadowed by the evening; the glaciers glittered again with a ghastly whiteness. The sorrowful barrier of these grand mountains separated us from France, towards which we were soon about to travel slowly.

HARMONIES OF THE TEMPERATE ZONE.

Why do the swallow and so many other birds place their habitation so near to that of man? Why do they make themselves our friends, mingling with our labours, and lightening them by their songs? Why is that happy spectacle of alliance and harmony, which is the end of nature, presented only in the climates of our temperate zone?

For this reason, that here the two parties, man and the bird, are free from the burdensome fatalities which in the south separate them, and place them in antagonism to one another.

That which enervates man, on the contrary, excites the bird, endows him with ardent activity, inquietude, and the vehemence which finds vents in harsh cries. Under the Tropics both are in complete divergence, slaves of a despotic nature, which weighs upon them differently.

To pass from those climates to ours is to become free.

_Here_ we dominate over the nature which _there_ subjugated us. I quit willingly, and without one wistful glance, the overwhelming paradise where, a feeble child, I have languished in the arms of the great nurse who, with a too potent draught, has intoxicated while thinking to suckle me.

This milder nature was made for me, is my legitimate spouse--I recognize her. And, above all, she resembles me; like me, she is grave, she is laborious, she has the instinct of work and patience.

Her renewed seasons share among themselves her great annual day, as the workman's day alternates between toil and repose. She gives no fruit gratuitously; she gives what is worth all the fruits of earth--industry, activity.

With what rapture I find there to-day my image, the trace of my will, the creations of my exertions and my intelligence! Deeply laboured by me, by me metamorphosed, she relates to me my works, reproduces to me myself. I see her as she was before she underwent this human creative work, before she was made man.

Monotonous at the first glance, and melancholy, she exhibited her forests and meadows; but both strangely different from those which are seen elsewhere.

The meadow, the rich green carpet of England and Ireland, with its delicate soft sward constantly springing up afresh--not the rough fleece of the Asiatic steppes, not the spiny and hostile vegetation of Africa, not the bristling savagery of American savannahs, where the smallest plant is woody and harshly arborescent--the European meadow, through its annual and ephemeral vegetation, its lowly little flowers, with mild and gentle odours, wears a youthful aspect; nay, more, an aspect of innocence, which harmonizes with our thoughts and refreshes our hearts.

On this first layer of humble yielding herbage, which has no pretensions to mount higher, stands out in bold contrast the strong individuality of the robust trees, so different from the confused vegetation of meridional forests.

Who can single out, beneath such a mass of lianas, orchids, and parasitical plants, the trees, themselves herbaceous, which are there, so to speak, engulphed? In our ancient forests of Gaul and Germany stand, strong and serious, slowly and solidly built, the elm or the oak--that forest hero, with kindly arms and heart of steel, which has conquered eight or ten centuries, and which, when felled by man and associated with his labours, endows them with the eternity of the works of nature.

As the tree, so the man. May it be given us to resemble it--to resemble that mighty but pacific oak, whose powerful absorption has concentrated every element, and made of it the grave, useful, enduring individual--the solid personality--of which all men confidently demand a support, a shelter; which stretches forth its helpful arms to the divers animal tribes, and shelters them with its foliage! With a thousand voices they gratefully enchant, by day and night, the still majesty of this aged witness of the years. The birds thank it from their hearts, and delight its paternal shades with song, love, and youth.

Indestructible vigour of the climates of the West? Why doth this oak live through a thousand years? Because it is ever young.

It is the oak which chronicles the commencement of spring. For us the emotion of the new life does not begin when all nature clothes itself in the uniform verdure of the meaner vegetation. It commences only when we see the oak, from the woody foliage of the past, which it still retains, gathering its fresh leaves; when the elm, permitting itself to be outstripped by inferior trees, tints with a light green the severe delicacy of its airy branches, clearly defined against the sky.

Then, then, Nature speaks to all--her potent voice troubles even the soul of sages. And why not? Is she not holy? And this surprising awakening, which has stirred life everywhere--from the hard dumb heart of the oaks, even to their lofty crest, where the bird pours out its gladness--is it not, as it were, a return of God?

I have lived in climates where the olive and the orange preserve an eternal bloom. Without ignoring the beauty of these favoured trees, and their special distinction, I could never accustom myself to the monotonous permanency of their unchangeable garb, whose verdure responded to the heaven's unchangeable sapphire. I was ever in a state of expectancy, waiting for a renewal which never came. The days passed by, but were always identical. Not a leaf the less on the ground, not a cloudlet in the sky. Mercy, I exclaimed, O everlasting Nature! To the changeful heart which thou hast given me, grant a little change. Rain, mire, storm, I accept them all; so that from sky or earth the idea of movement may return to me--the idea of renovation; that every year the spectacle of a new creation may refresh my heart, may restore to me the hope that my soul shall enjoy a similar resurrection, and, by the alternations of sleep, of death, or of winter, create for itself a new spring!

Man, bird, all nature, utter the same desire. We exist through change.

To these forcible alternations of heat, cold, fog, and sun, melancholy and joyaunce, we owe the tempered, the powerful personality of our West. Rain wearies us to-day; fine weather will come with the morrow. The splendours of the East, the marvels of the Tropics, taken together, are not worth the first violet of Easter, the first song of April, the blossom of the hawthorn, the glee of the young girl who resumes her robes of white.

In the morning a potent voice, of singular freshness and clearness, of keen metallic _timbre_, the voice of the mavis, rises aloft, and there is no heart so sick or so sour as to hear it without a smile.

One spring, on my way to Lyons, among the intertangled vines which the peasants laboured to raise up again, I heard a poor, old, miserable, and blind woman singing, with an accent of extraordinary gaiety, this ancient village lay:

"Nous quittons nos grands habits,
Pour en prendre de plus petits."

THE BIRD

AS THE LABOURER OF MAN.

The "_miserly_ agriculturist," is the accurate and forcible expression of Virgil. Miserly, and blind, in truth, for he proscribes the birds which destroy insects and protect his crops.

Not a grain will he spare to the bird which, during the winter rains, hunted up the future insect, sought out the nests of the larvæ, examined them, turned over every leaf, and daily destroyed myriads of future caterpillars; but sacks of corn to the adult insects, and whole fields to the grasshoppers which the bird would have combated!

With his eyes fixed on the furrow, on the present moment, without sight or foresight; deaf to the grand harmony which no one ever interrupts with impunity, he has everywhere solicited or approved the laws which suppressed the much-needed assistant of his labour, the insect-destroying bird. And the insects have avenged the bird. It has become necessary to recall in all haste the banished. In the island of Bourbon, for example, a price was set on each martin's head; they disappeared, and then the grasshoppers took possession of the island, devouring, extinguishing, burning up with harsh acridity all that they did not devour. The same thing has occurred in North America with the starling, the protector of the maize. The sparrow even, which attacks the grain, but also defends it--the thieving, pilfering sparrow, loaded with so many insults, and stricken with so many maledictions--it has been seen that without him Hungary would perish; that he alone could wage the mighty war against the cockchafers and the myriad winged foes which reign in the low-lying lands: his banishment has been revoked, and the courageous militia hastily recalled which, if not strictly disciplined, are not the less the salvation of the country.

No long time ago, near Rouen, and in the valley of Monville, the crows had for a considerable period been proscribed. The cockchafers, accordingly, profited to such an extent--their larvæ, multipled _ad infinitum_, pushed so far their subterranean works--that an entire meadow was pointed out to me as completely withered on the surface; every root of grass or herb was eaten up; and all the turf, easily detached, could be rolled back on itself just as one raises a carpet.

All toil, all appeals of man to nature, supposes the intelligence of the natural order. Such is the order, and such the law: _Life has around it and within it its enemy--most frequently as its guest--the parasite which undermines and cankers it_.

Inert and defenceless life, especially vegetable, deprived of locomotion, would succumb to it but for the stronger support of the indefatigable enemy of the parasite, the merciless pursuer, the winged conqueror of the monsters.

The war rages _without_ under the Tropics, where they surge up on all sides. _Within_ in our climates, where everything is hidden, more profound, and more mysterious.

In the exuberant fecundity of the Torrid Zone, the insects, those terrible destroyers of plant-life, carry off the superfluous. They are there a necessity. They ravage among the prodigious abundance of spontaneous plants, of lost seeds, of the fruits which Nature scatters over the wastes. Here, in the narrow field watered by the sweat of man, they garner in his place, devour his labour and its harvest; they attack even his life.

Do not say, "Winter is on my side; it will check the foe." Winter does but slay the enemies which would perish of themselves. It kills especially the ephemera, whose existence was already measured by that of the flower, or the leaf with which it was bound up. But, before dying, the prescient atom assures the safety of its posterity; it finds for it an asylum, conceals and carefully deposits its future, the germ of its reproduction. As eggs, as larvæ, or in their own shapes, living, mature, armed, these invisible creatures sleep in the bosom of the earth, awaiting their opportunity. Is she immovable, this earth? In the meadows I see her undulate--the black miner, the mole, continues her labours. At a higher elevation, in the dry grounds, stretch the subterranean granaries, where the philosophical rat, on a good pile of corn, passes the season in patience.

All this life breaks forth at spring-time. From high, from low, on the right, on the left, these predatory tribes, _échelonned_ by legions which succeed one another and relieve one another each in its month, in its day--the immense, the irresistible conscription of nature--will march to the conquest of man's works. The division of labour is perfect. Each has his post marked out, and will make no mistake. Each will go straight to his tree or his plant. And such will be their tremendous numbers, that not a leaf but will have its legion.

What wilt thou do, poor man? How wilt thou multiply thyself? Hast thou wings to pursue them? Hast thou even eyes to see them? Thou mayest kill them at thy pleasure; their security is complete: kill, annihilate millions; they live by thousands of millions! Where thou triumphest by sword and fire, burning up the plant itself, thou hearest all around the light whirring of the great army of atoms, which gives no heed to thy victory, and destroys unseen.

Listen. I will give thee two counsels. Weigh them, and adopt the wiser.

The first remedy for this, if you resolve upon fighting your foe, is to poison everything. Steep your seeds in sulphate of copper; put your barley under the protection of verdigris. This the foe is unprepared for; it disconcerts him. If he touches it, he dies or sickens. You, also, it is true, are scarcely flourishing; your adventurous stratagem may help the plagues which devastate our era. Happy age! The benevolent labourer poisons at the outset; this copper-coloured corn, handed over to the baker, ferments with the sulphate; a simple and agreeable means of "raising" the light _pâte_, to which, perhaps, people would object.

No; adopt a better course than this. Take your side. Before so many enemies it is no shame to fall back. Let things go, and fold your arms. Rest, and look on. Be like that brave man who, on the eve of Waterloo, wounded and prostrate, contrived to lift himself up and scan the horizon; but he saw there Blucher, and the great cloud of the black army. Then he fell back, exclaiming, "They are too many!"

And how much more right have you to say so! You are alone against the universal conspiracy of life. You also may exclaim, "They are too many!"

You insist. See here these fields so full of inspiring hope; see the humid pastures where I might please myself with watching the cattle lost among the thick herbage. Let us lead thither the herds!

They are expected. Without them what would become of those living clouds of insects which love nothing but blood? The blood of the ox is good; the blood of man is better. Enter; seat yourself in their midst; you will be well received, for you are their banquet. These darts, these horns, these pincers, will find an exquisite delicacy in your flesh; a sanguinary orgie will open on your body for the frantic dance of this famished host, which will not relax at least from want; you shall see more than one fall away, and die of the intoxicating fountain which he had opened with his dart. Wounded, bleeding, swollen with puffed-up sores, hope for no repose. Others will come, and again others, for ever, and without end. For if the climate is less severe than in the zones of the South, in revenge, the eternal rain--that ocean of soft warm water incessantly flooding our meadows--hatches in a hopeless fecundity those nascent and greedy lives, which are impatient to rise, to be born, and to finish their career by the destruction of superior existences.

I have seen, not in the marshes, but on the western heights, those pleasant verdurous hills, clothed with woods or meadows--I have seen the pluvial waters repose for lack of outlet; and then, when evaporated by the sun's rays, leave the earth covered with a rich and abundant animal production--slugs, snails, insects of a myriad species, all people of terrible appetite, born with sharp teeth, with formidable apparatus, and ingenious machines of destruction. Powerless against the irruption of an unexpected host which crawled, stirred, ascended, penetrated, had almost eaten up ourselves, we contended with them through the agency of some brave and voracious fowls, which never counted their enemies, and did not criticise, but swallowed them. These Breton and Vendean fowls, inspired with the genius of their country, made their campaign so much the more successfully, because each waged war in its own manner. The _black_, the _gray_, and the _egg-layer_ (such were their military titles), marched together in close array, and recoiled not a step; the _dreamer_ or _philosopher_ preferred skirmishing by himself (_chouanner_), and accomplished much more work. A superb black cat, the companion of their solitude, studied daily the track of the field mouse and the lizard, hunted the wasp, devoured the Spanish fly, always at some distance in advance of the respectful hens.

One word more in reference to them, and one regret. Our business being finished, we prepared for our departure. But what would become of _them_? Given to a friend, they would assuredly be eaten. We deliberated long. Then, coming to a vigorous decision, according to the ancient creed of savage tribes, who believed that it was sweetest to die by the hands of those we love, and thought that by eating their heroes they themselves became heroic, we made of them, not without lamentation, a funereal banquet.

It is a truly grand spectacle to see descend--one might almost say from heaven--against this frightful swarming of the universal monster-birth which awakens in the spring, hissing, whirring, croaking, buzzing, in its huge hunger, the universal saviour, in a hundred forms and a hundred legions, differing in arms and character, but all endowed with wings, all sharing a seeming privilege of ubiquity.

To the universal presence of the insect, to its ubiquity of numbers, responds that of the bird, of his swiftness, of his wing. The great moment is that when the insect, developing itself through the heat, meets the bird face to face; the bird multiplied in numbers; the bird which, having no milk, must feed at this very moment a numerous family with her living prey. Every year the world would be endangered if the bird could suckle, if its aliment were the work of an individual, of a stomach. But see, the noisy, restless brood, by ten, twenty, or thirty little bills, cry out for their prey; and the exigency is so great, such the maternal ardour to respond to this demand, that the desperate tomtit, unable to satisfy its score of children with three hundred caterpillars a day, will even invade the nests of other birds and pick out the brains of their young.

From our windows, which opened on the Luxemburg, we observed every winter the commencement of this useful war of the bird against the insect. We saw it in December inaugurate the year's labour. The honest and respectable household of the thrush, which one might call the leaf-lifter (_tourne-feuilles_), did their work by couples; when the sunshine followed rain, they visited the pools, and lifted the leaves one by one, with skill and conscientiousness, allowing nothing to pass which had not been attentively examined.

Thus, in the gloomiest months, when the sleep of nature so closely resembles death, the bird continued for us the spectacle of life. Even among the snow, the thrush saluted us when we arose. During our grave winter walks we were always accompanied by the wren, with its golden crest, its short, quick song, its soft and flute-like recall. The more familiar sparrows appeared on our balconies; punctual to the hour, they knew that twice a-day their meal would be ready for them, without any peril to their freedom.

For the rest, the honest labourers, on the arrival of spring, scrupled to ask our aid. As soon as their young were able to fly, they joyously brought them to our windows, as if to thank and bless us.

LABOUR.

THE WOODPECKER.

Among the calumnies of which birds have been made the victims, none is more absurd than to say, as it has been said, that the woodpecker, when burrowing among the trees, selects the robust and healthy trunks, those that offer the greatest difficulties, and must increase his toil. Common sense plainly shows that the poor animal, living upon worms and insects, will seek the infirm, the rotten trees, those offering the least resistance, and promising, moreover, the most abundant prey. The persistent hostility which he wages against the destructive tribes that would corrupt the vigorous trunk, is a signal service rendered to man. The State owes him, if not the appointment, at least the honorary title, of Conservator of the Forests. But what is the fact? That for all his reward, ignorant officials have often set a price upon his head!

But the woodpecker would be no true type of the workman if he were not calumniated and persecuted. His modest guild, spread over the two worlds, serves, teaches, and edifies man. His garb varies; but the common sign by which he may be recognized is the scarlet hood with which the good artisan generally covers his head, his firm and solid skull. His special tool, which is at once pickaxe and auger, chisel and plane, is his square-fashioned bill. His nervous limbs, armed with strong black nails of a sure and firm grasp, seat him securely on his branch, where he remains for whole days, in an awkward attitude, striking always from below upwards. Except in the morning, when he bestirs himself, and stretches his limbs in every direction, like all superior workmen, who allow a few moments' preparation in order not to interrupt themselves afterwards, he digs and digs throughout a long day with singular perseverance. You may hear him still later, for he prolongs his work into the night, and thus gains some additional hours.

His constitution is well adapted for so laborious a life. His muscles, always stretched, render his flesh hard and leathery. The vesicle of the gall, in him very large, seems to indicate a bilious disposition, eager and violent in work, but otherwise by no means choleric.

Necessarily the opinions which men have pronounced on this singular being are widely different. They have judged this great worker well or ill, according as they have esteemed or despised work, according as they themselves have been more or less laborious, and have regarded a sedentary and industrious life as cursed or blessed by Heaven.

It has often been questioned whether the woodpecker was gay or melancholy, and various answers have been given--perhaps all equally good--according to species and climate. I can easily believe that Wilson and Audubon, who chiefly refer to the golden-winged woodpecker of the Carolinas, on the threshold of the Tropics, have found him very lively and restless; this woodpecker gains his livelihood without toil in a genial country, rich in insects; his curved elegant beak, less rugged than the beak of our species, seems to indicate that he works in less rebellious woods. But the woodpecker of France and Germany, compelled to pierce the bark of our ancient European oaks, possesses quite a different instrument--a hard, strong, and heavy bill. It is probable that he devotes more hours to his toil than his American congener. He is, as a labourer, bound by hard conditions, working more and earning less. In dry seasons especially, his lot is wretched; his prey flies from him, and retires to an extreme distance, in search of moisture. Therefore he invokes the rain, with constant cry: "_Plieu! Plieu!_" It is thus that the common people interpret his note; in Burgundy he is called _The Miller's Procurer_; woodpecker and miller, if the rain should not descend, would stand still and run the risk of starving.

One eminent ornithologist, Toussenel, an excellent and ingenious observer, seems to me mistaken in his judgment of the woodpecker's character, when he pronounces him a lively bird. For on what grounds? On the amusing curvets in which he indulges to gain the heart of his love. But who among us, or among more serious beings, in such a case, does not do the same? He calls him also a tumbler and a clown, because at his appearance he wheeled round rapidly. For a bird whose powers of flight are very limited, it was perhaps the wisest course to adopt, especially in the presence of such an admirable shot. And this proved his good sense. A vulgar sportsman, the woodpecker, which knows the coarseness of his flesh, would have suffered to approach him. But in the presence of such a connoisseur and so keen a friend of birds, he had great cause for fear, lest he should be impaled to adorn his collection.

I beg this illustrious writer to consider also the moral habitudes and disposition which would be acquired from such continuous toil. The _papillonne_ counts for nothing here, and the length of such working-days far exceeds the convenient limit of what Fourier calls agreeable labour. The woodpecker toils alone and on his own account; undoubtedly he makes no complaint; he feels that it is for his interest to work hard and to work long. Firm on his robust legs, though in a painful attitude, he remains at his post all day, and even far into the night. Is he happy? I believe so. Gay? I doubt it. Melancholy? By no means. The passionate toil which renders us so grave, compensates by driving away sorrow.

The unintelligent artisan, or the poor over-wrought slave, whose only idea of happiness lies in immobility, would not fail to see in a life of such assiduity the malediction of Fate. The artisans of the German towns assert that he is a baker, who, in the indolent ease of his counting-house, starved the poor, deceived them, sold them false weight. And now, as a punishment, he works, they say, and must work until the day of judgment, living on insects only.

A poor and unmeaning explanation! I prefer the old Italian fable: Picus, son of Time or Saturn, was an austere hero, who scorned the deceitful love and illusions of Circe. To avoid her, he took to himself wings, and flew into the forest. If he bears no longer a human figure, he has--what is better--a foreseeing and prophetic genius; he knows that which is to come, he sees that which is to be.

A very grave opinion upon the woodpecker is pronounced by the Indians of North America. These heroes discern very clearly that the woodpecker himself was a hero. They are partial to wearing the head of one which they name "the wiry-billed woodpecker," and believe that his ardour and courage will pass into them. A well-founded belief, as experience has shown. The puniest heart must feel strengthened which sees ever present before it this eloquent symbol, saying: "I shall be like it in strength and constancy."

Only it should be noted that, if the woodpecker be a hero, he is the peaceful hero of labour. He asks nothing more. His beak, which might be very formidable, and his powerful spurs, are nevertheless prepared for everything else but combat. His toil so completely absorbs him, that no competition could stimulate him to fight. It engulfs him, requires of him all the exertion of his faculties.

Varied and complex is his work. At first the skilful forester, full of tact and experience, tests his tree with his hammer--I mean his beak. He listens, as the tree resounds, to what it has to say, to what there is within it. The process of auscultation, but recently adopted in medicine, has been the woodpecker's leading act for some thousands of years. He interrogates, sounds, detects by his ear the cavernous voids which the substance of the tree presents. Such an one, sound and vigorous in appearance, which, on account of its gigantic size, has been marked out for the shipwright's axe, the woodpecker, by his peculiar skill, condemns as worm-eaten, rotten, sure to fail in the most fatal manner possible, to bend in construction, or to spring a leak and so produce a wreck.

The tree thoroughly tested, the woodpecker selects it for himself, and establishes himself upon it; there he will exercise his art. The trunk is hollow, therefore rotten, therefore populous; a tribe of insects inhabits it. You must strike at the gate of the city. The citizens in wild tumult attempt to escape, either through the walls of the city, or below, through the drains. Sentinels should be posted; but in their default the solitary besieger watches, and from moment to moment looks behind to snap up the passing fugitives, making use, for this purpose, of an extremely long tongue, which he darts to and fro like a miniature serpent. The uncertainty of the sport, and the hearty appetite which it stimulates, fill him with passion; his glance pierces through bark and wood; he is present amidst the terrors and the counsels of his enemies. Sometimes he descends very suddenly, in alarm lest a secret issue should save the besieged.

A tree externally sound, but rotten and corrupt within, is a terrible image for the patriot who dreams over the destinies of cities. Rome, at the epoch when the republic begun to totter, feeling itself like to such a tree, trembled one day as a woodpecker alighted on the tribunal in open forum, under the very hand of the prætor. The people were profoundly moved, and revolved the gloomiest thoughts. But the augurs, who had been summoned, arrived: if the bird escaped with impunity, the republic would perish; if he remained, he threatened only him who held the bird in his hand--the prætor. This magistrate, who was Ælius Tubero, killed the bird immediately, died soon afterwards, and the republic endured six centuries longer.

This is grand, not ridiculous. It endured through this noble appeal to the citizen's devotion. It endured through this silent response given to it by a great heart. Such actions are fertile; they make men and heroes; they prolong the life of states.

To return to our bird: this workman, this solitary, this sublime prophet does not escape the universal law. Twice a-year he grows demented, throws off his austerity, and, shall it be said, becomes ridiculous. Happy he among men who plays the fool but twice a-year!

Ridiculous! He is not so because he loves, but because he loves comically. Gorgeously arrayed, and in his finest plumage, relieving his somewhat sombre garb by his beautiful scarlet _grecque_, he whirls round his lady-love; and his rivals do the same.

But these innocent workers, designed for the most serious labours--strangers to the arts of the fashionable world, to the graces of the humming-birds--know not in what way to manifest their duty, and present their very humble homage but by the most uncouth curvettings. Uncouth at least in our opinion; they are scarcely so in the eyes of the object of these attentions. They please her, and this is all that is needed. The queen's choice declared, no battle can take place. Admirable are the manners of these good and worthy workmen. The others retire aggrieved, but with delicacy cherish religiously the right of liberty.

Do the fortunate suitor and his fair one, think you, air their idle loves wandering through the forests? Not at all. They instantly begin to work. "Show me thy talents," says she, "and let me see that I have not deceived myself." What an opportunity for an artist! She inspires his genius. From a carpenter he becomes a joiner, a cabinet-maker; from a cabinet-maker, a geometer! The regularity of forms, that divine rhythm, appears to him in love.

It is exactly the renowned history of the famous blacksmith of Anvers, Quintin Matsys, who loved a painter's daughter, and who, to win her love, became the greatest painter of Flanders in the sixteenth century.

"Of Vulcan swart, love an Apelles made."

(D'un noir Vulcain, l'amour fit un Appelle).

Thus, one morning the woodpecker develops into the sculptor. With severe precision, the perfect roundness which the compass might give, he hollows out the graceful vault of a superb hemisphere. The whole receives the polish of marble and ivory. All kinds of hygienic and strategic precautions are not wanting. A narrow winding entry, whose slope inclines outwards that the water may not penetrate, favours the defence; it suffices for one head and one courageous bill to close it.

What heart could resist all these toils? Who would not accept this artist, this laborious purveyor for domestic wants, this intrepid defender? Who would not believe herself able to accomplish in safety, behind the generous rampart of this devoted champion, the delicate mystery of maternity?

So she resists no longer, and behold the pair installed! There is wanting now but a nuptial chant (Hymen! O Hymeneæ!) It is not the woodpecker's fault if Nature has denied to his genius the muse of melody. At least, in his harsh voice one cannot mistake the impassioned accents of the heart.

May they be happy! May a young and amiable generation spring into life, and mature under their eyes! Birds of prey shall not easily penetrate here. Only grant that the serpent, the frightful black serpent, may never visit this nest! Oh, that the child's rough hand may not cruelly crush its sweet hope! And, above all, may the ornithologist, the friend of birds, keep afar from this spot!