The Mason-Bees | Page 5

high as he can on tip-toe and
fumbles with his finger at the top of the long column. Then, with a
discreet smile spreading under the silky hairs of his dawning
moustache:
'Yes,' he says, 'that's it. The long leg is open at the top. There, I can feel
the hole.'
And Bastien, to confirm his mendacious statement, keeps wriggling his
forefinger at the top of the tube, while his fellow-conspirators suppress
their enjoyment as best they can.
'That will do,' says the unconscious abbe. 'You can get down, Bastien.
Take a note of it, boys: the longer leg of the barometer is open; take a
note of it. It's a thing you might forget; I had forgotten it myself.'
Thus was physics taught. Things improved, however: a master came
and came to stay, one who knew that the long leg of the barometer is
closed. I myself secured tables on which my pupils were able to write
instead of scribbling on their knees; and, as my class was daily
increasing in numbers, it ended by being divided into two. As soon as I
had an assistant to look after the younger boys, things assumed a

different aspect.
Among the subjects taught, one in particular appealed to both masters
and pupils. This was open-air geometry, practical surveying. The
college had none of the necessary outfit; but, with my fat pay--seven
hundred francs a year, if you please!--I could not hesitate over the
expense. A surveyor's chain and stakes, arrows, level, square and
compass were bought with my money. A microscopic graphometer, not
much larger than the palm of one's hand and costing perhaps five francs,
was provided by the establishment. There was no tripod to it; and I had
one made. In short, my equipment was complete.
And so, when May came, once every week we left the gloomy
school-room for the fields. It was a regular holiday. The boys disputed
for the honour of carrying the stakes, divided into bundles of three; and
more than one shoulder, as we walked through the town, felt the
reflected glory of those erudite rods. I myself--why conceal the
fact?--was not without a certain satisfaction as I piously carried that
most delicate and precious apparatus, the historic five-franc
graphometer. The scene of operations was an untilled, flinty plain, a
harmas, as we call it in the district. (Cf. "The Life of the Fly", by J.
Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter
1.--Translator's Note.) Here, no curtain of green hedges or shrubs
prevented me from keeping an eye upon my staff; here--an
indispensable condition--I had not the irresistible temptation of the
unripe apricots to fear for my scholars. The plain stretched far and wide,
covered with nothing but flowering thyme and rounded pebbles. There
was ample scope for every imaginable polygon; trapezes and triangles
could be combined in all sorts of ways. The inaccessible distances had
ample elbow-room; and there was even an old ruin, once a
pigeon-house, that lent its perpendicular to the graphometer's
performances.
Well, from the very first day, my attention was attracted by something
suspicious. If I sent one of the boys to plant a stake, I would see him
stop frequently on his way, bend down, stand up again, look about and
stoop once more, neglecting his straight line and his signals. Another,
who was told to pick up the arrows, would forget the iron pin and take
up a pebble instead; and a third deaf to the measurements of angles,
would crumble a clod of earth between his fingers. Most of them were

caught licking a bit of straw. The polygon came to a full stop, the
diagonals suffered. What could the mystery be?
I enquired; and everything was explained. A born searcher and observer,
the scholar had long known what the master had not yet heard of,
namely, that there was a big black Bee who made clay nests on the
pebbles in the harmas. These nests contained honey; and my surveyors
used to open them and empty the cells with a straw. The honey,
although rather strong-flavoured, was most acceptable. I acquired a
taste for it myself and joined the nest-hunters, putting off the polygon
till later. It was thus that I first saw Reaumur's Mason-bee, knowing
nothing of her history and nothing of her historian.
The magnificent Bee herself, with her dark-violet wings and black-
velvet raiment, her rustic edifices on the sun-blistered pebbles amid the
thyme, her honey, providing a diversion from the severities of the
compass and the square, all made a great impression on my mind; and I
wanted to know more than I had learnt from the schoolboys, which was
just how to rob the cells of their honey with a straw. As it happened,
my bookseller had a gorgeous