The Wonders of Instinct | Page 9

are just
beginning; but in reality the torrid season has anticipated the calendar
and for some weeks past the heat has been overpowering.
This evening in the village they are celebrating the National Festival.
(The 14th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the
Bastille.--Translator's Note.) While the little boys and girls are hopping
round a bonfire whose gleams are reflected upon the church-steeple,
while the drum is pounded to mark the ascent of each rocket, I am
sitting alone in a dark corner, in the comparative coolness that prevails
at nine o'clock, harking to the concert of the festival of the fields, the
festival of the harvest, grander by far than that which, at this moment,
is being celebrated in the village square with gunpowder, lighted
torches, Chinese lanterns and, above all, strong drink. It has the
simplicity of beauty and the repose of strength.
It is late; and the Cicadae are silent. Glutted with light and heat, they
have indulged in symphonies all the livelong day. The advent of the
night means rest for them, but a rest frequently disturbed. In the dense
branches of the plane-trees a sudden sound rings out like a cry of
anguish, strident and short. It is the desperate wail of the Cicada,
surprised in his quietude by the Green Grasshopper, that ardent
nocturnal huntress, who springs upon him, grips him in the side, opens
and ransacks his abdomen. An orgy of music, followed by butchery.
I have never seen and never shall see that supreme expression of our
national revelry, the military review at Longchamp; nor do I much
regret it. The newspapers tell me as much about it as I want to know.
They give me a sketch of the site. I see, installed here and there amid
the trees, the ominous Red Cross, with the legend, "Military
Ambulance; Civil Ambulance." There will be bones broken, apparently;
cases of sunstroke; regrettable deaths, perhaps. It is all provided for and

all in the programme.
Even here, in my village, usually so peaceable, the festival will not end,
I am ready to wager, without the exchange of a few blows, that
compulsory seasoning of a day of merry-making. No pleasure, it
appears, can be fully relished without an added condiment of pain.
Let us listen and meditate far from the tumult. While the
disembowelled Cicada utters his protest, the festival up there in the
plane-trees is continued with a change of orchestra. It is now the time
of the nocturnal performers. Hard by the place of slaughter, in the green
bushes, a delicate ear perceives the hum of the Grasshoppers. It is the
sort of noise that a spinning-wheel makes, a very unobtrusive sound, a
vague rustle of dry membranes rubbed together. Above this dull bass
there rises, at intervals, a hurried, very shrill, almost metallic clicking.
There you have the air and the recitative, intersected by pauses. The
rest is the accompaniment.
Despite the assistance of a bass, it is a poor concert, very poor indeed,
though there are about ten executants in my immediate vicinity. The
tone lacks intensity. My old tympanum is not always capable of
perceiving these subtleties of sound. The little that reaches me is
extremely sweet and most appropriate to the calm of twilight. Just a
little more breadth in your bow-stroke, my dear Green Grasshopper,
and your technique would be better than the hoarse Cicada's, whose
name and reputation you have been made to usurp in the countries of
the north.
Still, you will never equal your neighbour, the little bell-ringing Toad,
who goes tinkling all round, at the foot of the plane-trees, while you
click up above. He is the smallest of my batrachian folk and the most
venturesome in his expeditions.
How often, at nightfall, by the last glimmers of daylight, have I not
come upon him as I wandered through my garden, hunting for ideas!
Something runs away, rolling over and over in front of me. Is it a dead
leaf blown along by the wind? No, it is the pretty little Toad disturbed
in the midst of his pilgrimage. He hurriedly takes shelter under a stone,

a clod of earth, a tuft of grass, recovers from his excitement and loses
no time in picking up his liquid note.
On this evening of national rejoicing, there are nearly a dozen of him
tinkling against one another around me. Most of them are crouching
among the rows of flower-pots that form a sort of lobby outside my
house. Each has his own note, always the same, lower in one case,
higher in another, a short, clear note, melodious and of exquisite purity.
With their slow, rhythmical cadence, they seem to be intoning litanies.
"Cluck," says one; "click," responds another, on a finer note; "clock,"
adds