Part 21

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!