Peace reigns in the household until the quarrelsome instincts of pairing-time break out. Then affrays between suitors are frequent and lively, though not serious. The two rivals stand face to face, bite each other in the head, that solid, fang-proof helmet, roll each other over, pick themselves up and separate. The vanquished Cricket makes off as fast as he can; the victor insults him with a boastful ditty; then, moderating his tone, he veers and tacks around the object of his desires. He makes himself look smart and, at the same time, submissive. Gripping one of his antennæ with a claw, he takes it in his mandibles to curl it and grease it with saliva. With his long spurred and red-striped hind-legs, he stamps the ground impatiently and kicks out at nothing. His emotion renders him dumb. His wing-cases, it is true, quiver rapidly, but they give forth no sound, or at most an agitated rustling. A vain declaration! The female Cricket runs and hides herself in a curly bit of lettuce. She lifts the curtain a little, however, and looks out and wishes to be seen. Et fugit ad salices; et se cupit ante videri, [71] said the delightful eclogue, two thousand years ago. Thrice-consecrated strategy of love, thou art everywhere the same! The song is resumed, intersected by silences and murmuring quavers. Touched by so much passion, Galatea, I mean Dame Cricket, issues from her hiding-place. The other goes up to her, suddenly spins round, turns his back to her and flattens his abdomen against the ground. Crawling backwards, he makes repeated efforts to slip underneath. The curious backward manœuvre at last succeeds. Gently, my little one, gently! Discreetly flattened out, you manage to slide under. That’s done it! We have our couple. A spermatophore, a granule smaller than a pin’s head, hangs where it ought to. The meadows will have their Crickets next year. The laying of the eggs follows soon after. Then this cohabitation in couples in a cage often brings about domestic quarrels. The father is knocked about and crippled; his violin is smashed to bits. Outside my cells, in the open fields, the hen-pecked husband is able to take to flight; and that indeed is what he appears to do, not without good reason. This ferocious aversion of the mother for the father, even among the most peaceable, gives food for thought. The sweetheart of but now, if he come within reach of the lady’s teeth, is eaten more or less; he does not escape from the final interviews without leaving a leg or two and some shreds of wing-cases behind him. Locusts and Crickets, those lingering representatives of a bygone world, tell us that the male, a mere secondary wheel in life’s original mechanism, has to disappear at short notice and make room for the real propagator, the real worker, the mother.