High up, immediately above my head, the Swan stretches its great cross along the Milky Way; below, all around me, the insects’ symphony rises and falls. The infinitesimal telling its joys makes me forget the pageant of the stars. We know nothing of those celestial eyes which look down upon us, placid and cold, with scintillations that are like blinking eyelids. Science tells us of their distance, their speed, their mass, their volume; it overwhelms us with enormous figures, stupefies us with immensities; but it does not succeed in stirring a fibre within us. Why? Because it lacks the great secret, that of life. What is there up there? What do those suns warm? Worlds like ours, reason declares; planets whereon life revolves in infinite variety. It is a superb conception of the universe, but, when all is said, only a conception, not supported by obvious facts, those supreme proofs within the reach of all. The probable, the extremely probable, is not the manifest, which forces itself upon us irresistibly and leaves no room for doubt. In your company, on the contrary, O my Crickets, I feel the throbbing of life, which is the soul of our lump of clay; and that is why, under my rosemary-hedge, I give but an absent glance at the constellation of the Swan and devote all my attention to your serenade! A dab of animated glair, capable of pleasure and of pain, surpasses in interest the immensity of brute matter. CHAPTER XVII THE LOCUSTS: THEIR FUNCTION; THEIR ORGAN OF SOUND “Mind you are ready, children, to-morrow morning, before the sun gets too hot: we are going Locust-hunting.” This announcement throws the household into great excitement at bed-time. What do my little helpmates see in their dreams? Blue wings, red wings, suddenly flung out fanwise; long, saw-toothed legs, pale-blue or pink, which kick out when we hold their owners in our fingers; great shanks acting as springs that make the insect leap forward like a projectile shot from some dwarf catapult hidden in the grass. What they behold in sleep’s sweet magic lantern I also happen to see. Life lulls us with the same simple things in its first stages and its last. If there be one peaceful and safe form of hunting, one that comes within the powers of old age and childhood alike, it is Locust-hunting. Oh, what delicious mornings we owe to it! What happy moments when the mulberries are black and allow my assistants to go pilfering here and there in the bushes! What memorable excursions on the slopes covered with sparse grass, tough and burnt yellow by the sun! I retain a vivid recollection of all this; and my children will do the same.