CHAPTER V.
A PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIGHT AND COLOUR.
If the insect does not and will not speak to us, are we to suppose that it does not express the burning intensity of the life within it?
No living creature reveals itself more clearly; though only from itself to its kind, from insect to insect. They are bound up in themselves; are a sealed world, which has no outward expression, and no language except for its own members.
For all ordinary purposes, an electric telegraph exists in their antennæ. But the great, the eloquent language is manifested among them towards the close of their existence,--for one brief moment, it is true,--a moment announcing the approach of death, yet the grand festival of love.
They speak through the rare attractions with which they are invested,--through the wing, the flight, the airy existence,--through the fancy which possesses them (says good Du Tertre) of becoming birds. They speak through their brilliant hieroglyphics of colours and fantastic designs, their strange coquetry of extraordinary toilets. They speak in their very lustre, and some species reveal their inner flame by a visible torch.
They lavish with royal magnificence their last days. And wherefore should they economize, when to-morrow they die? Break forth then, O life of splendour! Sparkle, ye gold and emeralds, and sapphires and rubies! And let that incandescent ardour, that torrent of existence, that cataract of profuse radiance, be poured out in one common, rapid flood!
There is not space in our museums for the proper display of the prodigious, the unbounded variety of decoration with which Nature has, mother-like, sought to glorify the hymeneal of the insect and to emparadise its nuptials. A distinguished amateur having had the patience to show me in due succession genus after genus, species after species, the whole of his immense collection, I was astounded--in truth, I was stupefied--almost terrified by the inexhaustible energy--I was going to say fury--of invention which Nature displayed. I was overcome--I closed my eyes, and begged for a truce; my brain was dizzied and blinded, and became confused. But she, she would not let me go; she inundated and overwhelmed me with beautiful beings, with fantastic beings, with admirable monsters, with wings of fire, and cuirasses of emerald, clad in a hundred kinds of enamel, armed with singular apparatus--no less brilliant than formidable; some in embrowned steel, shot with yellow--others in silken hoods, embroidered with black velvet; these with fine dashes of tawny silk on a rich mahogany ground; those in pomegranate-coloured velvet lit up with gold; others in luminous, indescribable azures, relieved by jet-black beads; and others, again, bright in metallic streaks alternating with heavy velvet.
It was as if they wished to say:--
"We in ourselves are the whole of Nature. If she perishes, we shall enact a drama, and personate all her creations. For if you look for rich furry garb, behold us here in mantles such as a Russian czarina never wore. Do you wish for feathers? behold us radiant in plumage which the humming-bird cannot equal; or if you prefer leaves, we can imitate them so as to deceive your eye. Even wood--in fact, all kinds of substances--there is nothing which we cannot imitate. Take, I pray you, this little twig, and hold it in your hand,--it is an insect!"
Then I was fairly conquered. I made a humble reverence to a people so redoubtable; with a burning brain I issued from the magic cave; and for a long time afterwards the sparkling scintillating masks danced and whirled around me, pursuing me, and maintaining on my retina their wild, strange revel.
And yet I had seen them only in cases and in boxes, as dead as in nature they were ardent and restless. What would have been my impression if I had seen them alive, and in motion,--especially in the burning climes where they abound and superabound,--where everything is in harmony with them,--where the air, the water, the flora, impregnated with prolific flames, rival the keen ardour of the animal hosts in the madness of love, of production precipitated and incessantly renewed by impatient death?
The American forests of Brazil and Guiana are the formidable furnaces in which the great exchange of life is uninterruptedly carried on. The fantastic faëry of the vegetable kingdom is in accord with that of the animated forces. Savage, harsh, and plaintive cries--not songs--form the woodland concert. Strange voices of birds, in the woods and the savannahs, relieve each other,--hoarse and vibrating, but regular, as if to mark the hours. They are the clock of the desert. Some by day, others by night; and perfectly distinct also at each of the three periods of the day,--morn, and noon, and evening. They disquiet the traveller, inasmuch as they reproduce our human voices or sounds, and seem ironical or mocking. One cries, another whistles, another sighs. This strikes like an alarm, that like a hammer, while a third imitates the tones of a bagpipe. The vast plains re-echo the mighty voice of the cariama. And that of the serpent-conqueror, the courageous kamichi, harsh and strong, echoing over the marshes, makes the savage tremble, for he thinks he hears the spirits passing.
At evening, with the song of the grasshoppers, the croaking of the frogs, the shriek of the owls, and the lamentations of the vampires, mingles the howl of the apes; until a hiss, which seems drawn from a wounded bosom, silences all, and spreads a universal terror, because it indicates the presence of the sharp-clawed prowler, the swift jaguar.
In these forests there is nothing to reassure you. Yonder green and peaceful waters, whence ever and anon proceeds the sound of half-choked sighs,--you place your foot upon them, and with terror discover that they are solid! that the surface is composed of great alligators, with their greenish backs resembling breadths of moss or aquatic herbs! Let a living creature appear, and immediately they raise their heads and put themselves in motion; you behold the strange assemblage rise from the slime in all their horror! But is this all?--Even these monsters which reign on the surface have their tyrants over them. The piranha, or razor-fish, as swift as the cayman is unwieldy, severs with its saw-like teeth the latter's tail, and carries it off before it can wheel round. The cayman, nearly always, mutilated in this manner, would perish, if its cuirass did not prevent its enemy from dissecting it. The same terrible anatomist, with a flash of its scalpel, cuts down as it passes the bird which skims the waves. Aquatic birds which have been wounded by it are frequently caught. And what, then, of the quadrupeds? The most powerful are devoured. A horrible combat is waged without pause in the deep waters,--in the waters living and overflowing with life, but with death also,--where is realized to the letter a rapid and furious suicide of Nature,--Nature devouring in order to re-create itself!
The insects in fury and beauty are worthy of this scene. The exalted vitality, revealed among the gadflies and the mosquitoes, by their thirst of blood, is shown in other species by their enchanting colours, their caprices of design, their singularities of form, which either astonish us or terrify. The _Buprestis imperialis_, proud of its green cuirass powdered all over with dust of gold, seems to have passed through the bowels of the metalliferous earth, and enriched itself on the way. The _Buprestis chrysochlorus_, of a yellower green, flutters to and fro like a mounted gem. The _Arlequin_ of Guiana,--a gigantic mower, armed with tremendous antennæ and prodigious legs to traverse the innumerable obstacles offered by the tall herbage,--is marked with black commas on a yellow ground, with inexplicable hieroglyphs,--a being doubly strange and doubly enigmatic. It singularly reminds us of the texture of Indian stuffs, where, for the sake of harmonizing colours not usually brought side by side, the artist traces a number of wavy and broken lines, which soften and blend them into complete accord.
Those gentle and social insects, the butterflies, covering the banks with their winged tribes, transform the whole prairie into an enchanting flowery carpet. The butterfly of butterflies, the glorious butterfly of Brazil, of a rich azure lit up by shifting gleams, softly hovers, in the warm hours, above the waters crowned by the imperial dome of the blossomy forests. A pacific and splendid creature, it seems the innocent king of all the puissant nature. Others, scarcely less beautiful, follow in its train; and ever and ever more the glorious host, in floating azure, follows the current of the stream.
Such, then, are the tongues of Love; for the boundless rainbow of all these colours is simply its varied expression. And for what purpose, if love itself ought to appear without an intermediary?
Already, in our colder lands, the timid glow-worm, motionless under the hedgerow, suffers its little lamp to shine and guide through the night the lover to his love.
In Italy it moves to and fro, and its flame has acquired wings. I was much struck by it, at the hot springs of Acqui, in Piedmont, where sulphur everywhere prevails; the wild dance of the tiny lights seemed stimulated by the fires lurking in the entrails of the earth. In Brazil the very leaves overflow with phosphorus. How should aught be wanting for the illumination of the bridal-joy of the insect? That marvel, under the tropics, glitters everywhere and enchants everything. Two hundred species are known, which Nature has gifted with the poetic faculty of breathing forth flame, and charming their great festival with the poesy of light.
A graceful German lady, Mademoiselle Mérian, having been transplanted to these zones of fire, has related in naïve language the alarm which she experienced on seeing their insect wonders. The daughter and grand-daughter of excellent and laborious engravers, herself an artist and of well-informed mind, she has produced, in Latin, Dutch, and French, an admirable and picturesque work on the Insects of Surinam. The learned lady, in an exemplary life of misfortunes and virtues, had but one weakness (who has not one?)--the love of Nature. She quitted Germany for Holland, attracted by its unique and brilliant collections of the treasures of the two worlds. Then, as these did not suffice her, she visited Guiana, where she painted for several years. She combined in the same picture,--an excellent method,--the insect, the plant on which it lives, and the reptile which lives on the insect. Thoroughly conscientious, she sought out and posed her formidable models, of which, nevertheless, she was much afraid. Once, when the Indian savages had brought her a basket of insects, she was sleeping after her work. But in her chaste slumber she was disturbed by a strange dream. She thought she heard a harp, a melody of love. The melody grew inflamed; it was no longer a song, but an intoxication. All the room seemed filled with fire. She woke, and found her dream was true. The basket was the lyre, the basket was the volcano. She quickly saw that the volcano did not burn. The captives were fire-flies (_fulgores_); their song was an epithalamium, and their flame the flame of love.
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In the tropical countries the stranger generally travels by night to avoid the heat. But he would not dare to enter the populous shadows of the forest-depths, were he not reassured by the luminous insects which he sees dancing and fluttering in the distance, and anon planted on the neighbouring bushes. He takes them for his companions, and fixes them in his shoes, partly to show him the path, and partly to keep off serpents. And when the morning breaks, he gratefully and carefully replaces them among the thickets, and restores them to their amorous work. There is a pretty Indian proverb: "Carry away the fire-fly, but return it to the place from which thou carriedst it."
Who can fail to be affected by their flame? It follows the movement of life, it flares and wanes in cadence with the ebb and flow of our respiration; it beats in exact accord with the rhythm of our heart. It expands or contracts in harmony with it, and the trouble of its emotion agitates also that tremendous torch.
What lies at the bottom? the visible desire, the effort to please and to be loved, translated in a hundred different manners by the eloquence of light. One, of an unrivalled blue, with a head of rubies, outvies with its scintillation the red-hot coal. Another, of a more melancholy cast, plunges into a sombre red. A third, of flame-coloured yellow, fading and passing into green, seems to express the languors, swoons, and storms of the violent loves of the South.
The ardent daughter of Spain, rendered more impassioned by the American sky, puts her hand on the creature of the flame, and seizes upon it as her own. She makes it a talisman, a jewel, and a victim. Burning, she places it on her burning bosom, where it must soon perish.
There is no purpose to which she does not turn it. By a triumph of audacious coquetry, linking the insects with silk, or imprisoning them in gauze, she wreathes the animated flames in glowing necklaces, and rolls them around her waist in girdles of fire. The queens of the ball are crowned with an infernal diadem of living topazes, of throbbing emeralds, which flicker or gleam (through suffering or love?). A brilliant but funereal decoration, of sinister magnetism, whose charm is enhanced by a sentiment of death. They dance; the waning flame associates its tender gleams with the languishing glances of a deep black eye. They dance; without end and without reason, without pity or remembrance of the amorous light dying and fading on their bosom, and having no power to say: "Replace me where you captured me!"