CHAPTER IV.

THE ANTS:--CIVIL WAR--EXTERMINATION OF THE COMMUNITY.

It is the tyrant's punishment that he could not, even if he would, easily deliver his captive. So long as my nightingale sings, I know that he cares little for his cage, and I bear his captivity lightly; but when the time of song has gone by, I share his melancholy, and the question again and again recurs to my mind, "How can I release him?" He no longer knows how to fly; in truth, is almost without wings. If I set him free, he would perish before he had gone two steps. The liberties which he takes at Paris in a large chamber, and here, at Fontainebleau, in a small garden, are, really, of but little importance. He does not profit by them; almost always remains concealed in a gooseberry-bush, dreaming and listening. The strains he hears,--the lively songs of the warblers, the voices of love and, maternity,--augment, I believe, his sadness; so much so, that here, in the open air, under the blue sky, enjoying a relative degree of freedom, he loses his appetite, and will eat no longer. We bethought ourselves of giving him his natural diet, and of feeding him with the insects on which he lives in the woods. But here is another difficulty. Who would not shrink from hunting after and carrying living victims to be devoured? We preferred to give him insects _in futuro_, the eggs of insects, and inert sleeping nymphæ. We carried on a traffic in them at Fontainebleau, where our aristocratic pheasants, a feudal race, do not deign to eat anything but ants' eggs.

On the evening of the 8th of June, there was brought to me from the forest a great clod of earth, mixed with dry twigs, and especially with tiny _débris_ of the Northern trees, such as the needles of the firs, or little prickly leaves resembling thorns.

In the midst, the inhabitants pell-mell, of every size and grade, eggs, larvæ, nymphæ, diminutive artisans, great ants, which seemed to be warriors and defenders; finally, a few females which had just assumed their wedding garments, the wings which they wear for the moment of love. Thus it turned out to be a very complete specimen of the republic, varied, but well distinguished by one identical sign,--all this brownish-coloured populace having on their corselets a dull red spot. As for the classes and professions of the ants, they were easily characterized by their very habitations, notwithstanding the general confusion. They were carpenter-ants, of the species which prop the upper stories of their buildings with timber framework.

Though their situation was so completely altered, my ants were in no wise prostrated. They continued their different tasks, of which the principal was, to protect the eggs and nymphæ from the action of a too powerful sun.

The general commotion had flung them out of their subterranean cradles, and exposed them on the surface. The little ants busied themselves actively in rectifying the disorder. The great ones went and came, and circled about a great earthen vase which contained the dismembered fragment of the republic. They marched with a firm step, and recoiled before no obstacles. We could not frighten them. If we placed in their way any impediment,--a bit of twig or our finger,--they crouched upon their loins, manoeuvred with great address their tiny arms, and patted us like a young kitten.

In their revolutions around our vase, they encountered upon the sand some ashy-black ants which had taken possession of our garden, and constructed underneath its soil a large establishment. The latter do not have recourse to timber, but build in masonry,--cementing the earth with their saliva, and drying and seasoning it with their formic acid.

The spot was rendered peculiarly agreeable to them by its rose trees, apple and peach trees, which furnished them with abundant herds of gnats, that they might extract honey-dew for themselves and their little ones.

The rencontre was not very friendly. Though among the big carpenters were some ants of a sufficiently diminutive stature, they wholly differed from the black through their long legs and the red-spotted corselet. They were pitiless. Perhaps they suspected the blacks had been sent out as spies, to explore the ground, and lay snares for the emigrant colony which had just been disembarked. At all events, the big carpenters slew the little masons.

The act was followed by terrible and wholly unexpected results. Our vase was unfortunately placed near an apple-tree covered with those woolly grubs which are the despair of the gardener and the joy of the ants. Our masons had just taken possession of the precious sugary herd, and encamped themselves in the very roots of the tree, within reach of the invaluable booty. There they were, under the ground, a complete nation, an infinite number.

The massacre took place about twelve o'clock. At a quarter past eleven, or a little later, all the black legions were warned, aroused, erect, and ascending from their subterraneous habitations, poured out through every gate. The sand was hidden beneath the long black columns; our paths were all alive. The sun, shining full upon the little garden, stimulated and burned up the multitude, which only quickened their pace. Living always underground, they have necessarily a very susceptible brain. The furious heat, and especially their fear lest the invading giants should pounce upon their families, impelled them to confront death unflinchingly.

And a death which seemed certain; for each of the big carpenters, as far as size and thews were concerned, was well worth eight or ten of the little masons. At the first collision we saw a big ant fall upon a brown dwarf, and annihilate it at one blow.

The masons, however, had the advantage of numbers. But what of that? Suppose the front ranks were checked in the assault, and perished,--then the second, then the third,--if the army, still advancing, did but furnish the enemy with new victims? Such was our apprehension. All our fear was for the little aborigines of our garden, disturbed by that invasion of a foreign people which we had brought upon them,--a people ill-bred and brutal, which, without any provocation, had marked their first arrival by slaughtering the inhabitants of the country.

But it must be acknowledged that we had compared only the material forces of the two armies, and had not taken into account their moral strength.

We recognized at the first onset an astonishing amount of skill and intelligence on the part of the little blacks. By sixes, they seized upon one of their gigantic opponents, each holding and neutralizing a claw; then two leaped on its back, and firmly grasped its antennæ, until the giant, bound in every limb, was reduced to an inert body. It seemed to lose its senses; to grow dull and stupid; no longer to be conscious of its enormous superiority of strength. Others then rushed to the attack, and, without incurring any danger, stabbed him above and below.

The scene, regarded from a near point of view, was frightful. Whatever admiration the little ones merited for their heroic courage, their fury made one shudder. It was impossible to see without a feeling of pity these poor garotted giants, dragged miserably to and fro,--fired at from right and left,--floating as in an open sea on these billows of rage and impetuosity,--blind, powerless, and incapable of resistance,--like lambs beneath the butcher's knife.

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We longed to separate them. But how was it to be done? We were in the presence of infinity. A man's strength was nothing when tested against such multitudes. We might have proceeded to the extremity of a universal deluge,--a moment's _noyade_[P]--but even this would have proved insufficient. They would not have let go their death-grasp; and when the torrent had flowed by, the massacre would have continued. The sole remedy, and an atrocious one--worse even than the evil--would have been to have burned alive, with a wisp of flaming straw, the two contending hosts, the conquerors and the conquered.

[Footnote P: The wholesale drownings which took place at Lyons during the Reign of Terror were known as _noyades_.--Translator.]

We were particularly struck by the fact that, after all, it was only a very few of the big ants that were garotted and captured; and that if those which remained free had fallen upon the assailants, they might easily have wrought a frightful carnage, their action being so rapid, and one blow inflicting death. But no such idea occurred to them. They ran hither and thither in a panic of fear, and rushed into the very throes of danger, into the thickest press of the hostile masses. Alas, they were not only vanquished, but seemed to have lost their senses! While the little ants, feeling themselves at home, on their native soil, showed so firm a front, the gigantic foreigners,--without any stake in the ground,--a desperate fragment of an annihilated city,--wholly ignorant of the country whither they had been transplanted,--recognized that everything was antagonistic to them, that a snare was hidden at every step, that no refuge was open to their scattered forces. Ah, woful condition of a people whose fatherland has perished, and who have lost their gods!

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Yes, I excuse them. We ourselves were almost terrified at the sight of those legions of death,--that formidable army of little black skeletons which had all escaladed the earthen vase, and in that confined region, choked and burning, crowded and furious, mounted one upon another. As the discomfiture of the giants became a thing assured, horrible appetites were revealed among the blacks. An opportune moment arrived. It was a dramatic stroke! In their mute but terribly eloquent pantomime, we heard this cry: "Their young ones are fat!"

The gluttonous army of the lean threw themselves on the children. The latter, belonging to a superior race, were sufficiently heavy; and more, their oblong nymph-like envelope, round and smooth, offered no points of vantage. Two, three, four little blacks, by combining their efforts, succeeded, though not without difficulty, in carrying a single one of these up the smooth sides of the earthen vase. Then they came abruptly to a terrible resolve,--to seize upon the _maillots_, to bear off the naked children. It was no easy matter, for the little one clung stoutly, and its interwoven limbs were, so to speak, soldered together; in such wise that this violent and sudden development could only be effected by severe wounds,--in fact, by quartering them. The black ants then carried them off, torn and palpitating.

At the commencement of this kidnapping of children, we had expected to see some such spectacle as a _razzia_ of slaves, which is only too common among both men and ants. But we now understood that something more was meditated. In drawing them cruelly from their outer coat, which is to them the very necessity of life, it became too evident that their captors cared very little whether they lived or did not live. It was for their flesh they seized them; as a tender prey for the young ones they had left at home, the fat children being delivered up alive to the furious appetites of the lean!

To understand the horror of the scene, you must know the true nature of the large eggs of the ants,--improperly called eggs, but in reality their nymphs or chrysalides,--diminutive organized ants which, under a thin veil, strengthen their tender, delicate, and still soft existence. They remain in this envelope for the purpose of accomplishing a progress of successive solidification and colouring.

The very fine and wonderfully soft web which they weave for themselves is, as we know, of a dull white, lightly shaded with a delicate yellow, which, when stronger, turns into a nankeen tint. Open it shortly before the emergence of the perfect insect, and you find a being of exactly the same colour, all folded and rolled up in itself like the human embryo in its mother's womb. When stretched out, the aspect of the future ant is easily recognized, but it singularly differs from it in character: the head is quite innocent; lift up the antennæ, which, in this condition, resemble ears, and the young white head reminds you of that of a little white rabbit. The eyes alone,--two black points,--marked with sufficient prominency, indicate the next stage of colouring. For the rest, there is nothing to forewarn you that this little, weak, and denuded animal, so touching and so interesting, will become in a few days the black being so full of energy, so keen with life, so fierce in blood, which will traverse the earth in a fury of labour and burning activity.

One comprehends that in this stage of existence the milky and succulent nymphs of the ants will prove a very appetizing dish for the bird, and for the infinite number of creatures which hunt them greedily.

I have dissected only one nymph in the last days of its nymph-period, and when near its time of hatching. But that one was sufficient. The sight (seen through a lens of twelve times magnifying power) was very painful. The being was completely formed, and already black on the belly, yellow on the corselet. The head was intelligent, like that of an old ant, but pale, and changing from yellow to black. Still weak and heavy, and seized, as it were, with vertigo, it rolled from right to left, and from left to right, with a singular effect of somnolence and pain. You might have supposed it to be saying: "Ah me! so soon! Why hast thou called me so cruelly, before the proper hour, from my soft cradle to the harsh drudgery of life? But it is all at end for me!" It struggled nevertheless to confront the unknown chances of its novel situation, and to disengage its trammelled limbs. The antennæ were already perfectly free, and stirred about in their anxiety to discern the new world; this cerebral organ revealed very plainly the disquietude and agitation of the brain. Its greatest perplexity arose from its failure to release its two arms (or anterior limbs). It laboured violently to do so. They were glued to the body by an indescribable something which might be called a pale blood, and one sweated to see the poor little creature, already prudent and timid, unable to complete its offensive arrangements, and to extricate (apparently to snatch or pluck away) its two bleeding arms.

I have explained this at some length, in order to make the reader understand the passionate interest felt by the ants in the little balls which, to our eyes, seem so insignificant. Beneath its soft and transparent tissue they feel the infant palpitating under its two touching forms,--the creature, denuded and innocent, which dreameth still--the creature already formed and intelligent, perceiving everything, but incapable of self-defence, and, before it sees the light, disturbed by all the fears and agitations of existence.

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The most painful shock for the young of the insects is the sudden cold; at least, the nudity, the exposure to the air and light. This is so antipathetic and painful to them, that in certain species it is the source of their arts and their most ingenious devices. The eggs and nymphs of the ants in their tiny transparent swaddling-robe,--and still more the larvæ which are deprived of it,--feel with an excessive sensibility every atmospheric variation. Hence the delicate and continual attentions of their nurses in carrying them from place to place, in translating them from one to another of the well-contrived steps of their thirty or forty stories, in protecting their dear little chilly charge from cold, damp, or excessive heat. A degree more or less means for it life or death.

It is a cruel and tragical change for these children of love, spoiled hitherto with excessive indulgence, and tended with greater care than any princess, when they are abruptly deprived of their garments,--stripped, with blows from pincers, teeth, and claws,--and despoiled by the hands of the executioner. Suddenly exposed to the burning sun, dragged hither, pushed thither, rolled over all the roughnesses of a coarse sandy soil,--sensible, infinitely sensible, in their new condition of nakedness, to the shocks, blows, and rude somersaults which their violent enemies do not spare them!

In towns captured by a furious enemy, it has happened that the tombs of the dead have been desecrated. But here, we behold the exhumation of the living,--the despoiling of innocent and all vulnerable creatures, poor bits of skinless flesh, to whom the very lightest touch had been a sufficient agony!

This immense execution upon the population and their young was hurried over so rapidly, that at three o'clock in the afternoon nearly all was ended; the city was sacked and depopulated in every corner, and its future beyond all hope of a resurrection.

We thought that some fugitive might still be lurking in concealment; that perhaps the conquerors would abandon the desert if we transported them, with the destroyed city, into a paved coach-yard outside the garden; that then would awake in them the remembrance of their family, to whom, moreover, they could carry nothing more to be devoured. Our expectation was realized.

On the morning of the 10th of June we saw them scattered along all the roads which led towards their dwelling-place, at the other end of the garden. But the destiny of the vanquished seemed accomplished. The dead and silent city was nothing but a cemetery, where, with the exception of a few scattered bodies, could only be seen some dead wood, some old pods of Northern trees, and their gloomy _aiguilles_ (pines and once-green firs), not less dead than the city itself.

I confess that such a vengeance, so disproportionate to the act which was its cause or pretext, excited in me a strong feeling of indignation, and my heart, changing sides, was completely alienated from those little black barbarians.

So, observing that some of them, still implacable, were promenading among the ruins, I sent them rudely flying over its walls (that is, the edges of the vase). In vain it was gently pointed out to me that these blacks had been provoked, that they had shown the greatest courage, having braved so great a peril that their destruction might almost have been predicted. They were cruel and savage but heroic tribes, like the Iroquois, the Hurons, the revengeful heroes who formerly peopled the forests of the Mississippi and Canada. These reasons were good, but did not calm me. I felt too keenly the enormity of the crime. Without wishing to annihilate them, I confess that if these ferocious blacks had chanced to come under my foot I should not have turned aside.

The unfortunate empty vase continually reminded me of what had occurred, and held me as by a spell. On the evening of the 11th we were still seated on the ground before it, with our chin in our hand, completely absorbed in thought. Our gaze plunged into its depths. We persisted in longing for a sign of life to appear upon its perfect immobility, a something which might still say that all was not finished. This firm resolve seemed to have the potency of an evocation, and as if our desires had recalled to daylight some miserable spirit of the widowed city, one of the victims which had escaped made its appearance, and hurried headlong away from the field of death. And we perceived that it carried a cradle.

Night came, and it was in a completely strange locality, surrounded by enemies. A few holes, which one might mistake for places of refuge, were precisely the mouths opening into the Inferno of the blacks. The unhappy fugitive, with its misfortune increased by the burden of its infant, ran distractedly, and without knowing whither. I followed it with my eyes and heart, until the darkness concealed it from me.