CHAPTER VI.
"THE BEES" OF VIRGIL.
All modern writers have triumphed over the ignorance displayed by the poet Virgil in his fable of Aristæus, who draws life out of the womb of death, and causes his bees to spring from the entrails of immolated bulls.[Q] But, for myself, I have never laughed at it. I know, I feel, that every word of this great sacred poet has a weighty value, an authority which I would designate as that of an augur and a pontiff. And the fourth book of the _Georgics_, particularly, was a holy work, issuing from the inmost recesses of the heart. It was a pious homage rendered to sorrow and to friendship; an eulogium on the proscribed Gallus, Virgil's dearest friend. This eulogium, undoubtedly, was struck out by the prudent Mæcenas; and Virgil then substituted his Resurrection of the Bees: a song full of immortality, which, in the mystery of Nature's transformations, embodies our highest hope, that death is not a death, but the beginning of a new life.
[Footnote Q: The passage to which Michelet refers is found in the fourth book of the _Georgics_, and is thus translated by Dryden:--
"The secret in an easy method lies: Select four brawny bulls for sacrifice, Which on Lycæus graze, without a guide; Add four fair heifers yet in yoke untried: For these, four altars in their temple rear, And then adore the woodland powers with prayer. From the slain victims pour the streaming blood, And leave their bodies in the shady wood: Nine mornings thence, Lethean poppy bring, T' appease the manes of the poet's king: And, to propitiate his offended pride, A fatted calf and a black ewe provide: This finished, to the former woods repair. His mother's precepts he performs with care; The temple visits, and adores with prayer. Four altars raises, from his herds he calls, For slaughter, four the fairest of his bulls; Four heifers from his female store he took, All fair, and all unknowing of the yoke. Nine mornings thence, with sacrifice and prayers, The powers atoned, he to the grove repairs. Behold a prodigy! for, from within The broken bowels, and the bloated skin, A buzzing noise of bees his ears alarms, Straight issue through the sides assaulting swarms; Dark as a cloud they make a wheeling flight, Then on a neighbouring tree, descending light: Like a large cluster of black grapes they show, And make a large dependence from the bough." ]
Would he have descended to the empty pleasure of inserting a popular fable in that consecrated portion of his poem which had been occupied by his friend's name? I will never believe it. The fable, if it be one, must necessarily possess some serious foundation, and a truthful side. We are not dealing here with the worldly poet, the urbane singer, like Horace, the elegant favourite of Rome. It is not the charming improvisatore of the court of Augustus, the gay and indiscreet Ovid, who betrays the loves of the gods. Virgil is the child of Earth, the pure and noble figure of the old Italian peasant, the religious interrogator, the reverently simple interpreter of the secrets of Nature. But he may be mistaken in his words,--that he may have ill-applied the names,--this is not impossible; but so far as the facts are concerned, it is an entirely different matter: whatever he describes, I firmly believe he saw.
An accident threw me into the way of understanding the poet's intention. On a certain memorable day, my wife and I repaired to the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, to visit before winter the burial-places of my family, the tomb which reunites my father and his grandson. This latter had been born to me in the very year which terminated the first half of the present century, and I had named him Lazarus in my devout hope of the Awakening of the Nations. I had imagined that I saw upon his countenance a gleam, as it were, of the strong and tender thoughts which throbbed in my heart at that last moment of my teaching. Oh, vanity of human hopes! This flower of my autumn, which I yearned to animate with the potent vitality that had been of too tardy development in myself, disappeared almost in the act of birth. And there was no help but to deposit my child at the feet of my father, who had already been four years dead. Two cypresses which I then planted in that ill-omened nook of clay have acquired in the brief interval an extraordinary growth. Two, nay, three times taller than myself, they clothe their vigorous branches with a young, rich foliage which ever points towards heaven. If, with an effort, you lower them, they rear themselves again, in all their pride and strength, flourishing with a marvellous pith, as if they had drank from the earth where I planted them the precious treasure of my past and my unconquerable aspiration.
While revolving these thoughts I ascended the hill, and before arriving at the tomb, which is situated in the upper alley, I made this observation,--that though I had on so many occasions frequented this melancholy and beautiful spot, having been in earlier life the most assiduous visitor of the dead, I had scarcely ever seen any insects in the Père-Lachaise. Hardly even at the great epoch of the flowers, when everything is covered with bloom, and numbers of the old deserted sepulchres are embowered in roses, I had not remarked that animal life abounded there as it abounds elsewhere. Very few birds, and very few insects. Why? I could not say.
While making this reflection, we had finished climbing the hill; we stood in front of the tomb. And there, with admiration, with a species of astonishment, I found a surprising contradiction of what I had just been saying.
About a score of very brilliant bees hovered above the little garden-plot,--which was narrow as a shroud, stripped of bloom and bare of flowers, and saddened by the influence of the season. In the whole cemetery remained only the last autumnal flowers,--some withering and half-leafless Bengal roses. The spot where we stood, full of new buildings, masonry, and plaster, was an Arabia Deserta. Finally, on the tomb, towards the head of the grandfather, flourished only a few sickly white asters, and over my child the cypresses. It must needs have been that these asters, in their cold clayey soil, nourished either by the whispers of the air or the spirits of the earth, treasured up a modicum of honey, since the little gleaners resorted thither for their harvest.
* * * * *
I am not superstitious. I believe in but one miracle, the constant miracle of the Providence of Nature. I experienced nevertheless how powerfully the mind may be affected by a lively surprise of the heart. I felt an emotion of gratefulness at the sight of the mysterious little creatures animating this solitude, whither, alas! I myself came but rarely. The increasing absorption of my work, in which day pressed upon day,--the palpitating flame of the forge where one forges more and more quickly, in the doubt whether one will be living to-morrow,--all this kept us further from the tombs than in the days of our dreamy youth. I was much affected by seeing my place supplied. In my absence the bees peopled and vivified the spot, consoled, and perhaps rejoiced my dead. My father may have smiled on them in his kindly indulgence; they may have been the happiness and first delight of my child.
Selfish motives could not have led them thither; there was so little for them to take. Nevertheless, when we suspended to the cypress-boughs the garlands of _immortelles_ we had brought with us, they were curious enough to ascertain if there was any treasure in the new flowers. The hard, prickly corolla soon repulsed them, and sent them back to the faded asters. I felt very sad, and said to them:--"Late, very late, my friends, you come, and to the tomb of the poor! Why am I not able to recompense you with a banquet of friendship, which should sustain and warm you during the first cold breezes, already blowing on these icy heights, so exposed to the northern wind!"
As if they had understood me, their movements afforded an exact reply. Some I saw, with their little limbs skilfully bent forward, rubbing their backs in the sun; they longed to absorb into every vein its genial radiance. They made the most of that brief hour when the sun revolves too quickly; one scarcely feels it before it has gone! Their significant gesture plainly said:--"Oh, what a cold morning we have had! Let us make haste! In less than an hour commences the equally inclement evening, the frozen night,--nay, who knows? the winter! and then our death is at hand."
They were still full of life, however; marvellously trim and bright,--I may even say radiant,--under their illuminated wings, all shot with gold. I never saw more beautiful insects; insects more clearly inspired by a higher life. One thing embarrassed me; namely, that they were too handsome, and too shining, inasmuch as they did not wear their industrial attire, their velvety coat, their pincers, and their brushes. And, finally, I discovered another circumstance: that they had not the four wings of the bee, but only two.
I perceived my mistake. It was these insects which had deceived Virgil. Like myself, he thought them bees, and so he erroneously called them. Réaumur confesses that for a moment even he was deceived by them.
But the fact related by Virgil is not inaccurate. We can understand how keenly it would impress the minds of the ancients, and how they would see in it a type of resurrection. They seem the daughters of death. Of the three ages of their existence, they spend the first in morbid and deadly waters, fatal to all other creatures, which permit the escape of the residuum of life in dissolution; with ingenious tenderness, Nature there preserves them, maintains them alive, and enables them to breathe in the very midst of death.
Their second period is passed under the earth,--in the shades,--where they sleep their chrysalis-like slumber.
But when once they have quitted the place of sepulture, they are fully compensated for their previous abasement; a light aërial life, exempt from the bee's incessant toil, and glorified by golden wings, such as the latter never boasts of, is bestowed upon them, with the gift, moreover, of gentle manners. Innocent, and without stings, they live their season of love under the sun and among the flowers. Far from blushing at their origin,--these noble Virgilian bees!--they do not disdain the flowers of the cemetery, they keep company with the dead, and for the living collect that honey of the soul,--the hope of the future!