CHAPTER VIII.

SHELLS, MOTHER OF PEARL, AND PEARL.

The oursin has carried the genius of defence to its utmost limit. His cuirass, or, preferably, his fortress of pieces, is at once movable and resisting, yet sensitive, retractile, and capable of being repaired in case of accident; this fortress is fast-joined and anchored to the rock, and still farther lodged within a hollow of the rock, so that the enemy has no means of attacking the citadel;--it is a system of defence so perfect that it can never be surpassed. No shell is comparable to it; far less are any of the works of human industry.

The oursin is the completion of the starred and circular creatures; in him they have their highest and most triumphant development. The circle has few variations; it is the absolute form; in the globe of the oursin, at once so simple and so complicated, is the perfection and completion of the first world.

The beauty of the world next to come, will be the harmony of double forms, their equilibrium, the gracefulness of their oscillation. From the molluscs even up to man, every being in this next world is to be made up of two corresponding halves; in every animal is to be found (far better than _unity_) _Union_.

The master piece of the oursin had gone even beyond what was needed; that miracle of defence had made him prisoner; he was not only shut in but buried; he had dug his own grave. His perfection of isolation had banished him, deprived him of all connections, and of all possibility of progress.

To have a regular ascent, we must commence from a very low stage, from the elementary embryon, which at the outset will have no other movement than that of the elements. The new creature is the mere serf of the planet; so completely so, that even in the egg, it turns as the earth turns, with its double turning on its own axis, and the general rotation.

Even when emancipated from the egg, growing up, become adult, it will still remain the embryon, the soft mollusc. It will vaguely represent the progress of the superior lives; it will be as the foetus, as the larvæ or nymph of the insect, in which, folded and hidden, there yet are the organs of the winged creature which is yet to come.

One trembles for a creature so weak; even the polypus though not less soft is less in danger. Having life equally in all its parts, wounds, even mutilations will not kill the polypus: wounded and mutilated he still lives on, apparently forgetful of the excised parts. But the centralised mollusc is far more vulnerable. What a door in his ease is open to death!

The uncertain motion of the Medusa, which sometimes, perchance, may save her; the mollusc, at least at the outset, possesses but very slightly. All that is granted to him is his sloughing or exuding a gelatine matter, which walls him in, and replaces the cuirass of the oursin and the oursin's rock. The mollusc has the advantage of finding his defence within himself. Two valves form a house, light and fragile, indeed, so much so that those which float are transparent; in the case of those which are to be stationary, the mucus forms a filamentary anchoring cable, called the hyssas. It is formed exactly as silk is from an element originally quite gelatinous. The gigantic Iridacne, moors so fast by that cable, that the Madrepores mistake it for an islet, build upon it, envelope it, and strangle it.

Passive and motionless life. It has no other event than the periodical visit of the sun and light, and no other action but to absorb what comes, and to secrete the jelly which makes the house, and will by degrees do the rest. The attraction of the light, always in the same direction, centralizes the view; and behold the eye. The secretion fixed by a constant effort, becomes an appendage, an organ which lately was a cable, and which by and bye will become the foot, a shapeless and inarticulated mass, which will bend itself to anything. It is the fin of those that swim, the pick of those that burrow in the sand, and the foot of those who at first rather crawl than walk. Some species arch it so that they can make a clumsy essay at leaping.

Poor tribe, terribly exposed, pursued by many enemies, tossed by the waves and bruised on the rocks. Those of them which do not succeed in building a house, seek a shelter in living beds; they find a tent with the polypes, or with the floating Halcyons. The pearl-bearing Avicule, tries to find a quiet life in the hollows of the sponge. The Pholade, tries in his stony retreat, to imitate the arts of the oursins, but with what inferiority! Instead of the admirable chisel of the oursin, which might be envied by our stone cutters, the Pholade has but a little rasp, and to dig out a shelter for her fragile shell, she wears out the shell itself.

With but a few exceptions, the moluscs know themselves the prey of everything, and are therefore the most timid of creatures. The Cone so well knows that he is sought after, that he dares not leave his shelter, and dies there, from fear of being killed. The Volute and the Porcelain drag slowly along their pretty houses, and conceal them as well as they can. The Casque, to get along with his palace, has only a little Chinese foot, so small and so useless that he scarcely attempts to walk.

Such the life, such the dwelling; in no other species is there more complete identity between the inhabitant and the habitation; taken from his own substance, his house is but a continuation, a supplement of his own body; alike it even in form and tints. The architect, beneath the edifice, is himself its very foundation-stone.

A very simple thing it is for the sedentaries to remain sedentary. The oyster, regularly fed by the sea, has only to gape when he would dine, and sharply to close his shells, when he has any suspicion that he may become himself a dinner for some hungry neighbor. But for the travelling mollusc the thing is more complicated. He can travel, but he cannot leave behind him his beloved house which he will need for defence as well as shelter; and it is precisely while on his journey, that he is most liable to be attacked. He must shelter, above all, the most delicate part of his being, the tree by which he breathes, and whose little roots nourish him. His head is of little consequence, often it is lost without the destruction of life; but if the viscera were left uncovered and wounded, he must die.

Thus, prudent and cuirassed he seeks his livelihood. Come nightfall, he asks himself whether he will be quite safe in a wide open lodging? Will not some inquisitives intrude a look--who knows--may not some one find the way in with claw and tooth as well as glance?

The hermit reflects. He has but one instrument, his foot, from that he developes a very serviceable appendage with which he closes the aperture and behold him safe at home for the night. His great and permanent difficulty is this, to combine safety with connection with the outer world. He cannot, like the oursin, utterly isolate himself; without the aid of his instructors and nurses, light and air, he cannot strengthen his soft body and make his organs. He must acquire senses; he needs scent and hearing, those guides of the blind; he must acquire sight, and above all, he must be able to breathe freely. Great and imperative function, that! How little we think of it while it is easy; but what terrible pain and agitation if it become too difficult! Let our lungs become congested, let the larynx even be embarrassed for a single night and our agitation and anxiety are so extreme, so unendurable, that often, at all risks, we have every window thrown open. With the asthmatic, the anxiety and torture are so extreme that when they cannot breathe freely through the natural organ, they create a supplementary means. Air, air, air, or death!

Nature, when thus pressed, is terribly inventive. We not wonder if the poor sedentaries, stifling in their houses, have discovered a thousand means, invented a thousand sorts of pipes through which to admit the vital air. One admits air between plates around his feet, another by a sort of comb, another by a disc or buckler, and others by extending threads, some with pretty side plumes, and lastly, some have on their back a little tree, a pretty miniature aspen, which trembles continually and at every movement inhales or exhales a breath.

Sometimes those most sensitive and important organs affect the most elegant and fanciful forms; we would say that they wish to plead, to melt, to secure mercy, taking every form and every color. These little children of the sea, the molluscs, in their infantine grace, in their rich variety of colors, are their ocean mother's eternal ornament and joy. Stern as she may be, she has but to look on them, and she must smile.

But a timid life is full of melancholy. One cannot doubt that she greatly suffers from her severe seclusion, that fairest of the fair, that queen beauty of the seas, the Haliotide. She has a foot, and could, if she chose, get along, though slowly; but she dares not. Ask her why, and she will reply: "I am afraid. The Crab is continually watching me, and a whole world of voracious fish are continually swimming over my head. My cruel admirer, man, punishes me for my beauty; pursuing me from the Indies to the Pole, and is now loading whole ships with me at golden California."

But the unfortunate, though unable to go out, has discovered a subtle means of procuring air and water; in her house, she has little windows, which communicate with her little lungs. Hunger at length compels her to risk something, and towards evening she crawls a little around, and feeds on some sea-weed, her sole nourishment.

Here let us remark, that those marvellous shells, not only the Haliotide, but the Widow (black and white) and the Golden Mouth (of mingled pearly and gold color,) are poor herbivori, inoffensive, temperate, feeders. A living, and decisive refutation, that, of those who fancy that beauty is the daughter of Death, of blood, of murder, of a merely brutal accumulation of animal substance.

But to these, our beautiful shell-tenants, the merest modicum of subsistence suffices. Their chief aliment is the light which they drink in, by which they are permeated, by which they color and tint, with more than rainbow beauty, and variety of tint, their inner dwelling, in which they conceal and cherish their solitary love. Each of them is double, hermaphrodite; lover and loved, in one. As the palaces of the East are concealed by dark and repulsive outer walls, so, here, also, without, all is rude, within, all is of the most dazzling beauty; the hymeneal seclusion is lightened up by the gleaming and many-hued reflections of a little sea of mother of pearl, which, even when the house is closed to the outer light, create a faëry, a mysterious, and a most lovely twilight.

It is a great consolation that when our poor prisoners cannot have the sun, they can at least have a moon of their own, a paradise of soft and trembling lights, ever changing, yet ever renewed, and giving to that sedentary life, that little variety which is absolutely needed by every creature.

The poor children who work in the mines, ask visitors, not for food, or sweetmeats, or money, or toys--all they ask for is the means of getting more light. And it is the same with our Ocean children, the Haliotides. Every day, blind though they be, they feel, and greedily welcome, the return of the light, receiving it, and contemplating it, with the whole of their transparent bodies; and when the light has departed, from without, they still preserve and nurse some portion of it within themselves. They watch, they wait, they hope for its return; their whole little soul consists of that hope, that watching, that eager desire, that incessant yearning. Who can doubt that the return of the glad light is as delightful to them as it is to us, nay, even more so than it is to us, who have the manifold distractions of so busy and varied a life?

Their whole lives pass in thinking, wishing, divining, hoping, or regretting; their great lover, the Sun. Never seeing him, they yet, in their own fashion, certainly comprehend that that warmth, that glorious light comes to them from without, and from a great centre, powerful, fecund and beneficent. And they love that great deeply felt, though never seen, central light, which caresses them, fills them with joy, floods them with life. Had they the power, they no doubt would rush to seek his rays. And, at least, attached as they are to their abode, they, like the Brahmin at the door of the Pagoda, silently offer him up their homage, at once meditative and thrilling. First flower of instructive worship. Already they love and pray, who say the little word which the Holy prefers to all prayer--that _Oh!_ that heart utterance, which contents and pleases Heaven. When the Indian utters it at sunrise, he well knows that all that innocent world of mother of pearl, pearl, and humblest shells, utters it with him, from the depths of the seas.

I fully understand what the sight of the pearl suggests of feeling and fancy to the charmingly untutored heart, the woman heart, that dreams, and fancies, and is stirred by a sweet, and strange, and uncomprehended emotion. That pearl is not exactly a person, but neither, on the other hand, is it exactly a thing. What adorable whiteness; no, call it not mere whiteness, but _candor_, virginal candor; no, not virginal, but better still. For your young virgins, sweet and modest as they are, have always a slight dash of young tartness, and verdancy. No, the pearl's candor rather resembles that of the innocent young bride, so pure, yet so submissive to love.

No ambition to shine. Our pearl softens, almost suppresses, its lights. At first, you see only a dull white; it is only when you have taken a second and a closer glance that you discover its mysterious iris, its exquisitely glancing and pure light.

Where lived it? Ask the deep Ocean. On what? Ask the sunbeams; like some clear spirit it lived on love and light.

Great mystery! But our beautiful pearl herself explains it. We cannot look upon her without feeling that this creature, at once so lovely and so meek, must for a long time have lived in quietude, waiting and waited for, willing nothing and doing nothing, but the will of the beloved one.

The son of the sea put his beautiful dream into his shell, the shell into the mother of pearl, and she into the pearl, which is but a concentration of herself.

But the pearl we are told only comes to her mother in consequence of some wound, some continued suffering, which withdraws or absorbs all vulgar life into that divine poetry.

I have been told that the great ladies of the East, more delicate and tasteful than our vulgar rich, shun the diamond and allow their soft skin to be touched only by the pearl. And in truth, the brilliancy of the diamond is not in accord with the light of love. A necklace and a pair of bracelets of fine pearls are the harmonious and true decorations for woman; instead of diverting the glance of the lover, they move him, make tenderness more tender--say to him--"No noise--let us love!" The pearl seems amorous of woman, and woman of the pearl. The ladies of the North, when they have once put on pearl ornaments, never afterwards remove them, but carry them day and night concealed beneath their attire. On very rare occasions, if the rich fur cape, lined with white satin, chances to slip aside, we may catch a momentary glance of the happy ornament, the inseparable necklace. It reminds one of the silken tunic which the Odalisque wears close to her person, and loves so much that she will not part with it until it is worn and torn beyond all possibility of repair; believing it as she does to be a talisman, an infallible love charm.

It is just so with the pearl; like the silk, it drinks in and is impregnated with the very life of the wearer. When it has slept so many nights upon her fair bosom, the ornament is no longer an ornament, it is a part of the person, and is no longer to be seen by an indifferent eye. One alone has a right to know it, and to surprise upon that necklace the mystery of the beloved woman.