Part 4

Chapter 44,484 wordsPublic domain

“The stupid beast!” sang the nightingale who sat in the syringa-bush. “He does not care about flowers or music and singing. Nothing but eat, eat, eat!”

“The stupid beast!” piped the swallow who swept over the kitchen-garden on his long, pointed wings. “He has not the smallest taste for poetry: never thinks of sunshine and summer air. There is not the least go in him. Nothing but eat, eat, eat! And then, into the bargain, he is so full of loathsome poisonous hairs that one can’t eat him one’s self.”

“The stupid beast!” snapped the ant, who ran past with a grain of corn in her mouth. “Does he ever think of house and home? Of his children? Of food for the winter? Nothing but eat, eat, eat!”

“Goodness me!” said the caterpillar.

And he said no more for the time being, so overpowered was he with all this scolding. But, all the while that he was eating the green, juicy cabbage, he pondered on what he had heard and most on what the ant had said. And, when the ant next came by, the caterpillar had made it out:

“Hi, you ant!” he cried. “Stop a bit and explain to me what you said about the children. Don’t you know that I am a child myself? I only want time in order to grow big and pretty.”

The ant stood still and dropped the grain of corn she had in her mouth, so great was her amazement:

“Are _you_ a child?” she asked. “A nice child you are! Why, you’re a perfect elephant, fifty times as big as myself. And so you’re a child, are you? Lord knows what you’ll look like when you’re grown up!”

“I don’t know for certain,” said the caterpillar, with an air of mystery. “But I have a suspicion. If I could only tell you what I sometimes notice inside myself! I am quite certain that I shall be something great one day--if only you give me time to grow. I shall fly away over the garden on beautiful wings; I shall be a butterfly: just you wait and see! I know by my dreams that I am related to you others and that I am quite as good as you.”

“Bah!” said the ant and spat on the ground. “It is simply disgusting to listen to such balderdash. Dreams? Suspicions? No, there’s a thing that’s called the family and the ant-hill: that’s what _I_ stick to. Good-bye, you stupid caterpillar.”

Then she ran off, but stopped a little farther away and once more said:

“Bah!”

And the sun blazed and the caterpillar basked in its rays while he ate the green cabbage.

It was now past mid-day and the nightingale in the syringa-bush could not bear to sing in so great a heat. So he stopped and took an afternoon nap. The swallow flew up aloft to get a breath of fresh air, the ant carried her little white eggs up into the sun and the gardener sat under the big walnut-tree and had his dinner with his wife and children.

But the caterpillar went on eating indefatigably.

Suddenly a multitude of small black dots appeared in the air over the kitchen-garden. They danced up and down and up and down. At last, they hung low down, just above the caterpillar, and he could see that they were nice little animals, with fine, bright wings.

“Who are you? What do you want?” asked the caterpillar.

“We are mothers,” replied the little animals, “and we have come out to look for a place for our children.”

“Well, that’s right and proper enough,” said the caterpillar, who was thinking of what the ant had said. “But I don’t like you, for all that.”

“That’s very sad,” said the animalcules, “for we just happen to be so awfully fond of you.”

And, at that moment, a number of them settled on the caterpillar’s back.

“Oh! Oh!” he screamed. “Murder! Help! Police!”

The little animals flew up again, but remained hovering in the air above the caterpillar.

“But who are you?” he asked and writhed with pain. “What have I done to you that you should ill-treat me so?”

“Every one provides for himself and his,” replied the animalcules, “and we have now provided for our children. We are parasitic flies and our name is Ichneumon: it is not a pretty one, but it happens to be the best we have. For the rest, we are relations of the ants, if you happen to know them.”

“It’s a good enough family,” said the caterpillar and sighed. “But I don’t know why everybody should scold at me and sting me and scoff at me. What is this that you have done to me now?”

“You’ll know soon enough,” said the ichneumons. “Good-bye for the present and thank you.”

Then they soared up aloft and became little black dots again and, at last, disappeared altogether.

But the caterpillar heaved long and deep sighs and ate twice as much cabbage to console himself. Nevertheless, he could not keep from thinking of the uncomfortable visit he had had:

“I have a suspicion,” he said to himself. “An awkward suspicion. If only I could make something of it!”

But, when some time had passed, he began to make something of it.

He simply could not satisfy his appetite any longer. The more he ate, the hungrier he became. He munched one piece of cabbage-leaf after another and, nevertheless, he felt quite faint with hunger.

“What is the meaning of _this_ now?” he said, despondently.

“It’s we!” answered something inside him.

“Eh? What?” said the caterpillar and rolled round with terror. “Am I haunted inside, or have I gone mad?”

“It’s we, it’s the ichneumon-flies’ young,” came the sound again from deep down in his stomach.

The caterpillar’s head was in a whirl. But, when he had collected himself a little, he began to understand:

“So the ichneumons laid their eggs in my body!” he cried, in despair. “And have I now to feed all their voracious young?”

“That’s it!” said the young ones. “You’ve hit it to a T. Bestir yourself now, you stupid, lazy caterpillar, and eat till you burst, or we’ll eat you!”

So saying, they took a good nip at his flesh.

“Oh, oh!” yelled the caterpillar. “I will, I will, indeed I will.”

“Yes, but hurry up!” said the young ones. “We are so hungry, so hungry!”

And the caterpillar ate ever so much more than before, but it was not the slightest use. He could never eat enough and the ichneumon-flies’ young kept on crying for more. The ant and the swallow and the nightingale mocked at him every day and the gardener beat the cabbage with his rake, so angry was he at all this consumption.

But the caterpillar swallowed it all and reflected that there was not on earth a lot so distressing as his.

“Jeer away!” he thought. “You’re quick at that. If only you knew that I don’t get the food myself which I procure: the benefit of it all goes to the ichneumon-flies’ young.”

He ate and ate desperately. At last, he could bear it no longer. All day long, he noticed how the ichneumons were rummaging about inside him. He rolled round on the cabbage-leaf in despair and turned and twisted and screamed for help.

“Rather eat me up altogether while you’re about it!” he cried. “Rather let me die at once: I can’t endure this life!”

“Tut, tut!” said the young ones inside him and cackled with laughter. “It’s not so easy as that. You’ll be eaten right enough, when the time comes, never fear! But, for the present, all you have to do is to hold your tongue and eat.”

Every day, the young ones grew bigger and wanted more food. When they could no longer satisfy themselves with what the caterpillar ate, they began to devour two large lumps of fat which he had saved up in the happy days before the ichneumons came. They were meant to be used for wings and legs, once he had become a butterfly. And, when he noticed that they were gone, he shed bitter tears:

“Alas for my beautiful dreams!” he said. “Now I shall never be a butterfly, never flit in the sun all over the garden.”

“I told you all the time that that was nonsense about the butterfly,” said the ant, who passed at that moment.

“Listen,” said the caterpillar. “If you have a heart beating in your body, then help me, Ant.”

Then he told her of his misfortune. The swallow and the nightingale came and listened and the caterpillar implored them for advice and assistance.

“After all, I’m of your race,” he ended by saying. “Believe me, I feel it. If I get time and leisure, I shall turn into something pretty, a butterfly. I have felt that inside myself since the time when I was quite little.”

The swallow and the nightingale looked at each other and shook their heads. But the ant, who was the cleverest of the three, nodded thoughtfully and then said:

“What you say about the relationship may have something in it. To a certain extent. For we are all poor mortals, as the gardener says. But that bit about the butterfly is positively nothing but imagination. I am sorry for you, goodness knows I am, but I can’t help you. You must bear your lot with patience.”

“I _can’t_ bear it!” cried the caterpillar. “It is killing me. Think of the butterflies: are they not beautiful? Don’t you like looking at them? Help me, do you hear! If I die, a butterfly dies. Only think, if one day there were no butterflies!”

“Well,” said the ant, “as for that, the world would go on, even if you are right. There are caterpillars enough in the garden and, if you really _are_ butterflies’ children, there would be plenty left, even though a few did get lost. However, I have no time to speculate on this folly. If you wish to have my opinion in a nutshell, here it is, that your mother must have looked after you foolishly, for you to fall into the ichneumons’ power like this. And now I must go home and look after _my_ children. Good-bye and bless you!”

Then the ant went away. The nightingale flew up into the bush and sang in the warm evening so that all had to listen and admire him and the swallow soared high into the air and prophesied fine weather for the morrow.

But the caterpillar crouched humbly over his cabbage-leaf and ate.

“I think there are too many of us in here,” said one of the ichneumon-grubs the next morning. “I can’t breathe.”

“There’s a way out of that,” said one of the others. “Let’s bite a hole in the creature’s air-ducts; then we’ll get air enough. But see that he has one or two left, or we shall risk his going and suffocating before his time.”

It was no sooner said than done. But the caterpillar screamed louder than ever.

“Air! Air! I shall die of suffocation!”

“No, you won’t,” replied the young ones. “But you had better accustom yourself to be content with little. Hurry back to the cabbage.”

“Now it’s all up with me,” said the caterpillar, one morning.

“You may be right, this time,” replied the ichneumon-grubs.

That evening, they ate the last remnant of their host. Only the skin was left of the dead caterpillar. It lay dry and shrivelled up outside the grubs, who nestled in it as in a warm fur.

One fine day, they flew out. Pretty little animals they were, with light, bright wings, like their parents.

“Hurrah!” they cried. “Now it’s only a question of finding a caterpillar for our young. Each for himself and the devil take the hindmost: such is nature’s law. We are nature’s police: we see to it that things keep their balance. It would be a hideous world indeed, if it were full of caterpillars!”

“Or of ichneumon-flies!” piped the swallow and gulped down a mouthful of them as he spoke.

THE BEECH AND THE OAK

It was in the old days.

There were no towns with houses and streets and towering church-steeples. There were no schools. For there were not many boys and those there were learnt from their fathers to shoot with a bow and arrow, to hunt the deer in his hiding-place, to kill bears in order to make clothes of their hides and to get fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together. When they knew all this thoroughly, their education was completed.

Nor were there any railways, or tilled fields, or ships on the sea, or books, for there was nobody who would read them.

There was hardly anything but trees.

But then of trees there were plenty. They stood everywhere, from coast to coast, mirrored themselves in every river and sea and stretched their mighty branches up into the sky. They stooped out over the sea-shore, dipped their branches in the black water of the marshes and looked out haughtily over the land from the tall hills.

They all knew one another, for they belonged to one big family and they were proud of it.

“We are all oak-trees,” they said and drew themselves up. “We own the land and we govern it.”

And they were quite right, for there were only very few people at that time. Otherwise there was nothing but wild animals. Bears, wolves and foxes went hunting, while the deer grazed by the edge of the marsh. The wood-mouse sat outside her hole eating acorns and the beaver built his ingenious house on the river-bank.

Then, one day, the bear came trudging along and lay down at full length under a great oak-tree.

“Are you there again, you robber?” said the oak and shook a heap of withered leaves over him.

“You really ought not to be so wasteful with your leaves, old friend,” said the bear, licking his paws. “They are the only thing you have to keep off the sun with.”

“If you don’t like me, you can go away,” replied the oak, proudly. “I am lord of the land and, look where you may, you will find none but my brothers.”

“True enough,” growled the bear. “That’s just the tiresome part of it. I’ve been for a little trip abroad, you see, and have been a bit spoilt. That was in a country down south. I there took a nap under the beech-trees. Those are tall, slender trees, not crooked old fellows like you. And their tops are so close that the sunbeams can’t pierce through them at all. It was a real delight to sleep there of an afternoon, believe me.”

“Beech-trees?” asked the oak, curiously. “What are they?”

“You might wish that you were half as handsome as a beech-tree,” said the bear. “But now I’m not going to gossip with you any more. I’ve had to trot over a mile in front of a confounded hunter, who caught me on one of my hind-legs with an arrow. Now I want to sleep; and perhaps you will be so kind as to provide me with rest, since you can’t provide me with shade.”

The bear lay down and closed his eyes, but there was no sleep for him this time. For the other trees had heard what he had said and there came such a chattering and a jabbering and a rustling of leaves as had never been known in the forest.

“Heaven knows what sort of trees those are!” said the one. “Of course, it’s a story which the bear wants us to swallow,” said another.

“What can trees be like whose leaves are so close together that the sunbeams can’t pierce through them?” asked a little oak who had been listening to what the big ones were saying.

But next to him stood an old, gnarled tree, who slapped the little oak on the head with one of his lower branches.

“Hold your tongue,” he said, “and don’t talk till you’ve got something to say. And you others need not believe a word of the bear’s nonsense. I am much taller than you and I can see a long way over the forest. But as far away as I can see there is nothing but oak-trees.”

The little oak remained sheepish and silent and the other big trees whispered softly to one another, for they had a great respect for the old one.

But the bear got up and rubbed his eyes.

“Now you have disturbed my afternoon nap,” he growled, angrily, “and I shall have my revenge on you, never fear. When I come back, I shall bring some beech-seed with me and I’ll answer for it that you will all turn yellow with envy when you see how handsome the new trees are.”

Then he trotted away. But the oaks talked to one another for days at a time of the queer trees which he had told them of.

“If they come, we’ll do for them!” said the little oak-tree.

But the old oak gave him one on the head:

“If they come, you shall be civil to them, you puppy,” he said. “But they won’t come.”

Now this was where the old oak was wrong, for they did come.

In the autumn, the bear returned and lay down under the old oak.

“I am to give you the kind regards of the people down below there,” he said and picked some funny little things off his shaggy hide. “Just look what I’ve got for you.”

“What’s that?” asked the oak.

“That’s beech,” replied the bear. “Beech-seed, as I promised you.”

Then he trampled them into the earth and prepared to leave again:

“It’s a pity that I can’t stay to see how annoyed you will be,” he said, “but those confounded human beings have become so offensive. They killed my wife and one of my brothers the other day and I must look out for a place where I can dwell in peace. There is hardly a spot left for an honest bear to live in. Good-bye, you gnarled old oak-trees.”

When the bear had jogged off, the trees looked at one another seriously.

“Let us now see what happens,” said the old oak.

And thereupon they betook themselves to rest. The winter came and tore all their leaves from them. The snow lay high over all the land and every tree stood plunged in his own thoughts and dreamt of spring.

And, when the spring came, the grass was green and the birds began to sing where they last left off. The flowers swarmed up out of the ground and everything looked fresh and vigorous.

The oaks alone still stood with leafless branches:

“It is very distinguished to come last,” they said to one another. “The king of the forest does not arrive before the whole company is assembled.”

But at last they did arrive. All the leaves burst forth from the fat buds and the trees looked at one another and complimented one another on their good appearance. The little oak had grown a decent bit. This made him feel important and think that he now had the right to join in the conversation:

“There’s not much coming of the bear’s beech-trees,” he said, mockingly, but at the same time glanced up anxiously at the old oak who used to slap his head.

The old oak heard what he said and so did the others. But they said nothing. None of them had forgotten what the bear had said and every morning, when the sun shone, they peeped down secretly to see if the beeches had come. At bottom they were a little anxious, but they were too proud to talk about it.

And, one day, at last, the little sprouts shot up from the ground. The sun shone upon them and the rain fell over them, so that it was not long before they grew to a good height.

“I say, how pretty they are!” said the great oaks and twisted their crooked branches still more, so as to see them better.

“You are welcome among us,” said the old oak and gave them a gracious nod. “You shall be my foster-children and have just as good a time as my own.”

“Thank you,” said the little beeches and not a word more.

But the little oak did not like the strange trees:

“It’s awful, the way you’re shooting up,” he said, in a vexed tone. “You’re already half as tall as I am. May I beg you to remember that I am much older than you and of a good family besides?”

The beeches laughed with their tiny little green leaves, but said nothing.

“Shall I bend my branches a little to one side, so that the sun can shine on you better?” asked the old tree, politely.

“Much obliged,” replied the beeches. “We can grow quite nicely in the shade.”

And all that summer passed and another summer and still more. The beeches went on growing steadily and at last grew right over the little oak’s head.

“Keep your leaves to yourselves!” cried the oak. “You’re standing in my light; and that I can’t endure. I must have proper sunshine. Take your leaves away, else I shall die.”

The beeches only laughed and went on growing. At last, they met right above the little oak’s head and then he died.

“That was ill done!” roared the big oaks and shook their branches in anger.

But the old oak stood up for his foster-children.

“Serve him right!” he said. “That’s the reward of his bragging. I say it, although he is my own flesh and blood. But you must be careful now, you little beeches, for else I shall slap you on the head too.”

The years passed and the beeches kept on growing and gradually became slim young trees that reached right up among the old oak’s branches.

“You’re beginning to be rather intrusive for my taste,” said the old oak. “You had better try to grow a bit thicker and give up shooting into the air like that. Just look how your branches stick out. Bend them decently, as you see us do. How will you manage when a regular storm comes? Take it from me, the wind shakes the tree-tops finely! He has many a time come whistling through my old branches; and how do you think that you’ll come off, with that meagre display which you stick up in the air?”

“Every one grows in his own manner and we in ours,” replied the young beeches. “This is the way it’s done where we come from; and we dare say we are just as good as you.”

“That’s not a very polite remark to make to an old tree with moss on his branches,” said the oak. “I am beginning to regret that I was so good to you. If you have a scrap of honour in your composition, then have the kindness to move your leaves a little to one side. Last year, there were hardly any buds on my lower branches, all through your standing in my light.”

“We can’t quite see what that has to do with us,” replied the beeches. “Every one has enough to do to look after himself. If he is industrious and successful, then things go well with him. If not, he must be content to go to the wall. Such is the way of the world.”

And the oak’s lower branches died and he began to be terribly frightened.

“You’re nice fellows, you are,” he said, “the way you reward me for my hospitality! When you were little, I let you grow on my food and protected you against the storm. I let the sun shine on you whenever he wanted to and I treated you as if you were my own children. And now you choke me by way of thanks.”

“Fudge!” said the beeches.

Then they blossomed and put forth fruit and, when the fruit was ripe, the wind shook their branches and spread it all around.

“You are active people, like myself,” said the wind. “That’s why I like you and will gladly give you a hand.”

And the fox rolled at the foot of the beech and filled his coat with the prickly fruit and ran all over the country with it. The bear did the same and moreover laughed at the old oak while he lay and rested in the shadow of the beech. The wood-mouse was delighted with the new food which he got and thought that beech-nuts tasted much better than acorns.

New little beeches shot up round about and grew just as quickly as their parents and looked as green and happy as if they did not know what a bad conscience was.

But the old oak gazed out sadly over the forest. The light beech-leaves peeped forth on every hand and the oaks sighed and told one another their troubles.

“They are taking our power from us,” they said and shook themselves as well as they could for the beeches. “The land is no longer ours.”

One branch died after the other and the storm broke them off and flung them to the ground. The old oak had now only a few leaves left in his top.

“The end is at hand,” he said, gravely.

But there were many more people in the land now than before and they hastened to cut down the oaks while there were still some left:

“Oak makes better timber than beech,” they said.

“So at last we get a little appreciation,” said the old oak. “But we shall have to pay for it with our lives.”

Then he said to the beech-trees:

“What was I thinking of, when I helped you on in your youth? What an old fool I have been! We oak-trees used to be lords of the land and now, year after year, I have had to see my brothers all around succumb in the struggle against you. I myself am almost done for and not one of my acorns has shot up, thanks to your shadow. But, before I die, I should like to know what you call your behaviour.”

“That’s soon said, old friend!” replied the beeches. “We call it competition and it’s no discovery of ours. It’s that which rules the world.”

“I don’t know those foreign words of yours,” said the oak. “_I_ call it rank ingratitude.”

Then he died.

THE WEEDS

It was a fine and fruitful year.