4
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.