All the world pressed forward to inspect the limace. There were some who even had the hardihood to touch the creature with little sticks. “Hold, hold, my infant! Faut pas la toucher! Perhaps it is a poisonous one, hein? Demand of thy papa whether it is envenomed.”
By now, quite a little crowd had gathered. One would say, amateurs in limaçonnerie! Papa, not knowing in the least whether it was envenomed or otherwise, preferred not to make any statement before the other Parisians, who, if the truth were discovered, were no better informed than he himself as to the nature of the thing there. Strange as it may seem, those Parisians were really less wise about the limace than you and I are, to-day! For not one of them really knew that all of them were looking at a limace. But they one and all wanted to talk about it, solo, fugue, and chorus; and they did not know how best to mention it. Now it is absurd to keep on calling a thing la chose. So at last some one asked aloud, as all had been asking within, “What is it that that is, that that?”
Ah, if only M. J. Henri Fabre had been there, M. Fabre, the “insects’ Homer”! But M. Fabre was far away, and no one answered for him. There was a pause. Parisians hate a pause. The day had begun so joyous, and there they all were, pausing. Insupportable! A pretty lady with a primrose-colored parasol said that if it were a serpent, now, she would be able to tell you. She felt herself something of a connoisseur in serpents; there had been a serpent at the last pique-nique she had attended. The gentleman on whose arm she was leaning said, with emotion, “Ah, I can well believe that, Mademoiselle!” Then everybody laughed a merry “Hé, hé!” But all this graceful badinage brought them no nearer to knowledge. Hence those who really thirsted for knowledge were glad when the white-capped grandmother Petitpot, with proud beady eyes, pushed forward pale little Pierre with his bulging forehead. In fine, our Pierre, a child well instructed, could inform those ladies.
Appalling yet entrancing moment for black-aproned Pierre! He clasped his thin little Atlas of the World against his stomach, and silently prayed for knowledge to descend upon him from on high. Then he looked earnestly down on the limace, to put himself en rapport with the creature in her underworld life.
A touch of rose pink bloomed a moment on his sallow cheek. “I think,” he said, in his eager fluty voice of a born “teacher’s favorite,” “I think, yes, I believe well!—c’est une taupe.” The very utterance of his faith created in him a faith more abundant. He nodded his head sagely, even boldly. “Ah, oui, Madame, sans doute, c’est une taupe.”
Swiftly the words of the young scholar penetrated all the little groups of Parisians. Une taupe! Lady and gentleman, girl and boy, mason and grocer, one after the other took up that goodly revelation. “C’est une taupe!” Some repeated it a little sadly, as if it were a mistake, or at least an indelicacy, on the part of the taupe not to have been something else. Others repeated it with exquisite gayety, as if a taupe were the one object of joy the world had waited for, until then. Still others repeated it without passion and without surprise, as if a taupe were no more than should have been expected at such a time. But in one way or another, they all repeated it. C’est une taupe. Even those who had never had so much as a cornerwise glance at the limace went their ways, saying, with a fine discriminating wave of the hand, “une taupe.” Indeed, not having seen the limace, they were naturally far more confident than those who had really gone quite near to that brown half-moon on the green leaf, and touched it with twigs. The distribution of knowledge is a moving spectacle, is it not?
My friend who was beside me in that lovely wood, with the blue sky above the waving branches, and with the flower-like children springing up from the grass, and the autumn-leaf grandmothers walking abroad with baskets for the déjeuner, suddenly asked me why I was laughing like that, and the tears running down my cheeks.
“You do not know why!” I answered. “Oh, surely if you know anything at all, you must know! It is because I can see, at this moment, this same spectacle shaping itself everywhere on our planet; yes, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, on Capricornus and on Cancer, and even in the Equatorial belt where the lazy peoples live. Everywhere, everywhere on this round globe of ours, there is a poor limace among the green leaves, and no one knows what she is; but everywhere there is a good old grandmother, pushing forward a pale little Pierre with a bay-window brow, to tell the world, ‘C’est une taupe.’ And the world listens, and repeats, and so becomes wise.”
My friend, a sadly literal person, objected. It couldn’t be like that, among the Esquimaux, in their igloos. And I had all I could do to prove that among the Esquimaux, in their igloos, it was not only just like that, but more so. On the return boat for Paris, we were still arguing the question. The beady-eyed little grandmother had already helped to remove the life-preserving hat from the Petitpot baby. She continued to guard her basket, which now held only an aroma, and, please God, the carcasse for the morrow’s soup. Black-aproned Pierre, with an unrelenting grip upon his Atlas of the World, laid his sleepy, knowledge-burdened head against her shoulder. Mme. Petitpot whispered over that head into the grandmother’s ear, and the grandmother nodded and smiled. The two were agreed that it was truly a miracle; in all that fine company, the boy was the only one who knew. Surely there was a future for this child, already so well instructed! And with what agreeable courtesy he had said it, “Madame, c’est une taupe!”
The women smiled, yet there was something sad and lofty in their smiling. For they knew that they were guarding between them a very precious vessel, and they prayed for strength equal to the honored task. The evening breeze freshened sweetly; and in case that fabled Gallic monster, a courant d’air, might come stalking through the boat, the grandmother spread a fold of her voluminous black skirt over Pierre’s bare knees.