This reconnaissance and these first advances are followed by a sentimental promenade.
Two Scorpions are face to face, their claws outstretched, their hands clasped. Their tails curved in graceful spirals, the couple wander with measured steps the length of the window. The male goes first, walking backwards, smoothly, encountering [[248]]no resistance. The female follows obediently, held by the tips of her claws, face to face with her leader.
The promenade is interrupted by halts which do not in any way modify the method of conjunction; it is resumed, now in this direction, now in that, from one end of the enclosure to the other. Nothing indicates the goal for which the strollers are making. They loiter, musing and assuredly exchanging glances. Thus in my village, on Sunday, after vespers, the young people stroll along by the hedges, two by two.
Often they turn to one side. It is always the male who decides the fresh direction to be followed. Without releasing his companion’s hands he gracefully turns about, placing himself side by side with his companion. Then, for a moment, with his tail lying flat, he caresses her back. The other does not stir; she remains impassive. Sometimes the two heads touch, bending a little to right and left as if whispering into each other’s ears. What are they saying? How translate into words their silent epithalamium?
Sometimes, too, their foreheads touch and the two mouths meet with tender effusiveness. To describe these caresses the word “kisses” occurs to the mind. One dare not employ it; for here is neither head, face, lips, or cheeks. Truncated as though by a stroke of the shears, the animal has not even a snout. Where we should look for a face, are two hideous jaws like a wall. And this for the Scorpion is the height of beauty! With [[249]]his fore legs, more delicate and agile than the rest, he softly pats the dreadful mask, to his eyes an exquisite face; voluptuously he nibbles at it, tickles with his jaws the face touching his, as hideous as his own. His tenderness and naïveté are superb. The dove, they say, invented the kiss. I know of a precursor: the Scorpion.…
For a good hour I watch, unwearied, these interminable wanderings to and fro. Part of the household lends me the assistance of its eyes. Despite the lateness of the hour, our combined attention allows nothing essential to escape us. We admire the curious yoking of the couples which our presence does not disturb in the least. We find it almost graceful, and the expression is not exaggerated. Semi-translucid and gleaming in the light of the lantern, the happy pair seem carved from a block of yellow amber. With arms outstretched and tails coiled into graceful spirals, they gently stroll about with measured paces.
At last, about ten o’clock, a separation takes place. The male has come across a potsherd whose shelter appears to him suitable. He releases one of his consort’s hands, but only one, and still holding her firmly by the other he scratches with his legs and sweeps with his tail. A grotto opens. He enters it, and gradually, without violence, he draws the patient female into it. Presently both have disappeared. A little bank of sand closes their dwelling. The couple are at home.
To disturb them would be a blunder; I should [[250]]intervene too soon, at an inopportune moment, if I attempted to see at once what is happening down there. The preliminaries will possibly last the greater part of the night, and long vigils are beginning to tell upon my eighty years. My legs give way and sand trickles into my eyes. Let us go to bed.
All night I dream of Scorpions. They run under my blankets, they pass over my face, and I am not greatly disturbed thereby, such remarkable things do I see in my imagination![11]
Incidentally we may remark that it is not only in his imagination that insects frequent his bed-clothes and caress his bare skin. Here we come to an episode of the entomologist’s private life.
When wearing his last costume, the Pine Processionary caterpillar is very disagreeable to handle, or even to observe at close quarters. I happened, quite unexpectedly, to learn this more thoroughly than I wished.
After unsuspectingly passing a whole morning with my insects, stooping over them, magnifying-glass in hand, to examine the working of their slits, I found my forehead and eyelids suffering with redness for twenty-four hours, and afflicted with an itching even more painful and persistent than that [[251]]produced by the sting of a nettle. On seeing me come down to dinner in this sad plight, with my eyes reddened and swollen and my face unrecognisable, the family anxiously inquired what had happened to me, and were not reassured until I told them of my mishap.
I unhesitatingly attribute my painful experience to the red hairs ground to powder and collected into flakes. My breath sought them out in the open pockets and carried them to my face, which was very near. The unthinking intervention of my hands, which now and again sought to ease the discomfort, merely aggravated the ill by spreading the irritating dust.[12]
What would to another have been merely an annoying accident without other bearing than a commonplace lesson of prudence, became for him the starting-point of a whole series of instructive experiments.
Whatever his retirement has cost him, a man so passionately devoted to animals must bless the solitude of his village which enables him to pass all his time in observing and describing them. He congratulates himself, indeed, upon his premature retirement, which is dooming him to obscurity and impecuniosity for the rest of his days, at the same time [[252]]allowing him wholly to give himself up to entomology.
Ah, beloved village, so poor, so rustic, what a happy inspiration was mine when I came to you to demand of you a hermit’s retreat, where I could live in company with my dear insects and thus trace in a worthy manner a few chapters of their marvellous history![13]
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[1] Souvenirs, I., pp. 134–136. The Hunting Wasps, chap. viii., “The Languedocian Sphex.” [↑]