You are willing to pay ten francs to see an acrobat or a trained dog. Perhaps you have never watched a spider about to prepare its web. In that case, do not miss the spectacle at the very next opportunity. When you have had a good glimpse of the extraordinary creature revolving about the center of the work and fastening, with its hind leg, so quickly and accurately, the thread that it unwinds in just the right quantity, you will be so delighted that you will want to show the marvel to all those you love.
It is strange what a contempt men have for the joys that are offered them freely. And yet this does not argue a shallowness in our natures: there is a certain beauty in our prizing an object just because it has cost us some trouble. You must not imagine, however, that the marvels of nature come for nothing: they cost patience, time and attention.
An unhealthy curiosity and the taste for anomalies incline us to take pleasure in seeing a creature perform an action for which its own organism seems unsuited. It palls very quickly. For a long time now, for example, the flight of aviators has ceased to excite our interest: we know all about that unmysterious machine; its very sound and its presence in the sky defile the silence and the space whose virginity was a refuge for us. On the other hand, I assure you I never cease to be fascinated by the mysterious manœuvers of a swarm of gnats, their interweaving curves, the spherical movement which, from instant to instant, transports the whole group of insects and seems the result of some secret password, and so many other subtle and profound mysteries that remain, for the imagination, full of allurement, full, one might say, of resources.
And do you think there is nothing disturbing in the beauty of the imperious flight of the great dragon-fly, in its sudden, meditative pauses, in its peremptory starts that lash the air like a supple, furious whip?
To whatever school of philosophy they belong, the great observers of natural phenomena, the Darwins, Lamarcks, Fabres, give us a magnificent lesson in love. But why do we nourish ourselves only on their harvests instead of providing our own? Why do we buy and read their books without drawing any real profit from them, without ever taking the trouble to look down at our own feet, without ever going to live, with the creatures of the sand and the grass, their minute, thrilling existence, in which everything would be for us full of novelty, discovery, suggestion?
VIII
The world is so generous and I feel my heart so full, so overflowing, that I do not even dream of arranging in order all these things I have to say to you. I should wish first of all to see your brow relax, to hear you say that you are less dispirited and that you refuse to be bored.
I should like to know all of you, and each in particular, to take you by the arm and walk with you through one of the streets of your town, or along the highroad if you live in the country. You would tell me of your cares and we should search together and see if there is indeed nothing in the universe for which you are especially destined, if there does not indeed exist, all ready for your wound, the precise balm that is necessary to anoint and heal it.
I came out this morning from my shelter of planks. The barren, chalky soil that surrounds it is surely the most sterile in all Champagne, but it had rained and the storm had brought up out of this miserable soil, which is almost without vegetation, all sorts of kindly odors. They were worth more than all the perfumes of Florida, for they were the humble gift of poverty.
At the end of next February I could show you, some morning, if the sun were out, the color of the birches against the blue of the winter sky. All the slender branches will seem ablaze with purple fire, and the sky, through this delicate flame, will survey you with an exquisite tenderness. You must wait, you must drink it in deeply, and not go on your way before you have understood it. From it you will be able to store up enough happiness to last you till another winter comes and gives birth once more to this prodigy of light.