The Praying Mantis, that demoniac creature which alone among the insects turns its head to gaze, "whose pious airs conceal the most atrocious habits," remains on the watch, motionless, for hours at a time. Let a great grasshopper chance to come by: the Mantis follows it with its glance, glides between the leaves, and suddenly rises up before it; "and then assumes its spectral pose, which terrifies and fascinates the prey; the wing-covers open, the wings spring to their full width, forming a vast pyramid which dominates the back; a sort of swishing sound is heard, like the hiss of a startled adder; the murderous fore-limbs open to their full extent, forming a cross with the body, and exhibiting the axillae ornamented with eyes vaguely resembling those of the peacock's tail, part of the panoply of war, concealed upon ordinary occasions. These are only exhibited when the creature makes itself terrible and superb for battle. Then the two grappling-hooks are thrown; the fangs strike, the double scythes close together and hold the victim as in a vice." [(13/11.)]
There is no peace; night falls and the horrible conflict continues in the darkness. Atrocious struggles, merciless duels, fill the summer nights. On the stems of the long grasses, beside the furrows, the glow-worm "anaethetizes the snail," instilling into it its venom, which stupefies and produces sleep, in order to immobilize its prey before devouring it.
Having chorused their joy all the day long in the sunshine, in the evening the Cicadae fall asleep among the olives and the lofty plane-trees. But suddenly there is a sound as of a cry of anguish, short and strident; it is the despairing lamentation of the cicada, surprised in repose by the green grasshopper, that ardent hunter of the night, which leaps upon the cicada, seizes it by the flank, and devours the contents of the stomach. After the orgy of music comes night and assassination.
Such is the gloomy epic which goes forward among the flowers, amidst the foliage, under the shadowy boughs, and on the dusty fallows. Such are the sights that nature offers amid the profound peace of the fields, behind the flowering of the sudden spring-tide and the splendours of the summer. These murders, these assassinations are committed in a mute and silent world, but "the ear of the mind" seems to hear
"A tiger's rage and cries as of a lion
Roaring remotely through this pigmy world."
Was it to these thrilling revelations that Victor Hugo intended to apply these so wonderfully appropriate lines? Was it he who bestowed upon Fabre, according to a poetic tradition, the name of "the Homer of the insects," which fits him so marvellously well?
It is possible, although Fabre himself can cite no evidence to support these suggestions; but let us respect the legend, simply because it is charming, and because it adds an exact and picturesque touch to the portrait of Fabre.
In this drama of a myriad scenes, in which the little actors in their rustic stage play each in his turn their parts at the mercy of occasion and the hazard of encounter, the humblest creatures are personages of importance.
Like the human comedy, this also has its characters privileged by birth, clothed in purple, dazzling with embroidery, "adorned with lofty plumes," who strut pretentiously; "its idle rich," covered with robes of gold of rustling splendour, who display their diamonds, their topazes and their sapphires; who gleam with fire and shine like mirrors, magnificent of mien; but their brains are "dense, heavy, inept, without imagination, without ingenuity, deprived of all common sense, knowing no other anxiety than to drink in the sunlight at the heart of a rose or to sleep off their draughts in the shadow of a leaf.
Those who labour, on the contrary, do not attract the eye, and the most obscure are often the most interesting. Necessitous poverty has educated and formed them, has excited in them "feats of invention," unsuspected talents, original industries; a thousand curious and unexpected callings, and no subject of poetry equals in interest the detailed history of one of these tiny creatures, by which we pass without observing them, amid the stones, the brambles, and the dead leaves. It is these above all that add an original and epic note to the vast symphony of the world.