[CHAPTER 16. TWILIGHT.]
How he has laboured in this solitude! For he considers that he is still far from having completed his task. He feels more and more that he has scarcely done more than sketch the history of this singular and almost unknown world. "The more I go forward," he wrote to his brother in 1903, "the more clearly I see that I have struck my pick into an inexhaustible vein, well worthy of being exploited." [(16/1.)]
What studies he has undertaken, what observations he has carried out, "almost at the same time, the same moment!" His laboratory is crowded with these subjects of experiments. "As though I had a long future before me"--he was then just eighty years old--"I continue indefatigably my researches into the lives of these little creatures." [(16/2.)]
Work in solitude seems to him, more and more, the only life possible, and he cannot even imagine any other.
"The outer world scarcely tempts me at all; surrounded by my little family, it is enough for me to go into the woods from time to time, to listen to the fluting of the blackbirds. The very idea of the town disgusts me. Henceforth it would be impossible for me to live in the little cage of a citizen. Here I am, run wild, and I shall be so till the end." [(16/3.)]
For him work has become more than ever an organic function, the true corollary of life. "Away with repose! For him who would spend his life properly there is nothing like work--so long as the machine will operate."
Is this not the great law for all creatures so long as life lasts?
Why should the man who has made a fortune, who has neither children nor relations, and who may die tomorrow, continue to work for himself alone, to employ his days and his energies in useless labours which will profit neither himself nor his kind?
Ask of the Halictus, which, no longer capable of becoming a mother, makes herself guardian of a city, in order still to labour within the measure of her means.
Ask of the Osmia, the Megachile, the Anthidium, which "with no maternal aim, for the sole joy of labour, strive to expend their forces in the accomplishment of their vain tasks, until the forces of life fail."