I am one of the worshippers in the chapel of the lilacs. My orison, which cannot be translated into words, is a tender and intimate emotion. Devoutly I make my stations from one column of verdure to another, [[2]]telling step by step my observer’s rosary. My prayer is an “Oh!” of admiration.
To this delicious festival pilgrims have hastened, to gain the Lenten indulgences and to slake their thirst. Here, dipping their tongues by turns into the holy-water stoup of the same flower, are the Anthophora[1] and her tyrant the Melecta.[2] Robber and victim sip their nectar like good neighbours. There is no ill-feeling: between them. Both attend to their own affairs in peace. They seem not to know each other.
The Osmiæ,[3] clad in black-and-red velvet, dust their ventral brushes with pollen and make hoards of meal in the reeds round about. Here are the Eristales,[4] noisy, giddy-pated insects, whose wings shimmer in the sun like scales of mica. Drunk with syrup, they withdraw from the festival and sleep off their debauch in the shadow of a leaf. [[3]]
These others are Wasps, Polistes,[5] hot-tempered swashbucklers. When these intolerant creatures are abroad, peaceful insects withdraw and establish themselves elsewhere. Even the Hive-Bee, predominating in numbers and ever ready to unsheathe her sting, makes way for them, busy as she is gathering in the harvest.
These thick-set, richly variegated Moths are Sesiæ, with wings not dusted with scales throughout. The bare zones, like so much transparent gauze, contrast with the covered zones and are an added beauty. The sober sets off the magnificent.
Here is a crazy swarm, eddying, receding, returning, rising and falling. It is the ballet of the common Butterfly-folk, the Cabbage Butterflies,[6] all white, with black, eye-shaped dots. They flirt in mid-air, pursuing and pressing their attentions on one another, until, weary of frolic, now one, now another of the dancers alights once more upon the [[4]]lilacs, quenching her thirst from the amphoræ of the flowers. While the proboscis dives down the narrow throat of the blossom, sucking the nectar at the base, the wings, gently fluttering, are raised above the back, expanding anew and again standing erect.
Almost as numerous but less sudden in flight, because of his wide-spreading wings, is the Machaon, the magnificent Swallow-tail Butterfly, with the orange spots and the blue crescents.
The children have come to join me. They are enraptured by this elegant creature, which always escapes their pouncing hands and flies a little farther to taste the nectar of the flowers while moving its wings after the fashion of the Cabbage Butterfly. If the pump is working quietly in the sunlight, if the syrup is rising easily, this gentle fanning of the wings is in all these Butterflies a sign of satisfaction.
A catch! Anna, the youngest of the whole household, gives up all hope of capturing the Swallow-tails, who never wait for her nimble little hand to seize them. She has found something more to her liking. It is the Cetonia. The handsome insect has [[5]]not yet recovered from the chill of morning; it lies slumbering all golden on the lilac-blossoms, unconscious of danger, incapable of flight. It is plentiful. Five or six are quickly caught. I intervene, so that the rest may be left in peace. The booty is placed in a box, with a bed of blossoms. Presently, during the heat of the day, the Cetonia, with a long thread tied to one leg, will fly in circles round the little girl’s head.
Childhood is pitiless because it does not understand, for nothing is more cruel than ignorance. None of my madcaps will heed the sufferings of the insect, a melancholy galley-slave chained to a cannon-ball. These artless minds find amusement in torture. I dare not always call them to order, for I admit that I on my side am also guilty, though I am ripened by experience, to some extent civilized and beginning to know a thing or two. They inflict suffering for the sake of amusement and I for the sake of information: is it not really the same thing? Is there a very definite line of demarcation between the experiments of knowledge and the puerilities of childhood? I cannot see it. [[6]]