When the chemist has fully prepared his plan of research, he mixes his reagent at the most convenient moment and lights a flame under his retort. He is the master of time, place and circumstances. He chooses his hour, shuts himself up in his laboratory, where nothing can come to disturb the business in hand; he produces at will this or that condition which reflection suggests to him: he is in quest of the secrets of inorganic matter, whose chemical activities science can awaken whenever it thinks fit.
The secrets of living matter—not those of anatomical structure, but really those of life in action, especially of instinct—present much more difficult and delicate conditions to the observer. Far from being able to choose his own time, he is the slave of the season, of the day, of the hour, of the very moment. When the opportunity offers, he must seize it as it comes, without hesitation, for it may be long [[130]]before it presents itself again. And, as it usually arrives at the moment when he is least expecting it, nothing is in readiness for making the most of it. He must then and there improvise his little stock of experimenting material, contrive his plans, evolve his tactics, devise his tricks; and he can think himself lucky if inspiration comes fast enough to allow him to profit by the chance offered. This chance, moreover, hardly ever comes except to those who look for it. You must watch for it patiently for days and days, now on sandy slopes exposed to the full glare of the sun, now on some path walled in by high banks, where the heat is like that of an oven, or again on some sandstone ledge which is none too steady. If it is in your power to set up your observatory under a meagre olive-tree that pretends to protect you from the rays of a pitiless sun, you may bless the fate that treats you as a sybarite: your lot is an Eden. Above all, keep your eyes open. The spot is a good one; and—who knows?—the opportunity may come at any moment.
It came—late, it is true; but still it came. Ah, if you could now observe at your ease, in the quiet of your study, with nothing to distract your mind from your subject, far from the profane wayfarer who, seeing you so busily [[131]]occupied at a spot where he sees nothing, will stop, overwhelm you with queries, take you for some water-diviner, or—a graver suspicion this—regard you as some questionable character searching for buried treasure and discovering by means of incantations where the old pots full of coin lie hidden! Should you still wear a Christian aspect in his eyes, he will approach you, look to see what you are looking at, and smile in a manner that leaves no doubt as to his poor opinion of people who spend their time in watching Flies. You will be lucky indeed if the troublesome visitor, with his tongue in his cheek, walks off at last without disturbing things and without repeating in his innocence the disaster brought about by my two conscripts’ boots.
Should your inexplicable doings not puzzle the passer-by, they will be sure to puzzle the village keeper, that uncompromising representative of the law in the ploughed acres. He has long had his eye on you. He has so often seen you wandering about, like a lost soul, for no appreciable reason; he has so often caught you rooting in the ground, or, with infinite precautions, knocking down some strip of wall in a sunken road, that in the end he has come to look upon you with dark suspicion. You are nothing to him but a gipsy, a tramp, [[132]]a poultry-thief, a shady person or, at the best, a madman. Should you be carrying your botanizing-case, it will represent to him the poacher’s ferret-cage; and you would never get it out of his head that, regardless of the game-laws and the rights of landlords, you are clearing all the neighbouring warrens of their rabbits. Take care. However thirsty you may be, do not lay a finger on the nearest bunch of grapes: the man with the municipal badge will be there, delighted to have a case at last and so to receive an explanation of your highly perplexing behaviour.
I have never, I can safely say, committed any such misdemeanour; and yet, one day, lying on the sand, absorbed in the details of a Bembex’ household, I suddenly heard beside me:
‘In the name of the law, I arrest you! You come along with me!’
It was the keeper of Les Angles, who, after vainly waiting for an opportunity to catch me at fault and being daily more anxious for an answer to the riddle that was worrying him, at last resolved upon the brutal expedient of a summons. I had to explain things. The poor man seemed anything but convinced:
‘Pooh!’ he said. ‘Pooh! You will never make me believe that you come here and roast in the sun just to watch Flies. I shall keep an [[133]]eye on you, mark you! And, the first time I …! However, that’ll do for the present.’
And he went off. I have always believed that my red ribbon had a good deal to do with his departure. And I also put down to that red ribbon certain other little services by which I benefited during my entomological and botanical excursions. It seemed to me—or was I dreaming?—it seemed to me that, on my botanizing expeditions up Mont Ventoux, the guide was more tractable and the donkey less obstinate.
The aforesaid bit of scarlet ribbon did not always spare me the tribulations which the entomologist must expect when experimenting on the public way. Here is a characteristic example. Ever since daybreak I have been ambushed, sitting on a stone, at the bottom of a ravine. The subject of my matutinal visit is the Languedocian Sphex. Three women, vine-pickers, pass in a group, on the way to their work. They give a glance at the man seated, apparently absorbed in reflection. At sunset, the same pickers pass again, carrying their full baskets on their heads. The man is still there, sitting on the same stone, with his eyes fixed on the same place. My motionless attitude, my long persistency in remaining at that deserted spot, must have impressed them [[134]]deeply. As they passed by me, I saw one of them tap her forehead and heard her whisper to the others: