We must therefore believe that, if the possibilities of the future should ever produce a Dung-beetle carrying a horn upon his corselet, this upsetter of present customs will not be the Onthophagus succeeding in maturing the thoracic appendage of the nymph, but rather an insect resulting from a new model. The creative power throws aside the old moulds and replaces them by others, fashioned with fresh care, after plans of an inexhaustible variety. Its laboratory is not a peddling rag-fair, where the living assume the cast clothes of the dead: it is a medallist’s studio, where each effigy receives the stamp of a special die. Its treasure-house of forms, of unbounded wealth, excludes any niggardly patching of the old to make the new. It breaks up every mould once used; it does away with it, without resorting to shabby after-touches.
Then what is the meaning of those horny preparations, which are always blighted before they come to aught? Without feeling greatly abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity. [[97]]
A DUNG-BEETLE OF THE PAMPAS
[[99]]
CHAPTER VIII
A DUNG-BEETLE OF THE PAMPAS
To travel over the world, by land and sea, from pole to pole; to cross-question life, under every clime, in the infinite variety of its manifestations: that surely would be glorious luck for him that has eyes to see with; and it formed the radiant dream of my young years, at the time when Robinson Crusoe was my delight. These rosy illusions, rich in voyages, were soon succeeded by dull, stay-at-home reality. The jungles of India, the virgin forests of Brazil, the towering crests of the Andes, beloved by the condor, were reduced, as a field for exploration, to a patch of pebble-stones enclosed within four walls.
Heaven forfend that I should complain! The gathering of ideas does not necessarily imply distant expeditions. Jean-Jacques Rousseau herborized with the bunch of chickweed whereon he fed his canary; Bernardin de Saint-Pierre discovered a world on a strawberry-plant that grew by accident in a corner of his window; Xavier de Maistre, using an arm-chair by way of post-chaise, made one of the most famous of journeys around his room.[1]
This manner of seeing country is within my means, always excepting the post-chaise, which is too difficult to drive through the brambles. I go the circuit of my [[100]]enclosure over and over again, a hundred times, by short stages; I stop here and I stop there; patiently, I put questions; and, at long intervals, I receive some scrap of a reply.