When the song has its full volume, the wing-cases, raised high up and resembling a pair of large gauze sails, touch only at their inner edges. Then the two bows fit into each other slantwise and their mutual friction produces the sonorous vibration of the two stretched membranes.
The sound appears to be modified according as the strokes of each bow bear upon the knob, which is itself wrinkled, on the opposite wing-case, or upon one of the four smooth radiating veins. This would go some way towards explaining the illusions produced by music which seems to come from here, there and everywhere when the timid insect becomes distrustful.
The illusion of loud or soft, open or muffled sounds and consequently of distance, [[350]]which forms the chief resource of the ventriloquist’s art, has another, easily discovered source. For the open sounds, the wing-cases are raised to their full height; for the muffled sounds, they are lowered more or less. In the latter position, their outer edges press to a varying extent upon the insect’s yielding sides, thus more or less decreasing the vibratory surface and reducing the volume of sound.
A gentle touch with one’s finger stifles the sound of a ringing wine-glass and changes it into a veiled, indefinite note that seems to come from afar. The pale Cricket knows this acoustic secret. He misleads those who are hunting for him by pressing the edges of his vibrating flaps against his soft abdomen. Our musical instruments have their dampers, their sourdines; that of Œcanthus pellucens vies with and surpasses them in the simplicity of its method and the perfection of its results.
The Field Cricket and his kinsmen also employ the sourdine by clasping their abdomen higher or lower with the edge of their wing-cases; but none of them obtains from this procedure such deceptive effects as those of the Italian Cricket. [[351]]
In addition to this illusion of distance, which, at the faintest sound of footsteps, is constantly taking us by surprise, we have the purity of the note, with its soft tremolo. I know no prettier or more limpid insect song, heard in the deep stillness of an August evening. How often, per amica silentia lunæ,[2] have I lain down on the ground, screened by the rosemary-bushes, to listen to the delicious concert of the harmas![3]
The nocturnal Cricket swarms in the enclosure. Every tuft of red-flowering rock-rose has its chorister; so has every clump of lavender. The bushy arbutus-shrubs, the turpentine-trees, all become orchestras. And, with its clear and charming voice, the whole of this little world is sending questions and responses from shrub to shrub, or rather, indifferent to the hymns of others, chanting its gladness for itself alone.
High up, immediately above my head, the Swan stretches its great cross along [[352]]the Milky Way; below, all around me, the insects’ symphony rises and falls. The infinitesimal telling its joys makes me forget the pageant of the stars. We know nothing of those celestial eyes which look down upon us, placid and cold, with scintillations that are like blinking eyelids. Science tells us of their distance, their speed, their mass, their volume; it overwhelms us with enormous figures, stupefies us with immensities; but it does not succeed in stirring a fibre within us. Why? Because it lacks the great secret, that of life. What is there up there? What do those suns warm? Worlds like ours, reason declares; planets whereon life revolves in infinite variety. It is a superb conception of the universe, but, when all is said, only a conception, not supported by obvious facts, those supreme proofs within the reach of all. The probable, the extremely probable, is not the manifest, which forces itself upon us irresistibly and leaves no room for doubt.
In your company, on the contrary, O my Crickets, I feel the throbbing of life, which is the soul of our lump of clay; and that is why, under my rosemary-hedge, I give but an absent glance at the constellation of the [[353]]Swan and devote all my attention to your serenade! A dab of animated glair, capable of pleasure and of pain, surpasses in interest the immensity of brute matter. [[354]]