The big-bellied ones are therefore elderly matrons, indifferent nowadays to the effusive manners of the pairing-season. This time last year and perhaps even before, they had their own good spell; and that is enough for them henceforth. The female Scorpion’s period of gestation is consequently extraordinarily long, longer than will be often found even among animals of a higher order. It takes her a year or more to mature her germs.
Let us return to the couple whom we have just seen forming up beneath the lantern. I inspect them at six o’clock the next morning. They are under the tile linked precisely as though for a stroll, that is to say, face to face and with clasped fingers. While I watch them, a second pair forms and begins to wander to and fro. The early hour of the expedition surprises me: I had never seen such an incident in broad daylight and was seldom to see it again. As a rule it is at nightfall that the Scorpions [[138]]go strolling in couples. Whence this hurry to-day?
I seem to catch a glimpse of the reason. It is stormy weather; in the afternoon, there is incessant, very mild thunder. St. Mèdard, whose feast fell yesterday, is opening his flood-gates wide; it pours all night. The great electric tension and the smell of ozone have stirred up the sleepy hermits, who, nervously irritated, for the most part come to the threshold of their cells, stretching their questioning claws outside and enquiring into the condition of things. Two, more violently excited than the others, have come out, influenced by the intoxication of the pairing which is enhanced by the intoxication of the storm; they suited each other; and here they are solemnly marching to the sound of the thunder-claps.
They pass before open huts and try to go in. The owner objects. He appears in the doorway, shaking his fists, and his action seems to say:
“Go somewhere else; this place is taken.”
They go away. They meet with the same refusal at other doors, the same threats from the occupant. At last, for want of anything [[139]]better, they make their way under the tile where the first couple have been lodging since the day before.
The cohabitation entails no quarrelling; the first settlers and the newcomers, side by side, keep very quiet, each couple absorbed in meditation, completely motionless, with fingers still clasped. And this goes on all day. At five o’clock in the evening, the couples separate. Anxious apparently to take part in the usual twilight rejoicings, the males leave the shelter; the females, on the other hand, remain under the tile. Nothing, so far as I know, has happened during the long interview, nothing despite the stimulating effects of the thunderstorm.
This fourfold occupation of one dwelling is not an isolated instance: groups, regardless of sex, are not infrequent under the potsherds in the glass cage. I have already said that, in their original homes, I have never found two Scorpions under one stone. We must not infer from this that unsociable habits prohibit all intercourse among neighbours; we should be making a mistake: the glazed enclosure tells us so. There are cabins in more than sufficient numbers; each [[140]]Scorpion would be able to choose himself a dwelling and thenceforth to occupy it as the jealous owner. Nothing of the kind takes place. Once the nocturnal excitement sets in, there is no such thing as a home respected by others. Everything is common property. Whoever wishes to slip under the first tile that offers does so without protest from the occupant. The Scorpions go abroad, walk about and enter any house they may chance upon. In this way, when the twilight diversions are over, groups of three, four, or sometimes more are formed without distinction of sex and, packed pretty closely in the narrow home, spend the rest of the night and the whole of the following day together. For that matter, theirs is only a temporary shanty, which is exchanged next evening for another, according to the strollers’ fancy. And these roving gipsies live quite peaceably. There is never any serious strife between them, even when they are five or six in the same messroom.
Now this tolerance prevails only in the adults, due, no doubt, to some degree, to the fear of reprisals. There is another and more imperative reason for peaceful relations: [[141]]concord is a necessity in assemblies at which the future is being prepared. The Scorpions’ characters therefore become assuaged, but not entirely: there are always perverse appetites among the females who are about to enter upon the period of gestation.
I have always present in my mind the memory of the following odious spectacles. A heedless male, who has attained hardly a third or a fourth of his final size, is passing, unthinking, of evil, before the door of a dwelling. The fat matron comes out, accosts the poor wretch, picks him up in her claws, kills him with her sting and then quietly eats him.