Of all follies, as everybody knows, the worst are those of the wise. The honourable, economical, and respectable republic accordingly presents (one single day yearly, it is true) a prodigious spectacle—of love? of madness?—we do not know, but certainly of vertigo, and to speak plainly, of terror. M. Huber saw in it the appearance of a national holiday. What a holiday! And what a scene of intoxication! But no; nothing human can give an idea of this boiling effervescence.
I watched it on one occasion, between six and seven o'clock in the evening. The day had been one of heavy showers and warm gleams of light. The horizon was lowering, and yet the air calm. It was Nature's pause before resuming her storms of rain.
Upon a low sloping roof I saw descend quite a deluge of winged insects, which seemed stunned, confused, delirious. To describe their agitation, their disorderly movements, their somersaults and shocks to arrive more quickly at the goal, would be impossible. Many rested, and loved. The greater number whirled round and round without stopping. All were so eager to live, that their very eagerness proved an obstacle. This feverish desire produced a feeling of alarm.
A terrible idyllic poem!
It was impossible to make out what they wished. Were they enjoying a festival of love? Were they devouring one another? Right through this distraught multitude of fiancés who had lost their senses passed other and wingless ants, which threw themselves without mercy on the most embarrassed individuals, bit them, and treated them so severely, that we thought we could see them crunching the lovers. But no! They wanted nothing more than to force them to obey, and to recall them to their senses. Their vivid pantomime was the counsel of prudence translated into action. The wingless ants were the wise and irreproachable nurses, who, having no children, bring up those of the others, and bear all the burden of the toil and management of the city.
These virgins maintained a surveillance over the amorous and slothful, and rigidly inspected the marriage-festival as a public act, which, every year, renews the nation. Their natural fear was lest the winged fools should be wooed and won elsewhere, and create other tribes, without any thought of the parent community.
Numbers of the winged ones submitted, and allowed themselves to be carried below towards their country and virtue. But many tore themselves away, and flew afar, obedient only to the dictates of love and caprice.
It was an astonishing vision, a fantastic dream, which can never be forgotten.
In the morning nothing remained as a memorial of the excesses of the preceding evening, except the fragments of some severed wings, in which no one could have divined the trace of a unique soirée d'amour.