THE ANTS:—CIVIL WAR—EXTERMINATION OF THE COMMUNITY.
It is the tyrant's punishment that he could not, even if he would, easily deliver his captive. So long as my nightingale sings, I know that he cares little for his cage, and I bear his captivity lightly; but when the time of song has gone by, I share his melancholy, and the question again and again recurs to my mind, "How can I release him?" He no longer knows how to fly; in truth, is almost without wings. If I set him free, he would perish before he had gone two steps. The liberties which he takes at Paris in a large chamber, and here, at Fontainebleau, in a small garden, are, really, of but little importance. He does not profit by them; almost always remains concealed in a gooseberry-bush, dreaming and listening.
The strains he hears,—the lively songs of the warblers, the voices of love and, maternity,—augment, I believe, his sadness; so much so, that here, in the open air, under the blue sky, enjoying a relative degree of freedom, he loses his appetite, and will eat no longer.
We bethought ourselves of giving him his natural diet, and of feeding him with the insects on which he lives in the woods. But here is another difficulty. Who would not shrink from hunting after and carrying living victims to be devoured? We preferred to give him insects in futuro, the eggs of insects, and inert sleeping nymphæ. We carried on a traffic in them at Fontainebleau, where our aristocratic pheasants, a feudal race, do not deign to eat anything but ants' eggs.
On the evening of the 8th of June, there was brought to me from the forest a great clod of earth, mixed with dry twigs, and especially with tiny débris of the Northern trees, such as the needles of the firs, or little prickly leaves resembling thorns.