The slow dull animals of the genus Man are much scandalized at the proceedings of the wasp. It acts, it does not talk. But if it deigned to speak, its apology would be simple. A word would suffice. It is the being on whom Nature imposes the terrible destiny of suppressing time. We speak of the ephemera which lives a few hours: the period is sufficient for a creature that does nothing. The true ephemera is the wasp. In a brief six months' summer (not more than four months of full activity) it has to accomplish, not only the cycle of the individual life—to be born, to eat, to love, to die—but, what is far more onerous, the cycle of a prolonged social life, the most complicated which any insect is required to perform. What the bee leisurely elaborates in several years, the wasp must realize immediately. Much more than the bee! For the latter makes its honeycombs in a completed house (the hive, the hollow of the rock, the trunk of a tree); but the wasp must improvise without as within, the ramparts of the city no less than the city itself.
Four months to create everything, to make and unmake a people, and a people of lofty organization!
Learn, ye idle races which mutter that in fourscore years ye have no time, learn to despise it. It is a purely relative affair. There is never any time for the flat-bellied snail, were it to crawl through centuries. There is always time for heroic activity, firm will, and resolute energy.
The wasp dies. Its city of thirty thousand souls, improvised by a revolution, as by a thundering stroke of genius and courage, subsists as a testimony to its labours. Solid, eminently substantial, conscientiously wrought, and seemingly intended for eternity!
Let us note the starting-point.
A miserable fly, which in winter has survived the destruction of its race, issues all a-dust from its hiding-place. Thank Heaven, it is the spring-time! Does it seek to enjoy the sun? No, it will not allow itself a day's repose. What is its first duty? To love with a rapid and burning love, to go straight to its goal, to seize and take up as it passes that vital force which will create an entire people. Love on the wing,—no delay,—everything made to bear on the great social aim!
Savage and alone, with its idea and its hope, this mother of the future commonwealth creates in the first place its citizens, some thousands upon thousands of labourers. You have already learned that among insects every worker is a female. These too are workers, but the harsh necessities of toil suppress in them their sex. They love with a lofty devotion. The austere virgin looks for no other spouse than the community.
The chain of ardent labour is continued from the mother to her daughters. Her task was to beget: it is theirs to build. The fury of improvisation is the same in them, however, as it was in her. According to the region and the climate, the tribe, the species, and the work vary. Here they will excavate underground the cave in which they construct their edifice, isolating it from the soil, and preserving it from damp. There they suspend it in the air, and build it of strong coarse pasteboard to defy the heaviest rains. To make this paper or pasteboard, they hasten to the forest, where they select some thoroughly prepared wood, which has been long soaking, and has been already steeped by Nature just as we steep flax. Then within, with a strong sharp tooth (for theirs are not the graceful probosces of bees intended to kiss flowers), they gnaw, and tear, and loosen, and sever the rebellious filaments, pound them into pulp as we do the linen rags, and knead them with a heavy tongue. After the paste has been mixed with a viscous and adhesive saliva, it is spread out into thin layers. With teeth closed like a press, the work is completed. The elementary substance of the pasteboard is prepared.
A second industry now commences. The paper manufacturer is transformed into a mason. It has not the beaver's tail to serve as a trowel, but with the American wasp a sort of palette on the leg serves the same purpose. The operation is not the same here as in Guiana. The mason of Cayenne, having built up the walls, has only to suspend to them a succession of floors or platforms, following in that dry hot land the type of our human habitations. But the European mason, working with pasteboard, in a damp climate, where even in the summer heavy rains are frequent, adopts a different plan: a house within a house, a hive completely isolated from the envelope which encloses it. This is the most successful device for an ardent and chilly people, whose life-flame needs careful guarding.