I was about to quit the scene, and seat myself in a sunny opening, when at length a more successful sounding in one of the ancient trunks brought to light a world whose existence no one would have suspected.
At the summit of this trunk, cut off within a foot of the ground, you could very easily distinguish the works wrought by the scolyti and weevils, the former inhabitants of the tree, in conformity to the concentric arrangement of the sap. But all this belonged to ancient history; a different condition of things now existed. These miserable scolyti had perished, having undergone, like their tree, the energetic action of a great chemical transformation which excluded all life.
All life, except one, and that the keenest—a consuming and burned-up life, it seems—the life of those beings powerful under an infinitely little form, in which one might have readily concluded that a black flame, shining fitfully, had consumed all that was material, and reserved only what was spiritual.
The coup de théâtre was violent, and the immense swarming had its effect. A vivid and unwonted joy agitated the much-moved hand that had made the happy discovery; and in proportion to the full revelation of its greatness, a wild vertigo passed from the distracted people to the author of this great ruin. The walls of the city fell down, and revealed the interior of the edifice; innumerable halls and galleries were laid bare; generally four to five inches in length, and about half an inch in height,—a height certainly quite sufficient, and even majestic, if we take into account the size of the members of the community.
A true palace, or rather a vast and superb city; limited in breadth, but to what depth may it not penetrate the earth? It is said that some have been found which, perseveringly excavated, have numbered no fewer than seven hundred stories. Thebes and Nineveh were insignificant! Babylon and Babel alone might have sustained, in their audaciously towering piles, a comparison with these shadowy Babels which continually expanded in the abyss.
But more astonishing than the grandeur is the interior aspect of these habitations: without, all damp, and mossy, and overgrown with tiny cryptogams; within, an astonishing dryness, and an admirable cleanliness—every partition firm though soft, just as if it had been tapestried with cotton velvet, very heavy and lustreless. Is this black velvet produced from the wood itself, after undergoing powerful modification, or by an extremely delicate layer of microscopic fungi which may have been established in the tree while it was still moist, and before it received its all-powerful necromancers? The agent of the transformation betrayed itself directly: each separate cell, if closely smelt, betrayed the pungent odour of formic acid, by means of which the busy race had effected the metamorphosis of its abode, had burned it and purified it with its flame, had dried it and rendered it wholesome with its useful poison.
It is this acid also which, undoubtedly, had accelerated and assisted the enormous and colossal labour, had opened the way to the tiny efforts of those indefatigable sculptors whose chisels are their teeth. Yet even in this case there can be no question but that it must have occupied a considerable time. Successive generations had very probably passed their lives in the tree, working always on the same plan and in the same direction. The image of the projected and longed-for city—the hope of creating a secure fortress, a noble and massive acropolis—had for long years sustained the hearts of the courageous citizens. Ah, what would life be worth if one laboured only for one's-self! Let us look forward to the future. The first-comers who spent their lives in the tree, and from their internal reservoir drew and exhausted the juices that excavated it, could have enjoyed but for a very brief time a habitation so melancholy, and so steeped, as yet, in pestiferous damps and protracted rains; but they thought of future generations, and reverenced posterity.