"On this day, then, the 20th of July, allowing my glance to fall mechanically at my feet, and withdrawing my eyes for a moment from the too luminous picture, I saw with astonishment a scene which vividly contrasted with this attractive and holy spot,—an atrocious warlike struggle. The insect-giant which we call the stag-beetle, one of the largest of European species, a black shining mass, whose horns bristle with superb crescent-wise pincers, had seized upon a beetle of far inferior size. Nevertheless, the two enemies being equally provided with admirable defensive arms, after the fashion of the corselets, armlets, and cuisses of our ancient knights, the struggle was long and fierce. Both belonged to the murderous race which prey on little insects,—were powerful lords in the habit of devouring their vassals. Whichever had fallen victim in the fray, the Lilliputian people had certainly applauded. However, the blind instinctive movement which leads us, in such cases, to separate the combatants, induced me to interfere; and with the point of my umbrella, skilfully, delicately, and without wounding the two antagonists, I compelled the stronger of the two to release its grasp."
The captive thus secured was, without form of trial, adjudged to undergo our investigations as a punishment for his fratricidal voracity. Our system, however, is not to impale the insect,—a horrible punishment and a pitiful spectacle which has no end; for a month afterwards, ay, and more, you will see the poor transfixed wretches writhing in agony. Ether generally kills them rapidly, and apparently painlessly. Well, then, we etherized our prisoner largely. In a moment he spun round and fell: we thought him finished. An hour or two passed, and lo! he was once more alive, once more upright on trembling feet, and attempting to walk; he fell, and again he rose. But, to tell the truth, his gait was like that of a drunken man. A child would have laughed at it. We had no desire to laugh, being obliged to poison him a second time. A stronger dose was accordingly administered; but in vain,—he came again to himself. It was a curious circumstance; but it certainly seemed as if this kind of intoxication, while weakening and almost paralyzing the faculties of motion, had all the more keenly excited the nerves, and what we may call the amorous faculties. The use he sought to make of his vacillating step and last efforts was to join a female of his species which we had found lying dead, and placed upon the table. He felt her with his palpi and trembling arms. He contrived to turn her over, and tumbled about (very probably he could not see) to assure himself whether she was alive. He would not part from her: one would have sworn that he had undertaken, though dying, to resuscitate the dead. It was a fantastic, a gloomy, and yet, for one who knows at heart that all nature is identical, a touching spectacle.
It afflicted us greatly; we attempted to shorten it by the help of the ether, and to separate this Juliet from her Romeo. But the indomitable male laughed at all our poisons, and dismally dragged himself along. We shut him up in a large box, where he did not die until after a considerable period, and incredibly large doses. His punishment—and, reader, you may justly call it ours—endured for fully fifteen days.
This robust, enduring being, with his inextinguishable flame of life, threw us into a prolonged reverie.
On our first dabbling in bloodshed, Nature had wished to show us, and with a master's hand, the strange and unconquerable energy with which she has endowed life. "Love is strong as death." Where do we find this saying? In the Bible. Yes; and it is also the eternal Bible. For what more powerfully consecrates existence, and renders it sympathetic, reverend, and sacred? And how great a pity it is, then, to cut it short at the divine moment when every being has its share of God!
We excused ourselves by saying that this insect, which lives six years in a single night, could have spread its wings beneath the sky but two months longer,—just long enough to perpetuate its race. We deprived it, therefore, of a very little time—a month out of six or seven years.
Yes; but that month was the epoch to which all its life had tended. Previously it had only vegetated; but then, it could really have lived and reigned, powerful and joyous. Long an insect, in that hour it would have become almost a bird, a son of the flower-enamelled earth and the genial light. We had acted like the Parcæ, which delight in cutting the thread of our lives at the very moment of happiness!
