A PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIGHT AND COLOUR.
If the insect does not and will not speak to us, are we to suppose that it does not express the burning intensity of the life within it?
No living creature reveals itself more clearly; though only from itself to its kind, from insect to insect. They are bound up in themselves; are a sealed world, which has no outward expression, and no language except for its own members.
For all ordinary purposes, an electric telegraph exists in their antennæ. But the great, the eloquent language is manifested among them towards the close of their existence,—for one brief moment, it is true,—a moment announcing the approach of death, yet the grand festival of love.
They speak through the rare attractions with which they are invested,—through the wing, the flight, the airy existence,—through the fancy which possesses them (says good Du Tertre) of becoming birds. They speak through their brilliant hieroglyphics of colours and fantastic designs, their strange coquetry of extraordinary toilets. They speak in their very lustre, and some species reveal their inner flame by a visible torch.
They lavish with royal magnificence their last days. And wherefore should they economize, when to-morrow they die? Break forth then, O life of splendour! Sparkle, ye gold and emeralds, and sapphires and rubies! And let that incandescent ardour, that torrent of existence, that cataract of profuse radiance, be poured out in one common, rapid flood!