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Only one thing is changed: Dioscorides advises us to eat the Cigales roasted, but now they are boiled, and the decoction is administered as medicine. The explanation which is given of the diuretic properties of the insect is a marvel of ingenuousness. The Cigale, as every one knows who has tried to catch it, throws a jet of liquid excrement in one's face as it flies away.
When I wished to rear some green grasshoppers I had not far to seek for the diet of my pensioners; I fed them on Cigales, of which enormous numbers were consumed in my breeding-cages. It is therefore an established fact that the green grasshopper, the false Cigale of the North, will eagerly devour the true Cigale, the inhabitant of the Midi.
This handsome chafer appears towards the summer solstice, almost simultaneously with the first Cigales. The punctuality of its appearance gives it a place in the entomological calendar, which is no less punctual than that of the seasons. When the longest days come, those days which seem endless and gild the harvests, it never fails to hasten to its tree. The fires of St.
Death at night and sleep in the day time are the characteristics of Macao. No one seems to work, play, sing, dance or even read unless the latter indeed may be done in what Alphonse Daudet calls la Bibliotheque des cigales. As Robert Adams stepped from the chair, the Portuguese came forward with outstretched hand saying: "What is the news Dom Robert in Hong Kong?"
A voyage of exploration in a country a few inches wide evidently forms part of the curriculum of young Cigales. In my glass prison, so luxuriously furnished, this pilgrimage is useless. Never mind: it must be accomplished according to the consecrated rites. At last my wanderers grow less excited.
This time they commence to dig at once, and have soon disappeared. Finally the vase is placed in my study window, where it will be subject to the influences, good and ill, of the outer air. A month later, at the end of November, I pay the young Cigales a second visit. They are crouching, isolated at the bottom of the mould.
If you were to tell me that the Cigales play on their noisy instruments careless of the sound produced, and merely for the pleasure of feeling themselves alive, just as we rub our hands in a moment of satisfaction, I should not be particularly shocked.
Taking the average between these two dates, we get five weeks as the probable duration of the Cigales' life on earth. Four years of hard labour underground, and a month of feasting in the sun; such is the life of the Cigale. Do not let us again reproach the adult insect with his triumphant delirium.
There is not a single peasant in my village so blind as to be unaware of the total absence of Cigales in winter; and every tiller of the soil, every gardener, is familiar with the first phase of the insect, the larva, which his spade is perpetually discovering when he banks up the olives at the approach of the cold weather, and he knows, having seen it a thousand times by the edge of the country paths, how in summer this larva issues from the earth from a little round well of its own making; how it climbs a twig or a stem of grass, turns upon its back, climbs out of its skin, drier now than parchment, and becomes the Cigale; a creature of a fresh grass-green colour which is rapidly replaced by brown.
Of my experiences of this kind I will mention only one, the most remarkable of many. I borrowed the municipal artillery; that is, the iron boxes which are charged with gunpowder on the day of the patron saint. The artilleryman was delighted to load them for the benefit of the Cigales, and to fire them off for me before my house.
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