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At last, on the 27th of October, despairing of success, I gathered some asphodels from the orchard, and the armful of dry twigs in which the Cigales had laid their eggs was taken up to my study. Before giving up all hope I proposed once more to examine the egg-chambers and their contents. The morning was cold, and the first fire of the season had been lit in my room.
The number of performers was the same, the rhythm the same, the volume the same. The six witnesses were unanimous: the loud explosion had not modified the song of the Cigales in the least. The second box gave an identical result. What are we to conclude from this persistence of the orchestra, its lack of surprise or alarm at the firing of a charge? Shall we conclude that the Cigale is deaf?
My domestic researches had been pursued in vain. Two years running I had collected, in boxes, tubes, and bottles, a hundred twigs of every kind which were peopled by the eggs of the Cigale; but not one had shown me what I so desired to witness: the issue of the new-born Cigales. Réaumur experienced the same disappointment.
Thus refreshed in the open air, listening to the song of the cigales, the gang of harvesters would take their mid-day rest and gently digest their meal in the shadows of the sheaves. Our modern Thestylis, differing little from her classic sister, would take good care not to forget the gounflo-gus, that economical resource of large appetites.
If the twig is irregular in shape, or if several Cigales have been working successively at the same point, the distribution of the punctures is confused; the eye wanders, incapable of recognising the order of their succession or the work of the individual.
I leave to him the responsibility for his poetic images and his moral reflections, blossoms unknown to my naturalist's garden; but I can swear to the truth of all he says, for it corresponds with what I see each summer on the lilac-trees of my garden. The first Cigales appear about the summer solstice.
There is absolutely no debris round them; no earth thrown up from within. This is always the case; the holes of the Cigales are never surrounded by dumping-heaps, as are the burrows of the Geotrupes, another notable excavator. The way in which the work is done is responsible for this difference.
The Cigales singing in the branches above could not see what was happening below. There were six of us, spectators and auditors. We waited for a moment of relative quiet. The number of singers was counted by each of us, as well as the volume and rhythm of the song. We stood ready, our ears attentive to the aerial orchestra. The box exploded with a clap of thunder. No disturbance ensued above.
It is he who will preserve for future generations the absurd nonsense of which the body of the fable is constructed; the Cigale will always be hungry when the cold comes, although there were never Cigales in winter; she will always beg alms in the shape of a few grains of wheat, a diet absolutely incompatible with her delicate capillary "tongue"; and in desperation she will hunt for flies and grubs, although she never eats.
The Cigale, foreseeing his attack, empties its intestine in the eyes of its assailant and flies away. But the Cigale has a far more terrible enemy than the sparrow. This is the green grasshopper. It is late, and the Cigales are silent. Drowsy with light and heat, they have exhausted themselves in producing their symphonies all day long.
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