第85章 THE HALICTI: A PARASITE.(6)

Let us now see what comes of the parasite's intrusion. In the course of June, when peace is established in the Halictus' home, I dig up my largest village, comprising some fifty burrows in all. None of the sorrows of this underworld shall escape me. There are four of us engaged in sifting the excavated earth through our fingers. What one has examined another takes up and examines; and then another and another yet. The returns are heartrending. We do not succeed in finding one single nymph of the Halictus. The whole of the populous city has perished; and its place has been taken by the Gnat. There is a glut of that individual's pupae. I collect them in order to trace their evolution.

The year runs its course; and the little russet kegs, into which the original maggots have hardened and contracted, remain stationary.

They are seeds endowed with latent life. The heats of July do not rouse them from their torpor. In that month, the period of the second generation of the Halictus, there is a sort of truce of God: the parasite rests and the Bee works in peace. If hostilities were to be resumed straight away, as murderous in summer as they were in spring, the progeny of the Halictus, too cruelly smitten, might possibly disappear altogether. This lull readjusts the balance.

In April, when the Zebra Halictus, in search of a good place for her burrows, roams up and down the garden paths with her oscillating flight, the parasite, on its side, hastens to hatch. Oh, the precise and terrible agreement between those two calendars, the calendar of the persecutor and the persecuted! At the very moment when the Bee comes out, here is the Gnat: she is ready to begin her deadly starving-process all over again.

Were this an isolated case, one's mind would not dwell upon it: an Halictus more or less in the world makes little difference in the general balance. But, alas, brigandage in all its forms is the rule in the eternal conflict of living things! From the lowest to the highest, every producer is exploited by the unproductive. Man himself, whose exceptional rank ought to raise him above such baseness, excels in this ravening lust. He says to himself that business means getting hold of other people's cash, even as the Gnat says to herself that business means getting hold of the Halictus'

honey. And, to play the brigand to better purpose, he invents war, the art of killing wholesale and of doing with glory that which, when done on a smaller scale, leads to the gallows.

Shall we never behold the realization of that sublime vision which is sung on Sundays in the smallest village-church: Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis! If war affected humanity alone, perhaps the future would have peace in store for us, seeing that generous minds are working for it with might and main;but the scourge also rages among the lower animals, which in their obstinate way, will never listen to reason. Once the evil is laid down as a general condition, it perhaps becomes incurable. Life in the future, it is to be feared, will be what it is to-day, a perpetual massacre.

Whereupon, by a desperate effort of the imagination, one pictures to oneself a giant capable of juggling with the planets. He is irresistible strength; he is also law and justice. He knows of our battles, our butcheries, our farm-burnings, our town-burnings, our brutal triumphs; he knows our explosives, our shells, our torpedo-boats, our ironclads and all our cunning engines of destruction; he knows as well the appalling extent of the appetites among all creatures, down to the very lowest. Well, if that just and mighty one held the earth under his thumb, would he hesitate whether he ought to crush it?

He would not hesitate...He would let things take their course. He would say to himself:

'The old belief is right; the earth is a rotten apple, gnawed by the vermin of evil. It is a first crude attempt, a step towards a kindlier destiny. Let it be: order and justice are waiting at the end.'