The Life of the Fly
by
J. Henri Fabre
Part 5 out of 5
the bottom of my heart, that it is wrong to afflict the mothers.
'Saxicola,' the priest had said, on seeing my find.
'Hullo!' said I to myself. 'Animals have names, just like
ourselves. Who named them? What are all my different
acquaintances in the woods and meadows called? What does Saxicola
mean? '
Years passed and Latin taught me that Saxicola means an inhabitant
of the rocks. My bird, in fact, was flying from one rocky point to
the other while I lay in ecstasy before its eggs; its house, its
nest, had the rim of a large stone for a roof. Further knowledge
gleaned from books taught me that the lover of stony hillsides is
also called the Motteux, or clodhopper, because, in the plowing
season, she flies from clod to clod, inspecting the furrows rich in
unearthed grubworms. Lastly, I came upon the Provencal expression
Cul-blanc, which is also a picturesque term, suggesting the patch
on the bird's rump which spreads out like a white butterfly
flitting over the fields.
Thus did the vocabulary come into being that would one day allow me
to greet by their real names the thousand actors on the stage of
the fields, the thousand little flowers that smile at us from the
wayside. The word which the curate had spoken without attaching
the least importance to it revealed a world to me, the world of
plants and animals designated by their real names. To the future
must belong the task of deciphering some pages of the immense
lexicon; for today I will content myself with remembering the
Saxicola, or stonechat.
On the west, my village crumbles into an avalanche of garden
patches, in which plums and apples ripen. Low bulging walls,
blackened with the stains of lichens and mosses, support the
terraces. The brook runs at the foot of the slope. It can be
cleared almost everywhere at a bound. In the wider parts, flat
stones standing out of the water serve as a foot bridge. There is
no such thing as a whirlpool, the terror of mothers when the
children are away; it is nowhere more than knee deep. Dear little
brook, so tranquil, cool and clear, I have seen majestic rivers
since, I have seen the boundless sea; but nothing in my memories
equals your modest falls. About you clings all the hallowed
pleasure of my first impressions.
A miller has bethought him of putting the brook, which used to flow
so gaily through the fields, to work. Halfway up the slope, a
watercourse, economizing the gradient, diverts part of the water
and conducts it into a large reservoir, which supplies the mill
wheels with motor power. This basin stands beside a frequented
path and is walled off at the end.
One day, hoisting myself on a playfellow's shoulders, I looked over
the melancholy wall, all bearded with ferns. I saw bottomless
stagnant waters, covered with slimy green. In the gaps in the
sticky carpet, a sort of dumpy, black-and-yellow reptile was lazily
swimming. Today, I should call it a salamander; at that time, it
appeared to me the offspring of the serpent and the dragon, of whom
we were told such bloodcurdling tales when we sat up at night.
Hoo! I've seen enough: let's get down again, quick!
The brook runs below. Alders and ash, bending forward on either
bank, mingle their branches and form a verdant arch. At their
feet, behind a porch of great twisted roots, are watery caverns
prolonged by gloomy corridors. On the threshold of these
fastnesses shimmers a glint of sunshine, cut into ovals by the
leafy sieve above.
This is the haunt of the red-necktied minnows. Come along very
gently, lie flat on the ground and look. What pretty little fish
they are, with their scarlet throats! Clustering side by side, with
their heads turned against the stream, they puff their cheeks out
and in, rinsing their mouths incessantly. To keep their stationary
position in the running water, they need naught but a slight quiver
of their tail and of the fin on their back. A leaf falls from the
tree. Whoosh! The whole troop has disappeared.
On the other side of the brook is a spinney of beeches, with
smooth, straight trunks, like pillars. In their majestic, shady
branches sit chattering crows, drawing from their wings old
feathers replaced by new. The ground is padded with moss. At
one's first step on the downy carpet, the eye is caught by a
mushroom, not yet full-spread and looking like an egg dropped there
by some vagrant hen. It is the first that I have picked, the first
that have I turned round and round in my fingers, inquiring into
its structure with that vague curiosity which is the first
awakening of observation.
Soon, I find others, differing in size, shape and color. It is a
real treat for my prentice eyes. Some are fashioned like bells,
like extinguishers, like cups; some are drawn out into spindles,
hollowed into funnels, rounded into hemispheres. I come upon some
that are broken and are weeping milky tears; I step on some that,
instantly, become tinged with blue; I see some big ones that are
crumbling into rot and swarming with worms. Others, shaped like
pears, are dry and open at the top with a round hole, a sort of
chimney whence a whiff of smoke escapes when I prod their under
side with my finger. These are the most curious. I fill my
pockets with them to make them smoke at my leisure, until I exhaust
the contents, which are at last reduced to a kind of tinder.
What fun I had in that delightful spinney! I returned to it many a
time after my first find; and here, in the company of the crows, I
received my first lessons in mushroom lore. My harvests, I need
hardly say, were not admitted to the house. The mushroom, or the
bouturel, as we called it, had a bad reputation for poisoning
people. That was enough to make mother banish it from the family
table. I could scarcely understand how the bouturel, so attractive
in appearance, came to be so wicked; however, I accepted the
experience of my elders; and no disaster ever ensued from my rash
friendship with the poisoner.
As my visits to the beech clump were repeated, I managed to divide
my finds into three categories. In the first, which was the most
numerous, the mushroom was furnished underneath with little
radiating leaves. In the second, the lower surface was lined with
a thick pad pricked with hardly visible holes. In the third, it
bristled with tiny spots similar to the papillae on a cat's tongue.
The need of some order to assist the memory made me invent a
classification for myself.
Very much later there fell into my hands certain small books from
which I learnt that my three categories were well known; they even
had Latin names, which fact was far from displeasing to me.
Ennobled by Latin which provided me with my first exercises and
translations, glorified by the ancient language which the rector
used in saying his mass, the mushroom rose in my esteem. To
deserve so learned an appellation, it must possess a genuine
importance.
The same books told me the name of the one that had amused me so
much with its smoking chimney. It is called the puffball in
English, but its French name is the vesse-de-loup. I disliked the
expression, which to my mind smacked of bad company. Next to it
was a more decent denomination: Lycoperdon; but this was only so in
appearance, for Greek roots sooner or later taught me that
Lycoperdon means vesse-de-loup and nothing else. The history of
plants abounds in terms which it is not always desirable to
translate. Bequeathed to us by earlier ages less reticent than
ours, botany has often retained the brutal frankness of words that
set propriety at defiance.
How far off are those blessed times when my childish curiosity
sought solitary exercise in making itself acquainted with the
mushroom! 'Eheu! Fugaces labuntur anni!' said Horace. Ah, yes, the
years glide fleeting by, especially when they are nearing their
end! They were the merry brook that dallies among the willows on
imperceptible slopes; today, they are the torrent swirling a
thousand straws along, as it rushes towards the abyss. Fleeting
though they be, let us make the most of them. At nightfall, the
woodcutter hastens to bind his last fagots. Even so, in my
declining days, I, a humble woodcutter in the forest of science,
make haste to put my bundle of sticks in order. 'What will remain
of my researches on the subject of instinct? Not much, apparently;
at most, one or two windows opened on a world that has not yet been
explored with all the attention which it deserves.
A worse destiny awaits the mushrooms, which were my botanical joys
from my earliest youth. I have never ceased to keep up my
acquaintance with them. To this day, for the mere pleasure of
renewing it, I go, with a halting step, to visit them on fine
autumn afternoons. I still love to see the fat heads of the
boletes, the tops of the agarics and the coral-red tufts of the
clavaria emerge above the carpet pink with heather.
At Serignan, my last stage, they have lavished their seductions
upon me, so plentiful are they on the neighboring hills, wooded
with holm oak, arbutus and rosemary. During these latter years,
their wealth inspired me with an insane plan: that of collecting in
effigy what I was unable to keep in its natural state in an
herbarium. I began to paint life size pictures of all the species
in my neighborhood, from the largest to the smallest. I know
nothing of the art of painting in watercolors. No matter: what I
have never seen practiced I will invent, managing badly at first,
then a little better, at last well. The paintbrush will make a
change from the strain of my daily output of prose.
I end by possessing some hundreds of sheets representing the
mushrooms of the neighborhood in their natural size and colors. My
collection has a certain value. If it lacks artistic finish, at
least it boasts the merit of accuracy. It brings me visitors on
Sundays, country people, who stare at it in all simplicity,
astounded that such fine pictures should be done by hand, without a
copy and without compasses. They at once recognize the mushroom
represented; they tell me its popular name, thus proving the
fidelity of my brush.
Well, what will become of this great pile of drawings, the object
of so much work? No doubt, my family will keep the relic for a
time; but, sooner or later, taking up too much space, shifted from
cupboard to cupboard, from attic to attic, gnawed by the rats,
foxed, dirtied and stained, it will fall into the hands of some
little grandnephews who will cut it into squares to make paper
caps. It is the universal rule. What our illusions have most
fondly cherished comes to a pitiful end under the claws of ruthless
reality.
CHAPTER XVIII INSECTS AND MUSHROOMS
It were out of place to recall my long relations with the bolete
and the agaric if the insect did not here enter into a question of
grave interest. Several mushrooms are edible, some even enjoy a
great reputation; others are formidable poisons. Short of
botanical studies that are not within everybody's reach, how are we
to distinguish the harmless from the venomous? There is a
widespread belief which says that any mushroom which insects, or,
more frequently, their 1arvae, their grubs, accept can be accepted
without fear; any mushroom which they refuse must be refused. What
is wholesome food for them cannot fail to be the same for us; what
is poisonous to them is bound to be equally baneful to ourselves.
This is how people argue, with apparent logic, but without
reflecting upon the very different capabilities of stomachs in the
matter of diet. After all, may there not be some justification for
the belief? That is what I purpose examining.
The insect, especially in the larval stage, is the principal
devourer of the mushroom. We must distinguish between two groups
of consumers. The first really eat, that is to say, they break
their food into little bits, chew it and reduce it to a mouthful
which is swallowed just as it is; the second drink, after first
turning their food into a broth, like the bluebottles. The first
are the less numerous. Confining myself to the results of my
observations in the neighborhood, I count, all told, in the group
of chewers, four beetles and a moth caterpillar. To these may be
added the mollusk, as represented by a slug, or, more specifically,
an arion, of medium size, brown and adorned with a red edge to his
mantle. A modest corporation, when all is said, but active and
enterprising, especially the moth.
At the head of the mushroom loving beetles, I will place a
Staphylinid (Oxyporus rufus, LIN.), prettily garbed in red, blue
and black. Together with his larva, which walks with the aid of a
crutch at its back, he haunts the fungus of the poplar (Pholiota
aegerita, FRIES). He specializes in an exclusive diet. I often
come across him, both in spring and autumn, and never any elsewhere
than on this mushroom. For that matter, he had made a wise choice,
the epicure! This popular fungus is one of our best mushrooms,
despite its color of a doubtful white, its skin which is often
wrinkled and its gills soiled with rusty brown at the spores. We
must not judge people by appearances, nor mushrooms either. This
one, magnificent in shape and color, is poisonous; that other, so
poor to look at, is excellent.
Here are two more specialist beetles, both of small size. One is
the Triplax (Triplax russica, LIN.), who has an orange head and
corselet and black wing-cases. His grub tackles the hispid
polyporus (Polyporus hispidus, BULL.), a coarse and substantial
dish, bristling at its top with stiff hairs and clinging by its
side to the old trunks of mulberry trees, sometimes also of walnut
and elm trees. The other is the cinnamon-colored Anisotoma
(Anisotoma cinnamomea, PANZ.). His larva lives exclusively in
truffles.
The most interesting of the mushroom-eating beetles is the
Bolboceras (Bolboceras gallicus, MUL.). I have described elsewhere
his manner of living, his little song that sounds like the chirping
of a bird, his perpendicular wells sunk in search of an underground
mushroom (Hydnocystis orenaria, TUL.), which constitutes his
regular nourishment. He is also an ardent lover of truffles. I
have taken from between his legs, at the bottom of his manor house,
a real truffle the size of a hazelnut (Tuber Requienii, TUL.). I
tried to rear him in order to make the acquaintance of his grub; I
housed him in a large earthen pan filled with fresh sand and
enclosed in a bell cover. Possessing neither hydnocistes nor
truffles, I served him up sundry mushrooms of a rather firm
consistency, like those of his choice. He refused them all,
helvellae and clavariae, chanterelles and pezizae alike.
With a rhizopogon, a sort of little fungoid potato, which is
frequent in pine woods at a moderate depth and sometimes even on
the surface, I achieved complete success. I had strewn a handful
of them on the sand of my breeding pan. At nightfall, I often
surprised the Bolboceras issuing from his well, exploring the
stretch of sand, choosing a piece not too big for his strength and
gently rolling it towards his abode. He would go in again, leaving
the rhizopogon, which was too large to take inside, on the
threshold, where it served the purpose of a door. Next day, I
found the piece gnawed, but only on the under side.
The Bolboceras does not like eating in public, in the open air; he
needs the discreet retirement of his crypt. When he fails to find
his food by burrowing under ground, he comes up to look for it on
the surface. Meeting with a morsel to his taste, he takes it home
when its size permits; if not, he leaves it on the threshold of his
burrow and gnaws at it from below, without reappearing outside. Up
to the present, hydnocistes, truffles and rhizopoga are the only
food that I have known him to eat. These three instances tell us
at any rate that the Bolboceras is not a specialist like the
Oxyporus and the Triplax; he is able to vary his diet; perhaps he
feeds on all the underground mushrooms indiscriminately.
The moth enlarges her domain yet further. Her caterpillar is a
grub five or six millimeters long, white, with a black shiny head.
Colonies of it abound in most mushrooms. It attacks by preference
the top of the stem, for epicurean reasons that escape me; thence
it spreads throughout the cap. It is the habitual boarder of the
boletes, agarics, lactarii and russulie. Apart from certain
species and certain groups, everything suits it. This puny grub,
which will spin itself an infinitesimal cocoon of white silk under
the piece attacked and will later become an insignificant moth, is
the primordial ravager.
Let us next mention the arion, that voracious mollusk who also
tackles most mushrooms of some size. He digs himself spacious
niches inside them and there sits blissfully eating. Few in
numbers, compared with the other devourers, he usually sets up
house alone. He has, by way of a set of jaws, a powerful plane
which creates great breaches in the object of his depredations. It
is he whose havoc is most apparent.
Now all these gnawers can be recognized by their leavings, such as
crumbs and worm holes. They dig clean passages, they slash and
crumble without a slimy trail, they are the pinkers. The others,
the liquefiers, are the chemists; they dissolve their food by means
of reagents. All are the grubs of flies and belong to the
commonalty of the Muscidae. Many are their species. To
distinguish them from one another by rearing them in order to
obtain the perfect stage would involve a great expenditure of time
to little profit. We will describe them by the general name of
maggots.
To see them at work, I select, as the field of exploitation, the
satanic bolete (Boletus Satanas, LENZ.), one of the largest
mushrooms that I can gather in my neighborhood. It has a dirty-
white cap; the mouths of the tubes are a bright orange-red; the
stem swells into a bulb with a delicate network of carmine veins.
I divide a perfectly sound specimen into equal parts and place
these in two deep plates, put side by side. One of the halves is
left as it is: it will act as a control, a term of comparison. The
other half receives on the pores of its undersurface a couple of
dozen maggots taken from a second bolete in full process of
decomposition.
The dissolving action of the grub asserts itself on the very day
whereon these preparations are made. The undersurface, originally
a bright red, turns brown and runs in every direction into a mass
of dark stalactites. Soon, the flesh of the cap is attacked and,
in a few days, becomes a gruel similar to liquid asphalt. It is
almost as fluid as water. In this broth the maggots wallow,
wriggling their bodies and, from time to time, sticking the
breathing holes in their sterns above the water. It is an exact
repetition of what the liquefiers of meat, the grubs of the grey
flesh fly and the bluebottle, have lately shown us. As for the
second half of the bolete, the half which I did not colonize with
vermin, it remains compact, the same as it was at the start, except
that its appearance is a little withered by evaporation. The
fluidity, therefore, is really and truly the work of the grubs and
of them alone.
Does this liquefaction imply an easy change? One would think so at
first, on seeing how quickly it is performed by the action of the
grubs. Moreover, certain mushrooms, the coprini, liquefy
spontaneously and turn into a black fluid. One of them bears the
expressive name of the inky mushroom (Coprinus atramentarius,
BULL.) and dissolves into ink of its own accord. The conversion,
in certain cases, is singularly rapid. One day, I was drawing one
of our prettiest coprini (Coprinus sterquilinus, FRIES), which
comes out of a little purse or volva. My work was barely done, a
couple of hours after gathering the fresh mushroom, when the model
had disappeared, leaving nothing but a pool of ink upon the table.
Had I procrastinated ever so little, I should not have had time to
finish and I should have lost a rare and interesting find.
This does not mean that the other mushrooms, especially the
boletes, are of ephemeral duration and lacking in consistency. I
made the attempt with the edible bolete (Boletus edulis, BULL.),
the famous cepe of our kitchens, so highly esteemed for its flavor.
I was wondering whether it would not be possible to obtain from it
a sort of Liebig's extract of fungus, which would be useful in
cooking. With this purpose, I had some of these mushrooms cut into
small pieces and boiled, on the one hand, in plain water and, on
the other, in water with bicarbonate of soda added. The treatment
lasted two whole days. The flesh of the bolete was indomitable.
To attack it, I should have had to employ violent drugs, which were
inadmissible in view of the result to be attained.
What prolonged boiling and the aid of bicarbonate of soda leave
almost intact the fly's grubs quickly turn into fluid, even as the
flesh worms fluidify hard-boiled white of egg. This is done in
each instance without violence, probably by means of a special
pepsin, which is not the same in both cases. The liquefier of meat
has its own brand; the liquefier of the bolete has another sort.
The plate, then, is filled with a dark, running gruel, not unlike
tar in appearance. If we allow evaporation free course, the broth
sets, into a hard, easily crumbled slab, something like toffee.
Caught in this matrix, grubs and pupa perish, incapable of freeing
themselves. Analytical chemistry has proved fatal to them. The
conditions are quite different when the attack is delivered on the
surface of the ground. Gradually absorbed by the soil, the excess
of liquid disappears, leaving the colonists free. In my dishes, it
collects indefinitely, killing the inhabitants when it dries up
into a solid layer.
The purple bolete (Boletus purpureus, FRIES), when subjected to the
action of the maggots, gives the same result as the Satanic bolete,
namely, a black gruel. Note that both mushrooms turn blue if
broken and especially if crushed. With the edible bolete, whose
flesh invariably remains white when cut, the product of its
liquefaction by the vermin is a very pale brown. With the oronge,
or imperial mushroom, the result is a broth which the eye would
take for a thin apricot jam. Tests made with sundry other
mushrooms confirm the rule: all, when attacked by the maggot, turn
into a more or less fluid mess, which varies in color.
Why do the two boletes with the red tubes, the purple bolete and
the satanic bolete, change into a dark gruel? I have an inkling of
the reason. Both of them turn blue, with an admixture of green. A
third species, the bluish bolete (Boletus cyanescens, BULL., var.
lacteus, LEVEILLE), possess remarkable color sensitiveness. Bruise
it ever so lightly, no matter where, on the cap, the stem, the
tubes of the undersurface: forthwith, the wounded part, originally
a pure white, is tinted a beautiful blue. Place this bolete in an
atmosphere of carbonic acid gas. We can now knock it, crush it,
reduce it to pulp; and the blue no longer shows. But extract a
fragment from the crushed mass: immediately, at the first contact
with the air, the matter turns a most glorious blue. It reminds us
of a process employed in dyeing. The indigo of commerce, steeped
in water containing lime and sulfate of iron, or copperas, is
deprived of a part of its oxygen; it loses its color and becomes
soluble in water, as it was in the original indigo plant, before
the treatment which the plant underwent. A colorless liquid
results. Expose a drop of this liquid to the air. Straightway,
oxidization works upon the product: the indigo is reformed,
insoluble and blue.
This is exactly what we see in the boletes that turn blue so
readily. Could they, in fact, contain soluble, colorless indigo?
One would say so, if certain properties did not give grounds for
doubt. When subjected to prolonged exposure to the air, the
boletes that are apt to turn blue, particularly the most
remarkable, Boletus cyanescens, lose their color, instead of
retaining the deep blue which would be a sign of real indigo. Be
this as it may, these mushrooms contain a coloring principle which
is very liable to change under the influence of the air. Why
should we not regard it as the cause of the black tint when the
maggots have liquefied the boletes which turn blue? The others,
those with the white flesh, the edible bolete, for instance, do not
assume this asphalty appearance once they are liquefied by the
grubs.
All the boletes that change to blue when broken have a bad
reputation; the books treat them as dangerous, or at least open to
suspicion. The name of Satanic awarded to one of them is an ample
proof of our fears. The caterpillar and the maggot are of another
opinion: they greedily devour what we hold in dread. Now here is a
strange thing: those passionate devotees of Boletus Satanas
absolutely refuse certain mushrooms which we find delightful
eating, including the most celebrated of all, the oronge, the
imperial mushroom, which the Romans of the empire, past masters in
gluttony, called the food of the gods, cibus deorum, the agaric of
the Caesars, Agaricus caesareus. It is the most elegant of all our
mushrooms. When it prepares to make its appearance by lifting the
fissured earth, it is a handsome ovoid formed by the outer wrapper,
the volva. Then this purse gently tears and the jagged opening
partly reveals a globular object of a magnificent orange. Take a
hen's egg, boil it, remove the shell: what remains will be the
imperial mushroom in its purse. Remove a part of the white at the
top, uncovering a little of the yolk. Then you have the nascent
imperial. The likeness is perfect. And so the people of my part,
struck by the resemblance, call this mushroom lou rousset d'iou,
or, in other words, yolk of egg. Soon, the cap emerges entirely
and spreads into a disk softer than satin to the touch and richer
to the eye than all the fruit of the Hesperides. Appearing amid
the pink heather, it is an entrancing object.
Well, this gorgeous agaric (Amanita caesarea, SCOP.), this food of
the gods the maggot absolutely refuses. My frequent examinations
have never shown me an imperial attacked by the grubs in the field.
It needs imprisonment in a jar and the absence of other victuals to
provoke the attempt; and even then the treacle hardly seems to suit
them. After the liquefaction, the grubs try to make off, showing
that the fare is not to their liking. The Mollusk also, the Arion,
is anything but an ardent consumer. Passing close to an imperial
mushroom and finding nothing better, he stops and takes a bite,
without lingering. If, therefore, we required the evidence of the
insect, or even of the Slug, to know which mushrooms are good to
eat, we should refuse the best of them all. Though respected by
the vermin, the glorious imperial is nevertheless ruined not by
larvae, but by a parasitic fungus, the Mycogone rosea, which
spreads in a purply stain and turns it into a putrid mass. This is
the only despoiler that I know it to possess.
A second amanita, the sheathed amanita (Amanita vaginata, BULL.),
prettily streaked on the edges of the cap, is of an exquisite
flavor, almost equal to the imperial. It is called lou pichot
gris, the grayling, in these parts, because of its coloring, which
is usually an ashen gray. Neither the maggot nor the even more
enterprising Moth ever touches it. They likewise refuse the
mottled amanita (Amanita pantherina, D. C.), the vernal amanita
(Amanita verna, FRIES) and the lemon-yellow amanita (Amanita
citrina, SCHAEFF.), all three of which are poisonous. In short,
whether it be to us a delicious dish or a deadly poison, no amanita
is accepted by the grubs. The arion alone sometimes bites at it.
The cause of the refusal escapes us. It were vain, speaking of the
mottled amanita, for instance, to allege as a reason the presence
of an alkaloid fatal to the grubs, for we should have to ask
ourselves why the imperial, the amanita of the Caesars, which is
wholly free from poison, is rejected no less uncompromisingly than
the venomous species. Could it perhaps be lack of relish, a
deficiency of seasoning for stimulating the appetite? In point of
fact, when eaten raw, the amanitas have no particular flavor.
What shall we learn from the sharper-flavored mushrooms? Here, in
the pinewoods, is the woolly milk mushroom (Lactarius torminosus,
SCHAEFF.), turned in at the edges and wrapped in a curly fleece.
Its taste is biting, worse than Cayenne pepper. Torminosus means
colic producing. The name is very suitable. Unless he possessed a
stomach built for the purpose, the man who touched such food as
this would have a singularly bad time before him. Well, that
stomach the vermin possess: they revel in the pungency of the
woolly milk mushroom even as the spurge caterpillar browses with
delight on the loathsome leaves of the euphorbiae. As for us, we
might as well, in either case, eat live coals.
Is a condiment of this kind necessary to the grubs? Not at all.
Here, in the same pinewoods, is the "delicious" milk mushroom
(Lactarius deliciosus, LIN.), a glorious orange-red crater, adorned
with concentric zones. If bruised, it assumes a verdigris hue,
possibly a variant of the indigo tint peculiar to the blue-turning
boletes. From its flesh laid bare by being broken or cut ooze
blood-red€ drops, a well-defined characteristic peculiar to this
milk mushroom. Here the violent spices of the woolly milk mushroom
disappear; the flesh has a pleasant taste when eaten raw. No
matter: the vermin devour the mild milk mushroom with the same zest
with which they devour the horribly peppered one. To them the
delicate and the strong, the insipid and the peppery are all alike.
The epithet 'delicious' applied to the mushroom whose wound weeps
tears of blood is highly exaggerated. It is edible, no doubt, but
it is coarse eating and difficult to digest. My household refuses
it for cooking purposes. We prefer to put it to soak in vinegar
and afterwards to use it as we might use pickled gherkins. The
real value of this mushroom is largely overrated thanks to a too
laudatory epithet.
Is a certain degree of consistency required, to suit the grubs:
something midway between the softness of the amanitas and the
firmness of the milk mushrooms? Let us begin by questioning the
olive tree agaric or luminous mushroom (Pleurotus phosphoreus,
BATT.), a magnificent mushroom colored jujube red. Its popular
name is not particularly appropriate. True, it frequently grows at
the base of old olive trees, but I also pick it at the foot of the
box, the holm oak, the plum tree, the cypress, the almond tree, the
Guelder rose and other trees and shrubs. It seems fairly
indifferent to the nature of the support. A more remarkable
feature distinguishes it from all the other European mushrooms: it
is phosphorescent. On the lower surface and there only, it sheds a
soft, white gleam, similar to that of the glowworm. It lights up
to celebrate its nuptials and the emission of its spores. There is
no question of chemist's phosphorus here. This is a slow
combustion, a sort of more active respiration than usual. The
luminous emission is extinguished in the unbreathable gases,
nitrogen and carbonic acid; it continues in aerated water; it
ceases in water deprived of its air by boiling. It is exceedingly
faint, however, so much so that it is not perceptible except in the
deepest darkness. At night and even by day, if the eyes have been
prepared for it by a preliminary wait in the darkness of a cellar,
this agaric is a wonderful sight, looking indeed like a piece of
the full moon.
Now what do the vermin do? Are they drawn by this beacon? In no
wise: maggots, caterpillars and slugs never touch the resplendent
mushroom. Let us not be too quick to explain this refusal by the
noxious properties of the olive tree agaric, which is said to be
extremely poisonous. Here, in fact, on the pebbly ground of the
wastelands, is the eryngo agaric (Pleurotus eryngii, D. C.), which
has the same consistency as the other. It is the berigoulo of the
Provencaux, one of the most highly esteemed mushrooms. Well, the
vermin will have none of it: what is a treat to us is detestable to
them.
It is superfluous to continue this method of investigation: the
reply would be everywhere the same. The insect, which feeds on one
sort of mushroom and refuses others, cannot tell us anything about
the kinds that are good or bad for us. Its stomach is not ours.
It pronounces excellent what we find poisonous; it pronounces
poisonous what we think excellent. That being so, when we are
lacking in the botanical knowledge which most of us have neither
time nor inclination to acquire, what course are we to take? The
course is extremely simple.
During the thirty years and more that I have lived at Serignan, I
have never heard of one case of mushroom poisoning, even the
mildest, in the village; and yet there are plenty of mushrooms
eaten here, especially in autumn. Not a family but, when on a walk
in the mountains, gathers a precious addition to its modest
alimentary resources. What do these people gather? A little of
everything. Often, when rambling in the neighboring woods, I
inspect the baskets of the mushroom pickers, who are delighted for
me to look. I see things fit to make mycological experts stand
aghast. I often find the purple bolete, which is classed among the
dangerous varieties. I made the remark one day. The man carrying
the basket stared at me in astonishment: 'That a poison! The wolf's
bread!' he said, patting the plump bolete with his hand. 'What an
idea! It's beef marrow, sir, regular beef marrow!' [Author's note:
People use them indiscriminately for cooking purposes, after
removing the tubes on the under side, which are easily separated
from the rest of the mushroom.]
He smiled at my apprehensions and went away with a poor opinion of
my knowledge in the matter of mushrooms.
In the baskets aforesaid, I find the ringed agaric (Armillaria
mellea, FRIES), which is stigmatized as valde venenatus by Persoon,
an expert on the subject. It is even the mushroom most frequently
made use of, because of its being so plentiful, especially at the
foot of the mulberry trees. I find the Satanic bolete, that
dangerous tempter; the belted milk mushroom (Lactarius zonarius,
BULL.), whose burning flavor rivals the pepper of its woolly
kinsman; the smooth-headed amanita (Amanita leiocophala, D. C.), a
magnificent white dome rising out of an ample volva and fringed at
the edges with floury relics resembling flakes of casein. Its
poisonous smell and soapy aftertaste should lead to suspicion of
this ivory dome; but nobody seems to mind them.
How, with such careless picking, are accidents avoided? In my
village and for a long way around, the rule is to blanch the
mushrooms, that is to say, to bring them to the boil in water with
a little salt in it. A few rinsings in cold water conclude the
treatment. They are then prepared in whatever manner one pleases.
In this way, what might at first be dangerous becomes harmless,
because the preliminary boiling and rinsing have removed the
noxious elements.
My personal experience confirms the efficacy of this rustic method.
At home, we very often make use of the ringed agaric, which is
reputed extremely dangerous. When rendered wholesome by the ordeal
of boiling water, it becomes a dish of which I have naught but good
to say. Then again the smooth-headed amanita frequently appears
upon my table, after being duly boiled: if it were not first
treated in this fashion, it would be hardly safe. I have tried the
blue-turning boletes, especially the purple bolete and the Satanic.
They answered very well to the eulogistic term of beef marrow
applied to them by the mushroom picker who scouted my prudent
counsels. I have sometimes employed the mottled amanita, so ill
famed in the books, without disastrous result. One of my friends,
a doctor, to whom I communicated my ideas about the boiling water
treatment, thought that he would make the experiment on his own
account. He chose the lemon-yellow amanita, which has as bad a
reputation as the mottled variety, and ate it at supper.
Everything went off without the slightest inconvenience. Another,
a blind friend, in whose company I was one day to taste the Cossus
of the Roman epicures, treated himself to the olive tree agaric,
said to he so formidable. The dish was, if not excellent, at least
harmless.
It results from these facts that a good preliminary boiling is the
best safeguard against accidents arising from mushrooms. If the
insect, devouring one species and refusing another, cannot guide us
in any way, at least rustic wisdom, the fruit of long experience,
prescribes a rule of conduct which is both simple and efficacious.
You are tempted by a basketful of mushrooms, but you do not feel
very sure as to their good or evil properties. Then have them
blanched, well and thoroughly blanched. When it leaves the
purgatory of the stewpan, the doubtful mushroom can be eaten
without fear.
But this, you will tell me, is a system of cookery fit for savages:
the treatment with boiling water will reduce the mushrooms to a
mash; it will take away all their flavor and all their succulence.
That is a complete mistake. The mushroom stands the ordeal
exceedingly well. I have described my failure to subdue the cepes
when I was trying to obtain an extract from them. Prolonged
boiling, with the aid of bicarbonate of soda, so far from reducing
them to a mess, left them very nearly intact. The other mushrooms
whose size entitles them to culinary consideration offer the same
degree of resistance. In the second place, there is no loss of
succulence and hardly any of flavor. Moreover, they become much
more digestible, which is a most important condition in a dish
generally so heavy for the stomach. For this reason, it is the
custom, in my family, to treat them one and all with boiling water,
including even the glorious imperial.
I am a Philistine, it is true, a barbarian caring little for the
refinements of cookery. I am not thinking of the epicure, but of
the frugal man, the husbandman especially. I should consider
myself amply repaid for my persistent observations if I succeeded
in popularizing, however little, the wise Provencal recipe for
mushrooms, an excellent food that makes a pleasant change from the
dish of beans or potatoes, when we can overcome the difficulty of
distinguishing between the harmless and the dangerous.
[Recorder's note: Modern mycologists warn against Fabre's claim
that boiling neutralizes all mushroom poisons.]
CHAPTER XIX A MEMORABLE LESSON
I take leave of the mushrooms with regret: there would be so many
other questions to solve concerning them! Why do the maggots eat
the Satanic bolete and scorn the imperial mushroom? How is it that
they find delicious what we find poisonous and why is it that what
seems exquisite to our taste is loathsome to theirs? Can there be
special compounds in mushrooms, alkaloids, apparently, which vary
according to the botanical genus? Would it be possible to isolate
them and study their properties fully? Who knows whether medical
science could not employ them in relieving our ailments, even as it
employs quinine, morphia and other alkaloids? One might inquire
into the cause of the liquefaction of the coprini, which is
spontaneous, and that of the boletes, which is brought about by the
maggots. Do both cases come within the same category? Does the
coprinus digest itself by virtue of a pepsin similar to the
maggots'? One would like to discover the oxidizable substance that
gives the luminous mushroom its soft, white light, which is like
the beams of the full moon. It would be interesting to know
whether certain boletes turn blue owing to the presence of an
indigo which is more liable to change than dyers' indigo and
whether the green of the so-called delicious milk mushroom when
bruised is due to a like cause.
All these patient chemical investigations would tempt me, if the
rudimentary equipment of my laboratory and especially the
irrevocable flight of age-worn hopes permitted it. The day has
passed for it now; there is no time left to me. No matter: let us
talk chemistry once more, for a little while; and, for want of
something better, let us revive old memories. If the historian,
now and again, takes a small place in the story of his animals, the
reader will kindly excuse him: old age is prone to these
reminiscences, the bloom of later days.
I have received, in all, two lessons of a scientific character in
the course of my life: one in anatomy and one in chemistry. I owe
the first to the learned naturalist Moquin-Tandon, who, on our
return from a botanizing expedition to Monte Renoso, in Corsica,
showed me the structure of a Snail in a plate filled with water.
It was short and fruitful. From that moment, I was initiated.
Henceforth, I was to wield the scalpel and decently to explore an
animal's interior without any other guidance from a master. The
second lesson, that of chemistry, was less fortunate. I will tell
you what happened.
In my normal school, the scientific teaching was on an exceedingly
modest scale, consisting mainly of arithmetic and odds and ends of
geometry. Physics was hardly touched. We were taught a little
meteorology, in a summary fashion: a word or two about a red moon,
a white frost, dew, snow and wind; and, with this smattering of
rustic physics, we were considered to know enough of the subject to
discuss the weather with the farmer and the plowman.
Of natural history, absolutely nothing. No one thought of telling
us anything about flowers and trees, which give such zest to one's
aimless rambles, nor about insects, with their curious habits, nor
about stones, so instructive with their fossil records. That
entrancing glance through the windows of the world was refused us.
Grammar was allowed to strangle life.
Chemistry was never mentioned either: that goes without saying. I
knew the word, however. My casual reading, only half-understood
for want of practical demonstration, had taught me that chemistry
is concerned with the shuffle of matter, uniting or separating the
various elements. But what a strange idea I formed of this branch
of study! To me it smacked of sorcery, of alchemy and its search
for the philosopher's stone. To my mind, every chemist, when at
work, should have had a magic wand in his hand and the wizard's
pointed, star studded cap on his head.
An important personage who sometimes visited the school, in his
capacity as an honorary lecturer, was not the man to rid me of
those foolish notions. He taught physics and chemistry at the
grammar school. Twice a week, from eight to nine o'clock in the
evening, he held a free public class in an enormous building
adjacent to our schoolhouse. This was the former Church of Saint-
Martial, which has today become a Protestant meeting house.
It was a wizard's cave certainly, just as I had pictured it. At
the top of the steeple, a rusty weathercock creaked mournfully; in
the dusk, great Bats flew all around the edifice or dived down the
throats of the gargoyles; at night, Owls hooted upon the copings of
the leads. It was inside, under the immensities of the vault, that
my chemist used to perform. What infernal mixtures did he
compound? Should I ever know?
It is the day for his visit. He comes to see us with no pointed
cap: in ordinary garb, in fact, with nothing very queer about him.
He bursts into our schoolroom like a hurricane. His red face is
half-buried in the enormous stiff collar that digs into his ears.
A few wisps of red hair adorn his temples; the top of his head
shines like an old ivory ball. In a dictatorial voice and with
wooden gestures, he questions two or three of the boys; after a
moment's bullying, he turns on his heel and goes off in a whirlwind
as he came. No, this is not the man, a capital fellow at heart, to
inspire me with a pleasant idea of the things which he teaches.
Two windows of his laboratory look out upon the garden of the
school. One can just lean on them; and I often come and peep in,
trying to make out, in my poor brain, what chemistry can really be.
Unfortunately, the room into which my eyes penetrate is not the
sanctuary but a mere outhouse where the learned implements and
crockery are washed. Leaden pipes with taps run down the walls;
wooden vats occupy the corners. Sometimes, those vats bubble,
heated by a spray of steam. A reddish powder, which looks like
brick dust, is boiling in them. I learn that the simmering stuff
is a dyer's root, known as madder, which will be converted into a
purer and more concentrated product. This is the master's pet
study.
What I saw from the two windows was not enough for me. I wanted to
see farther, into the very classroom. My wish was satisfied. It
was the end of the scholastic year. A stage ahead in the regular
work, I had just obtained my certificate. I was free. A few weeks
remain before the holidays. Shall I go and spend them out of
doors, in all the gaiety of my eighteen summers? No, I will spend
them at the school which, for two years past, has provided me with
an untroubled roof and my daily crust. I will wait until a post is
found for me. Employ my willing service as you think fit, do with
me what you will: as long as I can study, I am indifferent to the
rest.
The principal of the school, the soul of kindness, has grasped my
passion for knowledge. He encourages me in my determination; he
proposes to make me renew my acquaintance with Horace and Virgil,
so long since forgotten. He knows Latin, he does; he will rekindle
the dead spark by making me translate a few passages. He does
more: he lends me an Imitation with parallel texts in Latin and
Greek. With the first text, which I am almost able to read, I will
puzzle out the second and thus increase the small vocabulary which
I acquired in the days when I was translating Aesop's Fables. It
will be all the better for my future studies. What luck! Board and
lodging, ancient poetry, the classical languages, all the good
things at once!
I did better still. Our science master--the real, not the honorary
one--who came twice a week to discourse of the rule of three and
the properties of the triangle, had the brilliant idea of letting
us celebrate the end of the school year with a feast of learning.
He promised to show us oxygen. As a colleague of the chemist in
the grammar school, he obtained leave to take us to the famous
laboratory and there to handle the object of his lesson under our
very eyes. Oxygen, yes, oxygen, the all-consuming gas; that was
what we were to see on the morrow. I could not sleep all night for
thinking of it.
Thursday afternoon came at last. As soon as the chemistry lesson
is over, we were to go for a walk to Les Angles, the pretty village
over yonder, perched on a steep rock. We were therefore in our
Sunday best, our out-of-doors clothes: black frock coats and tall
hats. The whole school was there, some thirty of us, in the charge
of an usher, who knew as little as we did of the things which we
were about to see. We crossed the threshold of the laboratory, not
without excitement. I entered a great nave with a Gothic roof, an
old, bare church through which one's voice echoed, into which the
light penetrated discreetly through stained glass windows set in
ribs and rosettes of stone. At the back were huge raised benches,
with room for an audience of many hundreds; at the other end, where
the choir once was, stood an enormous chimney mantel; in the middle
was a large, massive table, corroded by the chemicals. At one end
of this table was a tarred tub, lined inside with lead and filled
with water. This, I at once learned, was the pneumatic trough, the
vessel in which the gases were collected.
The professor begins the experiment. He takes a sort of large,
long glass bulb, bent abruptly in the region of the neck. This, he
informs us, is a retort. He pours into it, from a screw of paper,
some black stuff that looks like powdered charcoal. This is
manganese dioxide, the master tells us. It contains in abundance,
in a condensed state and retained by combination with the metal,
the gas which we propose to obtain. An oily looking liquid,
sulfuric acid, an excessively powerful agent, will set it at
liberty. Thus filled, the retort is placed on a lighted stove. A
glass tube brings it into communication with a bell jar full of
water on the shelf of the pneumatic trough. Those are all the
preparations. What will be the result? We must wait for the
action of heat.
My fellow pupils gather eagerly round the apparatus, cannot come
close enough to it. Some of them play the part of the fly on the
wheel and glory in contributing to the success of the experiment.
They straighten the retort, which is leaning to one side; they blow
with their mouths on the coals in the stove. I do not care for
these familiarities with the unknown. The good natured master
raises no objection; but I have never been able to endure the
thronging of a crowd of gapers, who are very busy with their elbows
and force their way to the front row to see whatever is happening,
even though it be merely a couple of mongrels fighting. Let us
withdraw and leave these officious ones to themselves. There is so
much to see here, while the oxygen is being prepared. Let us make
the most of the occasion and take a look round the chemist's
arsenal.
Under the spacious chimney mantel is a collection of queer stoves,
bound round with bands of sheet iron. There are long and short
ones, high and low ones, all pierced with little windows that are
closed with a terracotta shutter. This one, a sort of little
tower, is formed of several parts placed one above the other and
each supplied with big round handles to hold them by when you take
the monument to pieces. A dome, with an iron chimney, tops the
whole edifice, which must be capable of producing a very hell fire
to roast a stone of no significance. Another, a squat one,
stretches out like a curved spine. It has a round hole at either
end; and a thick porcelain tube sticks out from each. It is
impossible to conceive the purpose which such instruments as these
can serve. The seekers of the philosopher's stone must have had
many like them. They are torturers' engines, tearing the metals'
secrets from them.
The glass things are arranged on shelves. I see retorts of
different sizes, all with necks bent at a sudden angle. In
addition to their long beak, some of them have a narrow little tube
coming out of their bulb. Look, youngster, and do not try to guess
the object of these curious vessels. I see glasses with feet to
them, funnel-shaped and deep; I stand amazed at strange looking
bottles with two or three mouths to each, at phials swelling into a
balloon with a long, narrow tube. What an odd array of implements!
And here are glass cupboards with a host of bottles and jars,
filled with all manner of chemicals. The labels apprise me of
their contents: molybdenite of ammonia, chloride of antimony,
permanganate of potash and ever so many other strange terms.
Never, in all my reading, have I met with such repellent language.
Suddenly, bang! And there is running and stamping and shouting and
cries of pain! What has happened? I rush up from the back of the
room. The retort has burst, squirting its boiling vitriol in every
direction. The wall opposite is all stained with it. Most of my
fellow pupils have been more or less struck. One poor youth has
had the splashes full in his face, right into his eyes. He is
yelling like a madman. With the help of a friend who has come off
better than the others, I drag him outside by main force, take him
to the sink, which fortunately is close at hand, and hold his face
under the tap. This swift ablution serves its purpose. The
horrible pain begins to be allayed, so much so that the sufferer
recovers his senses and is able to continue the washing process for
himself.
My prompt aid certainly saved his sight. A week later, with the
help of the doctor's lotions, all danger was over. How lucky it
was that I took it into my head to keep some way off! My isolation,
as I stood looking into the glass case of chemicals, left me all my
presence of mind, all my readiness of resource. What are the
others doing, those who got splashed through standing too near the
chemical bomb? I return to the lecture hall. It is not a cheerful
spectacle. The master has come off badly: his shirtfront,
waistcoat and trousers are covered with smears, which are all
smoldering and burning into holes. He hurriedly divests himself of
a portion of his dangerous raiment. Those of us who possess the
smartest clothes lend him something to put on so that he can go
home decently.
One of the tall, funnel-shaped glasses which I was admiring just
now is standing, full of ammonia, on the table. All, coughing and
sniveling, dip their handkerchiefs into it and rub the moist rag
over their hats and coats. In this way, the red stains left by the
horrible compound are made to disappear. A drop of ink will
presently restore the color completely.
And the oxygen? There was no more question, I need hardly say, of
that. The feast of learning was over. Never mind: the disastrous
lesson was a mighty event for me. I had been inside the chemist's
laboratory; I had had a glimpse of those wonderful jars and tubes.
In teaching, what matters most is not the thing taught, whether
well or badly grasped: it is the stimulus given to the pupil's
latent aptitudes; it is the fulminate awakening the slumbering
explosives. One day, I shall obtain on my own account that oxygen
which ill luck has denied me; one day, without a master, I shall
yet learn chemistry.
Yes, I shall learn this chemistry, which started so disastrously.
And how? By teaching it. I do not recommend that method to
anybody. Happy the man who is guided by a master's word and
example! He has a smooth and easy road before him, lying straight
ahead. The other follows a rugged path, in which his feet often
stumble; he goes groping into the unknown and loses his way. To
recover the right road, if want of success have not discouraged
him, he can rely only on perseverance, the sole compass of the
poor. Such was my fate. I taught myself by teaching others, by
passing on to them the modicum of seed that had ripened on the
barren moor cleared, from day to day, by my patient plowshare.
A few months after the incident of the vitriol bomb, I was sent to
Carpentras to take charge of junior classes at the college there.
The first year was a difficult one, swamped as I was by the
excessive number of pupils, a set of duffers kept out of the more
advanced classes and all at different stages in spelling and
grammar. Next year, my school is divided into two; I have an
assistant. A weeding-out takes place in my crowd of scatterbrains.
I keep the older, the more intelligent ones; the others are to have
a term in the preparatory division. From that day forward, things
are different. Curriculum there is none. In those happy times,
the master's personality counted for something; there was no such
thing as the scholastic piston working with the regularity of a
machine. It was left for me to act as I thought fit. Well, what
should I do to make the school earn its title of 'upper primary'?
Why, of course! Among other things, I shall do some chemistry! My
reading has taught me that it does no harm to know a little
chemistry, if you would make your furrows yield a good return.
Many of my pupils come from the country; they will go back to it to
improve their land. Let us show them what the soil is made of and
what the plant feeds on. Others will follow industrial careers;
they will become tanners, metal founders, distillers; they will
sell cakes of soap and kegs of anchovies. Let us show them
pickling, soap making, stills, tannin and metals. Of course, I
know nothing about these things, but I shall learn, all the more so
as I shall have to teach them to the boys; and your schoolboy is a
little demon for jeering at the master's hesitation.
As it happens, the college boasts a small laboratory, containing
just what is strictly indispensable: a receiver, a dozen glass
balloons, a few tubes and a niggardly assortment of chemicals.
That will do, if I can have the run of it. But the laboratory is a
sanctum reserved for the use of the sixth form. No one sets foot
in it except the professor and his pupils preparing for their
degree. For me, the outsider, to enter that tabernacle with my
band of young imps would be most unseemly; the rightful occupant
would never think of allowing it. I feel it myself: elementary
teaching dare not aspire to such familiarity with the higher
culture. Very well, we will not go there, so long as they will
lend me the things.
I confide my plan to the principal, the supreme dispenser of those
riches. He is a classics man, knows hardly anything of science, at
that time held in no great esteem, and he does not quite understand
the object of my request. I humbly insist and exert my powers of
persuasion. I discreetly emphasize the real point of the matter.
My group of pupils is a numerous one. It takes more meals at the
schoolhouse--the real concern of a principal--than any other
section of the college. This group must be encouraged, lured on,
increased if possible. The prospect of disposing of a few more
platefuls of soup wins the battle for me; my request is granted.
Poor science! All that diplomacy to gain your entrance among the
despised ones, who have not been nourished on Cicero and
Demosthenes!
I am authorized to move, once a week, the material required for my
ambitious plans. From the first floor, the sacred dwelling of the
scientific things, I shall take them down to a sort of cellar where
I give my lessons. The troublesome part is the pneumatic trough.
It has to be emptied before it is carried downstairs and to be
filled again afterwards. A day scholar, a zealous acolyte, hurries
over his dinner and comes to lend me a hand an hour or two before
the class begins. We effect the move between us.
What I am after is oxygen, the gas which I once saw fail so
lamentably. I thought it all out at my leisure, with the help of a
book. I will do this, I will do that, I will go to work in this or
the other fashion. Above all, we will run no risks, perhaps of
blinding ourselves; for it is once more a question of heating
manganese dioxide with sulfuric acid. I am filled with misgivings
at the recollection of my old school fellow yelling like mad. Who
cares? Let us try for all that: fortune favors the brave! Besides,
we will make one prudent condition, from which I shall never
depart: no one but myself shall come near the table. If an
accident happen, I shall be the only one to suffer; and, in my
opinion, it is worth a burn or two to make acquaintance with
oxygen.
Two o'clock strikes; and my pupils enter the classroom. I
purposely exaggerate the likelihood of danger. They are all to
stay on their benches and not stir. This is agreed. I have plenty
of elbow room. There is no one by me, except my acolyte, standing
by my side, ready to help me when the time comes. The others look
on in profound silence, reverent towards the unknown.
Soon the gaseous bubbles come "gloo-glooing" through the water in
the bell jar. Can it be my gas? My heart beats with excitement.
Can I have succeeded without any trouble at the first attempt? We
will see. A candle blown out that moment and still retaining a red
tip to its wick is lowered by a wire into a small test jar filled
with my product. Capital! The candle lights with a little
explosion and burns with extraordinary brilliancy. It is oxygen
right enough.
The moment is a solemn one. My audience is astounded and so am I,
but more at my own success than at the relighted candle. A puff of
vainglory rises to my brow; I feel the fire of enthusiasm run
through my veins. But I say nothing of these inner sensations.
Before the boys' eyes, the master must appear an old hand at the
things he teaches. What would the young rascals think of me if I
allowed them to suspect my surprise, if they knew that I myself am
beholding the marvelous subject of my demonstration for the first
time in my life? I should lose their confidence, I should sink to
the level of a mere pupil.
Sursum corda! Let us go on as if chemistry were a familiar thing to
me. It is the turn of the steel ribbon, an old watch spring rolled
corkscrew fashion and furnished with a bit of tinder. With this
simple lighted bait, the steel should take fire in a jar filled
with my gas. And it does burn; it becomes a splendid firework,
with cracklings and a blaze of sparks and a cloud of rust that
tarnishes the jar. From the end of the fiery coil a red drop
breaks off at intervals, shoots quivering through the layer of
water left at the bottom of the vessel and embeds itself in the
glass which has suddenly grown soft. This metallic tear, with its
indomitable heat, makes every one of us shudder. All stamp and
cheer and applaud. The timid ones place their hands before their
faces and dare not look except through their fingers. My audience
exults; and I myself triumph. Ha, my friends, isn't it grand, this
chemistry!
All of us have red letter days in our lives. Some, the practical
men, have been successful in business; they have made money and
hold their heads high in consequence. Others, the thinkers, have
gained ideas; they have opened a new account in the ledger of
nature and they silently taste the hallowed joys of truth. One of
my great days was that of my first acquaintance with oxygen. On
that day, when my class was over and all the materials put back in
their place, I felt myself grow several inches taller. An
untrained workman, I had shown, with complete success, that which
was unknown to me a couple of hours before. No accident whatever,
not even the least stain of acid.
It is, therefore, not so difficult nor so dangerous as the pitiful
finish of the Saint Martial lesson might have led me to believe.
With a vigilant eye and a little prudence, I shall be able to
continue. The prospect is enchanting.
And so, in due season, comes hydrogen, carefully contemplated in my
reading, seen and reseen with the eye of the mind before being seen
with the eyes of the body. I delight my little rascals by making
the hydrogen flame sing in a glass tube, which trickles with the
drops of water resulting from the combustion; I make them jump with
the explosions of the thunderous mixture. Later, I show them, with
the same invariable success, the splendors of phosphorus, the
violent powers of chlorine, the loathsome smells of sulfur, the
metamorphoses of carbon and so on. In short, in a series of
lessons, the principal nonmetallic elements and their compounds are
passed in review during the course of the year.
The thing was bruited abroad. Fresh pupils came to me, attracted
by the marvels of the school. Additional places were laid in the
dining hall; and the principal, who was more interested in the
profits on his beans and bacon than in chemistry, congratulated me
on this accession of boarders. I was fairly started. Time and an
indomitable will would do the rest.
CHAPTER XX INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY
Everything happens sooner or later. When, through the low windows
overlooking the garden of the school, my eye glanced at the
laboratory, where the madder vats were steaming; when, in the
sanctuary itself, I was present, by way of a first and last
chemistry lesson, at the explosion of the retort of sulfuric acid
that nearly disfigured every one of us, I was far indeed from
suspecting the part which I was destined to play under that same
vaulted roof. Had a prophet foretold that I should one day succeed
the master, never would I have believed him. Time works these
surprises for us.
Stones would have theirs too, if anything were able to astonish
them. The Saint Martial building was originally a church; it is a
protestant place of worship now. Men used to pray there in Latin;
today they pray in French. In the intervening period, it was for
some years in the service of science, the noble orison that
dispels the darkness. What has the future in store for it? Like
many another in the ringing city, to use Rabelais' epithet, will
it become a home for the fuller's teasels, a warehouse for scrap
iron, a carrier's stable? Who knows? Stones have their destinies
no less unexpected than ours.
When I took possession of it as a laboratory for the municipal
course of lectures, the nave remained as it was at the time of my
former short and disastrous visit. To the right, on the wall, a
number of black stains struck the eye. It was as though a madman's
hand, armed with the inkpot, had smashed its fragile projectile at
that spot. I recognized the stains at once. They were the marks
of the corrosive which the retort had splashed at our heads. Since
those days of long ago, no one had thought fit to hide them under a
coat of whitewash. So much the better: they will serve me as
excellent counselors. Always before my eyes, at every lesson, they
will speak to me incessantly of prudence.
For all its attractions, however, chemistry did not make me forget
a long cherished plan well suited to my tastes, that of teaching
natural history at a university. Now, one day, at the grammar
school, I had a visit from a chief inspector which was not of an
encouraging nature. My colleagues used to call him the Crocodile.
Perhaps he had given them a rough time in the course of his
inspections. For all his boorish ways, he was an excellent man at
heart. I owe him for a piece of advice which greatly influenced my
future studies.
That day, he suddenly appeared, alone, in the schoolroom, where I
was taking a class in geometrical drawing. I must explain that, at
this time, to eke out my ridiculous salary and, at all costs, to
provide a living for myself and my large family, I was a mighty
pluralist, both inside the college and out. At the college in
particular, after two hours of physics, chemistry or natural
history, came, without respite, another two hours' lesson, in which
I taught the boys how to make a projection in descriptive geometry,
how to draw a geodetic plane, a curve of any kind whose law of
generation is known to us. This was called graphics.
The sudden irruption of the dread personage causes me no great
flurry. Twelve o'clock strikes, the pupils go out and we are left
alone. I know him to be a geometrician. The transcendental curve,
perfectly drawn, may work upon his gentler mood. I happen to have
in my portfolio the very thing to please him. Fortune serves me
well in this special circumstance. Among my boys, there is one
who, though a regular dunce at everything else, is a first rate
hand with the square, the compass and the drawing pen: a deft-
fingered numskull, in short.
With the aid of a system of tangents of which I first showed him
the rule and the method of construction, my artist has obtained the
ordinary cycloid, followed by the interior and the exterior
epicycloid and, lastly, the same curves both lengthened and
shortened. His drawings are admirable Spider's webs, encircling
the cunning curve in their net. The draftsmanship is so accurate
that it is easy to deduce from it beautiful theorems, which would
be very laborious to work out by the calculus.
I submit the geometrical masterpieces to my chief inspector, who is
himself said to be smitten with geometry. I modestly describe the
method of construction, I call his attention to the fine deductions
which the drawing enables one to make. It is labor lost: he gives
but a heedless glance at my sheets and flings each on the table as
I hand it to him.
'Alas!' said I to myself. 'There is a storm brewing; the cycloid
won't save you; it's your turn for a bite from the Crocodile!'
Not a bit of it. Behold the bugbear growing genial. He sits down
on a bench, with one leg here, another there, invites me to take a
seat by his side and, in a moment, we are discussing graphics.
Then, bluntly: 'Have you any money? ' he asks.
Astounded at this strange question, I answer with a smile.
'Don't be afraid,' he says. 'Confide in me. I'm asking you in
your own interest. Have you any capital? '
'I have no reason to be ashamed of my poverty, monsieur
l'inspecteur general. I frankly admit, I possess nothing; my means
are limited to my modest salary.'
A frown greets my answer; and I hear, spoken in an undertone, as
though my confessor were talking to himself: 'That's sad, that's
really very sad.'
Astonished to find my penury treated as sad, I ask for an
explanation: I was not accustomed to this solicitude on the part of
my superiors.
'Why, yes, it's a great pity,' continues the man reputed so
terrible. 'I have read your articles in the Annales des sciences
naturelles. You have an observant mind, a taste for research, a
lively style and a ready pen. You would have made a capital
university professor.'
'But that's just what I'm aiming at!'
'Give up the idea.'
'Haven't I the necessary attainment? '
'Yes, you have; but you have no capital.' The great obstacle stands
revealed to me: woe to the poor in pocket! University teaching
demands a private income. Be as ordinary, as commonplace as you
please, but, above all, possess the coin that lets you cut a dash.
That is the main thing; the rest is a secondary condition.
And the worthy man tells me what poverty in a frock coat means.
Though less of a pauper than I, he has known the mortification of
it; he describes it to me, excitedly, in all its bitterness. I
listen to him with an aching heart; I see the refuge which was to
shelter my future crumbling before my eyes: 'You have done me a
great service, sir,' I answered. 'You put an end to my hesitation.
For the moment, I give up my plan. I will first see if it is
possible to earn the small fortune which I shall need if I am to
teach in a decent manner.'
Thereupon we exchanged a friendly grip of the hand and parted. I
never saw him again. His fatherly arguments had soon convinced me:
I was prepared to hear the blunt truth. A few months earlier, I
had received my nomination as an assistant lecturer in zoology at
the university of Poitiers. They offered me a ridiculous salary.
After paying the costs of moving, I should have had hardly three
francs a day left; and, on this income, I had to keep my family,
numbering seven in all. I hastened to decline the very great
honor.
No, science ought not to practice these jests. If we humble
persons are of use to her, she should at least enable us to live.
If she can't do that, then let her leave us to break stones on the
highway. Oh, yes, I was prepared for the truth when that honest
fellow talked to me of frock coated poverty! I am telling the story
of a not very distant past. Since then, things have improved
considerably; but, when the pear was properly ripened, I was no
longer of an age to pick it.
And what was I to do now, to overcome the difficulty mentioned by
my inspector and confirmed by my personal experience? I would take
up industrial chemistry. The municipal lectures at Saint Martial
placed a spacious and fairly well-equipped laboratory at my
disposal. Why not make the most of it?
The chief manufacture of Avignon was madder. The farmer supplied
the raw material to the factories, where it was turned into purer
and more concentrated products. My predecessor had gone in for it
and done well by it, so people said. I would follow in his
footsteps and use the vats and furnaces, the expensive plant which
I had inherited. So to work.
What should I set myself to produce? I proposed to extract the
coloring substance, alizarin, to separate it from the other matters
found with it in the root, to obtain it in the pure state and in a
form that allowed of the direct printing of the stuffs, a much
quicker and more artistic method than the old dyeing process.
Nothing could be simpler than this problem, once the solution was
known; but how tremendously obscure while it had still to be
solved! I dare not call to mind all the imagination and patience
spent upon endless endeavors which nothing, not even the madness of
them, discouraged. What mighty meditations in the somber church!
What glowing dreams, soon to be followed by sore disappointment,
when experiment spoke the last word and upset the scaffolding of my
plans. Stubborn as the slave of old amassing a peculium for his
enfranchisement, I used to reply to the check of yesterday by the
fresh attempt of tomorrow, often as faulty as the others, sometimes
the richer by an improvement, and I went on indefatigably, for I
too cherished the indomitable ambition to set myself free.
Should I succeed? Perhaps so. I at last had a satisfactory
answer. I obtained, in a cheap and practical fashion, the pure
coloring matter, concentrated in a small volume and excellent for
both printing and dyeing. One of my friends took up my process on
a large scale in his works; a few calico factories adopted the
produce and expressed themselves delighted with it. The future
smiled at last; a pink rift opened in my gray sky. I should
possess the modest fortune without which I must deny myself the
pleasure of teaching in a university. Freed of the torturing
anxiety about my daily bread, I should be able to live at ease
among my insects.
In the midst of the joys of seeing these problems solved by
chemistry, yet another ray of sunshine was reserved for me, adding
its gladness to that of my success. Let us go back a couple of
years. The chief inspectors visited our grammar school. These
personages travel in pairs: one attends to literature, the other to
science. When the inspection was over and the books checked, the
staff was summoned to the principal's drawing room, to receive the
parting admonitions of the two luminaries. The man of science
began. I should be sadly put to it to remember what he said. It
was cold professional prose, made up of soulless words which the
hearer forgot once the speaker's back was turned, words merely
boring to both. I had heard enough of these chilly sermons in my
time; one more of them could not hope to make an impression on me.
The inspector in literature spoke next. At the first words which
he uttered, I said to myself: 'Oho! This is a very different
business!'
The speech was alive and vigorous and full of images; indifferent
to scholastic commonplaces, the ideas soared, hovering gently in
the serene heights of a kindly philosophy. This time, I listened
with pleasure; I even felt stirred. Here was no official homily:
it was full of impassioned zeal, of words that carried you with
them, uttered by an honest man accomplished in the art of speaking,
an orator in the true sense of the word. In all my school
experience, I had never had such a treat.
When the meeting broke up, my heart beat faster than usual: 'What a
pity,' I thought, 'that my side, the science side, cannot bring me
into contact, some day, with that inspector! It seems to me that we
should become great friends.'
I inquired his name of my colleagues, who were always better
informed than I. They told me it was Victor Duruy.
Well, one day, two years later, as I was looking after my Saint
Martial laboratory in the midst of the steam from my vats, with my
hands the color of boiled lobster claws from constant dipping in
the indelible red of my dyes, there walked in, unexpectedly, a
person whose features straightway seemed familiar. I was right, it
was the very man, the chief inspector whose speech had once stirred
me. M. Duruy was now minister of public instruction. He was
styled, 'Your excellency;' and this style, usually an empty
formula, was well deserved in the present case, for our new
minister excelled in his exalted functions. We all held him in
high esteem. He was the workers' minister, the man for the humble
toiler.
'I want to spend my last half-hour at Avignon with you,' said my
visitor, with a smile. 'That will be a relief from the official
bowing and scraping.'
Overcome by the honor paid me, I apologized for my costume--I was
in my shirt sleeves--and especially for my lobster claws, which I
had tried, for a moment, to hide behind my back.
'You have nothing to apologize for. I came to see the worker. The
working man never looks better than in his overall, with the marks
of his trade on him. Let us have a talk. What are you doing just
now? '
I explained, in a few words, the object of my researches; I showed
my product; I executed under the minister's eyes a little attempt
at printing in madder red. The success of the experiment and the
simplicity of my apparatus, in which an evaporating dish,
maintained at boiling point under a glass funnel, took the place of
a steam chamber, caused him some surprise.
'I will help you,' he said. 'What do you want for your laboratory?
'
'Why, nothing, monsieur le ministre, nothing! With a little
application, the plant I have is ample.'
'What, nothing! You are unique there! The others overwhelm me with
requests; their laboratories are never well enough supplied. And
you, poor as you are, refuse my offers!'
'No, there is one thing which I will accept.'
'What is that? '
'The signal honor of shaking you by the hand.'
'There you are, my friend, with all my heart. But that's not
enough. What else do you want? '
'The Paris Jardin des Plantes is under your control. Should a
crocodile die, let them keep the hide for me. I will stuff it with
straw and hang it from the ceiling. Thus adorned, my workshop will
rival the wizard's cave.'
The minister cast his eyes round the nave and glanced up at the
Gothic vault: 'Yes, it would look very well.' And he gave a laugh
at my sally. 'I now know you as a chemist,' he continued. 'I knew
you already as a naturalist and a writer. I have heard about your
little animals. I am sorry that I shall have to leave without
seeing them. They must wait for another occasion. My train will
be starting presently. Walk with me to the station, will you? We
shall be alone and we can chat a bit more on the way.'
We strolled along, discussing entomology and madder. My shyness
had disappeared. The self sufficiency of a fool would have left me
dumb; the fine frankness of a lofty mind put me at my ease. I told
him of my experiments in natural history, of my plans for a
professorship, of my fight with harsh fate, my hopes and fears. He
encouraged me, spoke to me of a better future. We reached the
station and walked up and down outside, talking away delightfully.
A poor old woman passed, all in rags, her back bent by age and
years of work in the fields. She furtively put out her hand for
alms. Duruy felt in his waistcoat, found a two franc piece and
placed it in the outstretched hand; I wanted to add a couple of
sous as my contribution, but my pockets were empty, as usual. I
went to the beggar woman and whispered in her ear: 'Do you know who
gave you that? It's the emperor's minister.
The poor woman started; and her astounded eyes wandered from the
open-handed swell to the piece of silver and from the piece of
silver to the open-handed swell. What a surprise! What a windfall!
'Que lou bon Dieu ie done longo vido e santa, pecaire!' she said,
in her cracked voice.
And, curtseying and nodding, she withdrew, still staring at the
coin in the palm of her hand.
'What did she say? ' asked Duruy.
'She wished you long life and health.'
'And pecaire? '
'Pecaire is a poem in itself: it sums up all the gentler passions.'
And I myself mentally repeated the artless vow. The man who stops
so kindly when a beggar puts out her hand has something better in
his soul than the mere qualities that go to make a minister.
We entered the station, still alone, as promised, and I quite
without misgivings. Had I but foreseen what was going to happen,
how I should have hastened to take my leave! Little by little, a
group formed in front of us. It was too late to fly; I had to
screw up my courage. Came the general of division and his
officers, came the prefect and his secretary, the mayor and his
deputy, the school inspector and the pick of the staff. The
minister faced the ceremonial semicircle. I stood next to him. A
crowd on one side, we two on the other. Followed the regulation
spinal contortions, the empty obeisances which my dear Duruy had
come to my laboratory to forget. When bowing to St. Roch, in his
corner niche, the worshipper at the same time salutes the saint's
humble companion. I was something like St. Roch's dog in the
presence of those honors which did not concern me. I stood and
looked on, with my awful red hands concealed behind my back, under
the broad brim of my felt hat.
After the official compliments had been exchanged, the conversation
began to languish; and the minister seized my right hand and gently
drew it from the mysterious recesses of my wide awake.
'Why don't you show those gentlemen your hands? ' he said. 'Most
people would be proud of them.'
'Workman's hands,' said the prefect's secretary. 'Regular
workman's hands.'
The general, almost scandalized at seeing me in such distinguished
company, added: 'Hands of a dyer and cleaner.'
'Yes, workman's hands,' retorted the minister, 'and I wish you many
like them. Believe me, they will do much to help the chief
industry of your city. Skilled as they are in chemical work, they
are equally capable of wielding the pen, the pencil, the scalpel
and the lens. As you here seem unaware of it, I am delighted to
inform you.'
This time, I should have liked the ground to open and swallow me
up. Fortunately, the bell rang for the train to start. I said
goodbye to the minister and, hurriedly taking to flight, left him
laughing at the trick which he had played me.
The incident was noised about, could not help being so, for the
peristyle of a railway station keeps no secrets. I then learned to
what annoyances the shadow of the great exposes us. I was looked
upon as an influential person, having the favor of the gods at my
disposal. Place hunters and canvassers tormented me. One wanted a
license to sell tobacco and stamps, another a scholarship for his
son, another an increase of his pension. I had only to ask and I
should obtain, said they.
O simple people, what an illusion was yours! You could not have hit
upon a worse intermediary. I figuring as a postulant! I have many
faults, I admit, but that is certainly not one of them. I got rid
of the importunate people as best I could, though they were utterly
unable to fathom my reserve. What would they have said had they
known of the minister's offers with regard to my laboratory and my
jesting reply, in which I asked for a crocodile skin to hang from
my ceiling! They would have taken me for an idiot.
Six months elapsed; and I received a letter summoning me to call
upon the minister at his office. I suspected a proposal to promote
me to a more important grammar school and wrote begging that I
might be left where I was, among my vats and my insects. A second
letter arrived, more pressing than the first and signed by the
minister's own hand. This letter said: 'Come at once, or I shall
send my gendarmes to fetch you.'
There was no way out of it. Twenty-four hours later, I was in M.
Duruy's room. He welcomed me with exquisite cordiality, gave me
his hand and, taking up a number of the Moniteur: 'Read that,' he
said. 'You refused my chemical apparatus; but you won't refuse
this.
I looked at the line to which his finger pointed. I read my name
in the list of the Legion of Honor. Quite stupid with surprise, I
stammered the first words of thanks that entered my head.
'Come here,' said he, 'and let me give you the accolade. I will be
your sponsor. You will like the ceremony all the better if it is
held in private, between you and me: I know you!'
He pinned the red ribbon to my coat, kissed me on both cheeks, made
me telegraph the great event to my family. What a morning, spent
with that good man!
I well know the vanity of decorative ribbonry and tinware,
especially when, as too often happens, intrigue degrades the honor
conferred; but, coming as it did, that bit of ribbon is precious to
me. It is a relic, not an object for show. I keep it religiously
in a drawer.
There was a parcel of big books on the tab1e a collection of the
reports on the progress of science drawn up for the International
Exhibition of 1867, which had just closed.
'Those books are for you,' continued the minister. 'Take them with
you. You can look through them at your leisure: they may interest
you. There is something about your insects in them. You're to
have this too: it will pay for your journey. The trip which I made
you take must not be at your own expense. If there is anything
over, spend it on your laboratory.'
And he handed me a roll of twelve hundred francs. In vain I
refused, remarking that my journey was not so burdensome as all
that; besides, his embrace and his bit of ribbon were of
inestimable value compared with my disbursements. He insisted:
'Take it,' he said, 'or I shall be very angry. There's something
else: you must come to the emperor's with me tomorrow, to the
reception of the learned societies.'
Seeing me greatly perplexed and as though demoralized by the
prospect of an imperial interview: 'Don't try to escape me,' he
said, 'or look out for the gendarmes of my letter! You saw the
fellows in the bearskin caps on your way up. Mind you don't fall
into their hands. In any case, lest you should be tempted to run
away, we will go to the Tuileries together, in my carriage.'
Things happened as he wished. The next day, in the minister's
company, I was ushered into a little drawing room at the Tuileries
by chamberlains in knee breeches and silver-buckled shoes. They
were queer people to look at. Their uniforms and their stiff gait
gave them the appearance, in my eyes, of beetles who, by way of
wing cases, wore a great, gold-laced dress coat, with a key in the
small of the back. There were already a score of persons from all
parts waiting in the room. These included geographical explorers,
botanists, geologists, antiquaries, archeologists, collectors of
prehistoric flints, in short, the usual representatives of
provincial scientific life.
The emperor entered, very simply dressed, with no parade about him
beyond a wide, red, watered silk ribbon across his chest. No sign
of majesty, an ordinary man, round and plump, with a large
moustache and a pair of half-closed, drowsy eyelids. He moved from
one to the other, talking to each of us for a moment as the
minister mentioned our names and the nature of our occupations. He
showed a fair amount of information as he changed his subject from
the ice floes of Spitzbergen to the dunes of Gascony, from a
Carlovingian charter to the flora of the Sahara, from the progress
in beetroot growing to Caesar's trenches before Alesia. When my
turn came, he questioned me upon the hypermetamorphosis of the
Meloidae [a beetle family including the oil beetle and the Spanish
fly], my last essay in entomology. I answered as best I could,
floundering a little in the proper mode of address, mixing up the
everyday monsieur with sire, a word whose use was so entirely new
to me. I passed through the dread straits and others succeeded me.
My five minutes' conversation with an imperial majesty was, they
tell me, a most distinguished honor. I am quite ready to believe
them, but I never had a desire to repeat it.
The reception came to an end, bows were exchanged and we were
dismissed. A luncheon awaited us at the minister's house. I sat
on his right, not a little embarrassed by the privilege; on his
left was a physiologist of great renown. Like the others, I spoke
of all manner of things, including even Avignon Bridge. Duruy's
son, sitting opposite me, chaffed me pleasantly about the famous
bridge on which everybody dances; he smiled at my impatience to get
back to the thyme-scented hills and the gray olive yards rich in
Grasshoppers.
'What!' said his father. 'Won't you visit our museums, our
collections? There are some very interesting things there.'
'I know, monsieur le ministre, but I shall find better things,
things more to my taste, in the incomparable museum of the fields.'
'Then what do you propose to do? '
'I propose to go back tomorrow.
I did go back, I had had enough of Paris: never had I felt such
tortures of loneliness as in that immense whirl of humanity. To
get away, to get away was my one idea.
Once home among my family, I felt a mighty load off my mind and a
great joy in my heart, where rang a peal of bells proclaiming the
delights of my approaching emancipation. Little by little, the
factory that was to set me free rose skywards, full of promises.
Yes, I should possess the modest income which would crown my
ambition by allowing me to descant on animals and plants in a
university chair.
'Well, no,' said Fate, 'you shall not acquire the freedman's
peculium; you shall remain a slave, dragging your chain behind you;
your peal of bells rings false!'
Hardly was the factory in full swing when a piece of news was
bruited, at first a vague rumor, an echo of probabilities rather
than certainties, and then a positive statement leaving no room for
doubt. Chemistry had obtained the madder dye by artificial means;
thanks to a laboratory concoction, it was utterly overthrowing the
agriculture and industries of my district. This result, while
destroying my work and my hopes, did not surprise me unduly. I
myself had toyed with the problem of artificial alizarin and I knew
enough about it to foresee that, in no very distant future, the
work of the chemist's retort would take the place of the work of
the fields.
It was finished; my hopes were dashed to the ground. What to do
next? Let us change our lever and begin to roll Sisyphus' stone
once more. Let us try to draw from the ink pot what the madder vat
declines to yield. Laboremus!
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