THE LIFE OF THE FIRE-FLIES. 181 
thought she heard a harp, a melody of love. The melody grew in- 
flamed ; it was no longer a song, but an intoxication. All the room 
seemed filled with fire. She woke, and found her dream was true. 
The basket was the lyre, the basket was the volcano. She quickly saw 
that the volcano did not burn. The captives were fire-flies (fulgores) ; 
their song was an epithalamium, and their flame the flame of love. 
In the tropical countries the stranger generally travels by night to 
avoid the heat. But he would not dare to enter the populous shadows 
of the forest-depths, were he not reassured by the luminous insects 
which he sees dancing and fluttering in the distance, and anon planted 
on the neighbouring bushes. He takes them for his companions, and 
fixes them in his shoes, partly to show him the path, and partly to keep 
off serpents. And when the morning breaks, he gratefully and care- 
fully replaces them among the thickets, and restores them to their 
amorous work. There is a pretty Indian proverb: “Carry away the 
fire-fly, but return it to the place from which thou carriedst it.” 
Who can fail to be affected by their flame? It follows the move- 
ment of life, it flares and wanes in cadence with the ebb and flow of 
our respiration ; it beats in exact accord with the rhythm of our heart. 
It expands or contracts in harmony with it, and the trouble of its 
emotion agitates also that tremendous torch. 
What lies at the bottom? the visible desire, the effort to please and 
to be loved, translated in a hundred different manners by the eloquence 
of light. One, of an unrivalled blue, with a head of rubies, outvies with 
its scintillation the red-hot coal. Another, of a more melancholy cast, 
plunges into a sombre red. A third, of flame-coloured yellow, fading 
and passing into green, seems to express the languors, swoons, and 
storms of the violent loves of the South. 
The ardent daughter of Spain, rendered more impassioned by the 
American sky, puts her hand on the creature of the flame, and seizes 
upon it as her own. She makes it a talisman, a jewel, and a victim. 
Burning, she places it on her burning bosom, where it must soon perish. 
There is no purpose to which she does not turn it. By a triumph 
of audacious coquetry, linking the insects with silk, or imprisoning 
