The Life of the Grasshopper 



Nevertheless the fable comes to us from 

 Greece, which is preeminently the land of 

 olive-trees and Cicadae. Was ^Esop really 

 the author, as tradition pretends? It is 

 doubtful. Nor does it matter, after all : the 

 narrator is a Greek and a fellow-countryman 

 of the Cicada, whom he must know well 

 enough. My village does not contain a 

 peasant so ignorant as to be unaware of the 

 absolute lack of Cicadae in winter; every 

 tiller of the soil is familiar with the insect's 

 primary state, the larva, which he turns over 

 with his spade as often as he has occasion to 

 bank up the olive-trees at the approach of 

 the cold weather; he knows, from seeing it 

 a thousand times along the paths, how this 

 grub leaves the ground through a round pit 

 of its own making, how it fastens on to some 

 twig, splits its back, divests itself of its skin, 

 now drier than shrivelled parchment, and 

 turns into the Cicada, pale grass-green at 

 first, soon to be succeeded by brown. 



The Attic peasant was no fool either : he 

 had remarked that which cannot escape the 

 least observant eye; he also knew what my 

 rustic neighbours know so well. The poet, 

 whoever he may have been, who invented 

 the fable was writing under the best con- 

 6 



