THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER 17 



a cry of anguish, strident and short. It is the desperate 

 wail of the Cicada, surprised in his quietude by the 

 Green Grasshopper, that ardent nocturnal huntress, who 

 springs upon him, grips him in the side, opens and ran- 

 sacks his abdomen. An orgy of music, followed by 

 butchery. 



I have never seen and never shall see that supreme 

 expression of our national revelry, the military review 

 at Longchamp ; nor do I much regret it. The newspapers 

 tell me as much about it as I want to know. They give 

 me a sketch of the site. I see, installed here and there 

 amid the trees, the ominous Red Cross, with the legend, 

 " Military Ambulance ; Civil Ambulance." There will 

 be bones broken, apparently; cases of sunstroke; re- 

 grettable deaths, perhaps. It is all provided for and all 

 in the program. 



Even here, in my village, usually so peaceable, the 

 festival will not end, I am ready to wager, without the 

 exchange of a few blows, that compulsory seasoning of 

 a day of merry-making. No pleasure, it appears, can be 

 fully relished without an added condiment of pain. 



Let us listen and meditate far from the tumult. While 

 the disemboweled Cicada utters his protest, the festival 

 up there in the plane-trees is continued without a change 

 of orchestra. It is now the time of the nocturnal per- 

 formers. Hard by the place of slaughter, in the green 

 bushes, a delicate ear perceives the hum of the Grass- 

 hoppers. It is the sort of noise that a spinning-wheel 

 makes, a very unobtrusive sound, a vague rustle of dry 

 membranes rubbed together. Above this dull bass there 



