The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



click up above. He is the smallest of my batrachian 

 folk and the most venturesome in his expeditions. 



How often, at nightfall, by the last glimmers 

 of daylight, have I not come upon him as I wan- 

 dered through my garden, hunting for ideas! 

 Something runs away, rolling over and over in 

 front of me. Is it a dead leaf blown along by 

 the wind? No, it is the pretty little Toad dis- 

 turbed in the midst of his pilgrimage. He hur- 

 riedly takes shelter under a stone, a clod of earth, 

 a tuft of grass, recovers from his excitement and 

 loses no time in picking up his liquid note. 



On this evening of national merry-making there 

 are nearly a dozen of him tinkling one against 

 the other around me. Most of them are squatting 

 among the rows of flower-pots that form a sort of 

 lobby outside my house. Each has his own note, 

 always the same, lower in one case, higher in 

 another, a short, clear note, melodious and of ex- 

 quisite purity. 



With their slow, rhythmical cadence, they seem 

 to be intoning litanies. Cluck, says one; click, 

 responds another, on a finer note; clock, adds a 

 third, the tenor of the band. And this is re- 

 peated indefinitely, like the bells of the village 

 pealing on a holiday: cluck, click, clock! cluck, 

 click, clock! 



As a song this litany has neither head nor tail 

 to it; as a collection of pure sounds, it is delicious. 1 



1 Souvenirs, vi., pp. 196-203, 246-247. The Life of the 

 Grasshopper, chap, xiv., " The Green Grasshopper." 

 242 



