The Life of the Grasshopper 



would make the high-flying insect die of 

 boredom. 



Is it not possible that people have con- 

 fused the Cricket with the Cicada, as they 

 also do the Green Grasshopper? With the 

 Cricket they would be quite right. He is 

 one who bears captivity gaily: his stay-at- 

 home ways predispose him to it. He lives 

 happily and whirrs without ceasing in a cage 

 no larger than a man's fist, provided that 

 we serve him with his lettuce -leaf every day. 

 Was it not he whom the small boys of Athens 

 reared in little wire cages hanging on a 

 window-frame ? 



Their successors in Provence and all over 

 the south have the same tastes. In the towns, 

 a Cricket becomes the child's treasured pos- 

 session. The insect, petted and pampered, 

 telts him in its ditty of the simple joys 

 of the country. Its death throws the whole 

 household into a sort of mourning. 



Well, these recluses, these compulsory 

 celibates, live to be patriarchs. They keep 

 fit and well long after their cronies in the 

 fields have succumbed; and they go on sing- 

 ing till September. Those additional three 

 months, a long space of time, double their 

 existence in the adult form. 



344 



