THE STUDY OF NATURE. 55 
The storm-beaten mountain relates to you the epopea of earth, its rude 
dramatic history, and shows its bones in evidence of its truth. But 
these young children of chance, who spring up on its arid flank, prove 
that she is still fertile, that her débris contain the elements of a new 
organization, that all death is a life begun. 
So these ruins have never caused us any sadness, We have con- 
versed among them freely of destiny, providence, death, the life to 
come. I, whom age and toil have given a right to die—she, whose 
brow is already bent by the trials of infancy and a wisdom beyond 
her years, we have not lived the less for a grand inspiration of soul, 
for the rejuvenescent breath of that much-loved mother, Nature.* 
Sprung from her at so great a distance from one another, so united 
in her to-day, we would fain have rendered eternal this rare moment 
of existence, “have cast anchor on the island of time.” And how 
could we better realize our idea than by this work of tenderness, of 
universal brotherhood, of adoption of all life ! 
My wife incessantly recalled me to it, enlarging my sentiments of 
individual tenderness by her facile, bright, emotional interpretation 
of the spirit of the country and the voices of solitude. 
It was then, among other things, that I learned to understand 
birds which, like the swallows, sing little, but talk much—prattling 
of the fine weather, of the chase, of scanty or abundant food, of 
their approaching departure; in fact, of all their affairs. I had 
listened to them at Nantes in October, at Turin in June. Their 
September causeries were more intelligible at La Héve. We trans- 
lated them easily in all their fond vivacity, all their joyousness of 
youth and good-humour, free from ostentation or satire, in accord 
with the happy moderation of a bird so free and so wise, which 
appears not ungratefully to recognize that he has received from God 
a lot of such signal felicity. 
Alas! even the swallow is not spared in that senseless warfare 
* That the reader may feel the full furce of this passage, I subjoin the original: “‘ Nous 
n’en vivions pas moins d'un grand souffle d’ame, de la rajeunissante haleine de cette mére 
aimée, la Nature.” q 
5 
