AS THE LABOURER OF MAN. 217 
And how much more right have you to say so! You are alone 
against the universal conspiracy of life. You also may exclaim, “They 
are too many !” 
You insist. See here these fields so full of inspiring hope; see 
the humid pastures where I might please myself with watching the 
cattle lost among the thick herbage. Let us lead thither the herds! 
They are expected. Without them what would become of those 
living clouds of insects which love nothing but blood? The blood of 
the ox is good; the blood of man is better. Enter; seat yourself in 
their midst; you will be well received, for you are their banquet. 
These darts, these horns, these pincers, will find an exquisite delicacy 
in your flesh; a sanguinary orgie will open on your body for the 
frantic dance of this famished host, which will not relax at least from 
want ; you shall-see more than one fall away, and die of the 
intoxicating fountain which he had opened with his dart. Wounded, 
bleeding, swollen with puffed-up sores, hope for no repose. Others 
will come, and again others, for ever, and without end. For if the 
climate is less severe than in the zones of the South, in revenge, the 
eternal rain—that ocean of soft warm water incessantly flooding our 
meadows—hatches in a hopeless fecundity those nascent and greedy 
lives, which are impatient to rise, to be born, and to finish their career 
by the destruction of superior existences. 
I have seen, not in the marshes, but on the western heights, those 
pleasant verdurous hills, clothed with woods or meadows—I have 
seen the pluvial waters repose for lack of outlet; and then, when 
evaporated by the sun’s rays, leave the earth covered with a rich and 
abundant animal production-—slugs, snails, insects of a myriad species, 
all people of terrible appetite, born with sharp teeth, with formidable 
apparatus, and ingenious machines of destruction. Powerless against 
the irruption of an unexpected host which crawled, stirred, ascended, 
penetrated, had almost eaten up ourselves, we contended with them 
through the agency of some brave and voracious fowls, which never 
counted their enemies, and did not criticise, but swallowed them. 
These Breton and Vendean fowls, inspired with the genius of their 
14 a 
