The Life of the Weevil 
“On the very spot where you stand med- 
itating upon a splinter of stone, an arm of 
the sea once stretched, filled with war-like 
devourers and peaceful victims. A deep in- 
let occupied the future site of the Rhone 
valley. Its billows broke not far from your 
house.” 
Here in fact are the cliffs of the shore, 
in such a state of preservation that, when I 
concentrate my thoughts, I seem to hear the 
thunder of curving billows. Sea-urchins, 
Lithodomi,! Petricole,2 Pholades* have left 
their signatures upon the rock: hemispherical 
recesses large enough to contain one’s fist; 
circular cells; cabins with a narrow opening 
through which the recluse received the in- 
coming water, laden with food and constantly 
renewed. Sometimes the erstwhile occupant 
is there, mineralized, intact to the smallest 
details of his striz, of his scales, a brittle 
ornamentation; more often he has dis- 
appeared, fallen into decay, and his house 
has filled with a fine sea-mud, hardened into 
a chalky kernel. 
In this quiet inlet, collected by some eddy 
1A form of Mussel—Translator’s Note. 
2Another genus of bivalve mollucs—Trazslator’s Note. 
3Piddocks.—Translator’s Note. 
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