The Life of the Weevil 
soil, hunting for garlic, the exclusive food 
of her larva. In my modest kitchen-garden, 
garlic, dear to the Provence folk, has its 
-special corner. At the time when we gather 
it, in July, most of the heads give me a mag- 
nificent grub, fat as butter, which has dug 
itself a large hollow in one of the cloves, only 
one, without touching the rest. This is the 
grub of the Brachycerus, which discovered 
the aioli of the Provencal cooks long before 
they did. 
Raw garlic, Raspail? used to say, is the 
camphor of the poor. The camphor pos- 
sibly, but not the bread. This paradox 
becomes a reality in the case of our grub, 
which is so much in love with this powerful 
condiment that it will not eat anything else 
its whole life long. How, with this fiery 
diet, does it put on such fine layers of fat? 
That is its secret; and there is room for 
every sort of taste in this world of ours. 
After eating its clove, this lover of garlic 
dives deeper into the soil, fearing perhaps 
the lifting of the bulbs, the time for which 
1Frangois Vincent Raspail (1794-1878), a French 
physician and politician, one of the early advocates of 
universal suffrage—Translator’s Note. 
170 
