50 
FOREST LABOURS 
The ants teach us a similar lesson of patience. 
The breeders of birds and game incessantly damage ; 
overthrow, and carry away the immense works which 
have occupied them for a whole season. Incessantly 
they begin them anew with heroic ardour. 
We constantly paid them a visit, and learned to 
sympathize with them more and more. Their patient 
procedures, their active and concentrated life, is, in 
truth, more like that of the artisan than the winged 
existence of the bird which formerly occupied our 
attention. That free inheritor of the day, that favourite 
of Nature, soars so high above man! To what may I 
compare my long laborious career ? I have, indeed, 
caught glimpses of the sky, and sometimes heard the 
songs of the birds above; but, on the whole, my exist¬ 
ence, the indefatigable labour which chains me to my 
task, much more nearly resembles the modest com¬ 
munities of the ant and the bee. 
At first sight, the labours of their comrades, the 
quarrymen, are not very agreeable to contemplate. 
So many spoiled and badly quarried stones, so many 
fragments, so much dust and sand, have in them 
nothing attractive. It is but a field of ruin which is 
displayed before you. But what does Nature think 
of it ? To judge by the eagerness with which the 
plants take possession of the sand, mingle with it, and 
convert it into a soil for their use, Nature is happy 
enough to see all this substance, which, while for thou¬ 
sands of years retained in the sandstone, did not enter into circulation, 
returning into the mobility of the Universal Life. That fortunate battle 
