THE ATTACK ANI) THE DEFENCE. 
275 
less, and incapable of resistance,—like lambs beneath the butcher’s 
knife. 
We longed to separate them. But how was it to be done ? We 
were in the presence of infinity. A man’s strength was nothing when 
tested against such multitudes. We might have proceeded to the 
extremity of a universal deluge,—a moment’s noyacle * —but even this 
would have proved insufficient. They would not have let go their 
death-grasp; and when the torrent had flowed by, the massacre would 
have continued. The sole remedy, and an atrocious one—worse even 
than the evil—would have been to have burned alive, with a wisp of 
flaming straw, the two contending hosts, the conquerors and the 
conquered. 
We were particularly struck by the fact that, after all, it was only 
a very few of the big ants that were garotted and captured; and that 
if those which remained free had fallen upon the assailants, they might 
easily have wrought a frightful carnage, their action being so rapid, 
and one blow inflicting death. But no such idea occurred to them. 
They ran hither and thither in a panic of fear, and rushed into the very 
throes of danger, into the thickest press of the hostile masses. Alas, 
they were not only vanquished, but seemed to have lost their senses ! 
While the little ants, feeling themselves at home, on their native soil, 
showed so firm a front, the gigantic foreigners,—without any stake in 
the ground,—a desperate fragment of an annihilated city,—wholly 
ignorant of the country whither they had been transplanted,—recog¬ 
nized that everything was antagonistic to them, that a snare was hidden 
at every step, that no refuge was open to their scattered forces. Ah, 
woful condition of a people whose fatherland has perished, and who 
have lost their gods I 
Yes, I excuse them. We ourselves were almost terrified at the sight 
of those legions of death,—that formidable army of little black skeletons 
which had all escaladed the earthen vase, and in that confined region, 
* The wholesale droAvnings which took place at L-yons during the Reign of Tei'ror were 
known as noyades. —Translator. 
