Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/62

56 offered me the whole world, I would not stir an inch from here."

"But, if I offered you a glass of brandy, would you accompany me?"

"Brandy? what brandy? not rye brandy, I hope."

"Some slivowitz, if you like."

The good man heaved a sigh, whistled to his dog, and slowly directed his course towards the pond. I followed in his path, several steps to the rear. A gold-colored will-o'-the-wisp accompanied us, as if to lighten our way. While we followed the fantastic flamelet, which passed sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, whirling under the branches, lengthening itself out on the moss like a snake, or hovering in the air above us, we found ourselves up to the knees in the swamp.

The moon was hidden behind a cloud, as if she were in a conspiracy with the elves to mystify us. The alders, until now motionless and silent, rocked with a dull, rustling sound. The jarring cry of the bittern struck harshly on the ear. Then the water plashed almost over us. It was the dog, which plunged in and with sturdy barks announced to us that we had reached the end. I leaped precipitately over the thick branches, and found myself on the edge of the lake, where the moon, smiling and disentangled from her veils, seemed to contemplate its peaceful face.

The woman with golden hair had disappeared. We saw her neither in the waves where just before she had glittered like a star, nor on the shore, where her white form had stood in relief like a luminary against the blackness of the alders. Now all reposed in mournful silence: not a ripple upon the water, not a breath among the leaves. And in the middle of the pool rose majestically towards heaven a pale water-lily, mounting upward like a white flame.

The gamekeeper drew a long breath.

"God has protected us," murmured he, "but let no one say now that it was not the letawitza."

 

 From The Spectator.

is a curious fact that the severest school of natural history has confirmed rather than undermined the favorite notion of idealist and mystical schools that in the world of plants and animals there are all sorts of types and anticipations, on a lower plane, of the passions, weaknesses, subterfuges, and craft of men, and especially that the cunning and hypocrisy of nature — practised without any consciousness by the creatures who profit by them — are much more elaborate and perfect than the cunning and hypocrisy of men. It is very curious, too, that it is in the lower region of animal life that this cunning appears to play the most important part. The writers on "natural selection" show us that for one case in which the effects of illusion are used to protect the higher races of animals, there are scores in which those effects are used to protect the lower races. The reptiles and the insects are, as it were, especially under the shield of nature's most elaborate deceptions. There are insects which live, as it were, by hypocrisy, by getting themselves mistaken — so perfect is their costume and acting — for the withered leaves or dried-up twigs amongst which they habitually feed. There are butterflies, again, innocent themselves of any bitter flavor, which are saved by their happy resemblance to other butterflies so bitter in flavor that all the insect-eating birds avoid them. Then, again, there is another favorite device of nature for protecting reptiles and insects, namely, to dress the sheep in wolves' clothing, — in other words, to make creatures which are quite incapable of doing any other animal a serious mischief, assume an air so alarming that they get all the credit of weapons of offence which they do not possess. Thus there are some perfectly harmless snakes in Central America, described by Mr. Wallace, whose protection consists in a gay collar, closely resembling that of one of the most deadly snakes of the forest. Like Patroclus clad in the armor of Achilles, this harmless creature scares away his enemies by the terror of a false repute. But the most curious, perhaps, of all these protecting illusions, because the most utterly deceptive, is one explained by Sir John Lubbock in another of those many lively studies of natural history with which he instructs and amuses us in these dreary days. It is that which he quotes from Weissmann, concerning the fear inspired in small birds by the caterpillar of the sphinx or hawk-moth. The creature is very good food for birds, and quite helpless against them, but it is protected partly by its likeness to a snake, and partly by false eyes upon it, which are merely spots, and nothing else, but which have a very ugly, glaring look when the creature retracts its head, as it does when in danger.