This evening in the village they are celebrating the National Festival. (The 14th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille.--Translator's Note.) While the little boys and girls are hopping round a bonfire whose gleams are reflected upon the church-steeple, while the drum is pounded to mark the ascent of each rocket, I am sitting alone in a dark corner, in the comparative coolness that prevails at nine o'clock, harking to the concert of the festival of the fields, the festival of the harvest, grander by far than that which, at this moment, is being celebrated in the village square with gunpowder, lighted torches, Chinese lanterns and, above all, strong drink. It has the simplicity of beauty and the repose of strength.

It is late; and the Cicadae are silent. Glutted with light and heat, they have indulged in symphonies all the livelong day. The advent of the night means rest for them, but a rest frequently disturbed. In the dense branches of the plane-trees a sudden sound rings out like a cry of anguish, strident and short. It is the desperate wail of the Cicada, surprised in his quietude by the Green Grasshopper, that ardent nocturnal huntress, who springs upon him, grips him in the side, opens and ransacks his abdomen. An orgy of music, followed by butchery.

I have never seen and never shall see that supreme expression of our national revelry, the military review at Longchamp; nor do I much regret it. The newspapers tell me as much about it as I want to know. They give me a sketch of the site. I see, installed here and there amid the trees, the ominous Red Cross, with the legend, "Military Ambulance; Civil Ambulance." There will be bones broken, apparently; cases of sunstroke; regrettable deaths, perhaps. It is all provided for and all in the programme.

Even here, in my village, usually so peaceable, the festival will not end, I am ready to wager, without the exchange of a few blows, that compulsory seasoning of a day of merry-making. No pleasure, it appears, can be fully relished without an added condiment of pain.

Let us listen and meditate far from the tumult. While the disembowelled Cicada utters his protest, the festival up there in the plane-trees is continued with a change of orchestra. It is now the time of the nocturnal performers. Hard by the place of slaughter, in the green bushes, a delicate ear perceives the hum of the Grasshoppers. It is the sort of noise that a spinning-wheel makes, a very unobtrusive sound, a vague rustle of dry membranes rubbed together. Above this dull bass there rises, at intervals, a hurried, very shrill, almost metallic clicking. There you have the air and the recitative, intersected by pauses. The rest is the accompaniment.

Despite the assistance of a bass, it is a poor concert, very poor indeed, though there are about ten executants in my immediate vicinity. The tone lacks intensity. My old tympanum is not always capable of perceiving these subtleties of sound. The little that reaches me is extremely sweet and most appropriate to the calm of twilight. Just a little more breadth in your bow-stroke, my dear Green Grasshopper, and your technique would be better than the hoarse Cicada's, whose name and reputation you have been made to usurp in the countries of the north.

Still, you will never equal your neighbour, the little bell-ringing Toad, who goes tinkling all round, at the foot of the plane-trees, while you click up above. He is the smallest of my batrachian folk and the most venturesome in his expeditions.

How often, at nightfall, by the last glimmers of daylight, have I not come upon him as I wandered through my garden, hunting for ideas! Something runs away, rolling over and over in front of me. Is it a dead leaf blown along by the wind? No, it is the pretty little Toad disturbed in the midst of his pilgrimage. He hurriedly takes shelter under a stone, a clod of earth, a tuft of grass, recovers from his excitement and loses no time in picking up his liquid note.

On this evening of national rejoicing, there are nearly a dozen of him tinkling against one another around me. Most of them are crouching among the rows of flower-pots that form a sort of lobby outside my house. Each has his own note, always the same, lower in one case, higher in another, a short, clear note, melodious and of exquisite purity.

With their slow, rhythmical cadence, they seem to be intoning litanies. "Cluck," says one; "click," responds another, on a finer note; "clock," adds a third, the tenor of the band. And this is repeated indefinitely, like the bells of the village pealing on a holiday: "cluck, click, clock; cluck, click, clock!"

The batrachian choristers remind me of a certain harmonica which I used to covet when my six-year-old ear began to awaken to the magic of sounds. It consisted of a series of strips of glass of unequal length, hung on two stretched tapes. A cork fixed to a wire served as a hammer. Imagine an unskilled hand striking at random on this key-board, with a sudden clash of octaves, dissonances and topsy-turvy chords; and you will have a pretty clear idea of the Toads' litany.

As a song, this litany has neither head nor tail to it; as a collection of pure sounds, it is delicious. This is the case with all the music in nature's concerts. Our ear discovers superb notes in it and then becomes refined and acquires, outside the realities of sound, that sense of order which is the first condition of beauty.

Now this sweet ringing of bells between hiding-place and hiding-place is the matrimonial oratorio, the discreet summons which every Jack issues to his Jill. The sequel to the concert may be guessed without further enquiry; but what it would be impossible to foresee is the strange finale of the wedding. Behold the father, in this case a real paterfamilias, in the noblest sense of the word, coming out of his retreat one day in an unrecognizable state. He is carrying the future, tight-packed around his hind-legs; he is changing houses laden with a cluster of eggs the size of peppercorns. His calves are girt, his thighs are sheathed with the bulky burden; and it covers his back like a beggar's wallet, completely deforming him.

Whither is he going, dragging himself along, incapable of jumping, thanks to the weight of his load? He is going, the fond parent, where the mother refuses to go; he is on his way to the nearest pond, whose warm waters are indispensable to the tadpoles' hatching and existence. When the eggs are nicely ripened around his legs under the humid shelter of a stone, he braves the damp and the daylight, he the passionate lover of dry land and darkness; he advances by short stages, his lungs congested with fatigue. The pond is far away, perhaps; no matter: the plucky pilgrim will find it.

He's there. Without delay, he dives, despite his profound antipathy to bathing; and the cluster of eggs is instantly removed by the legs rubbing against each other. The eggs are now in their element; and the rest will be accomplished of itself. Having fulfilled his obligation to go right under, the father hastens to return to his well-sheltered home. He is scarcely out of sight before the little black tadpoles are hatched and playing about. They were but waiting for the contact of the water in order to burst their shells.