Less excusably than La Fontaine, the Greek fabulist wrote of the Cigale of the books, instead of interrogating the living Cigale, whose cymbals were resounding on every side; careless of the real, he followed tradition.  He himself echoed a more ancient narrative; he repeated some legend that had reached him from India, the venerable mother of civilisations.  We do not know precisely what story the reed-pen of the Hindoo may have confided to writing, in order to show the perils of a life without foresight; but it is probable that the little animal drama was nearer the truth than the conversation between the Cigale and the Ant.  India, the friend of animals, was incapable of such a mistake.  Everything seems to suggest that the principal personage of the original fable was not the Cigale of the Midi, but some other creature, an insect if you will, whose manners corresponded to the adopted text.

Imported into Greece, after long centuries during which, on the banks of the Indus, it made the wise reflect and the children laugh, the ancient anecdote, perhaps as old as the first piece of advice that a father of a family ever gave in respect of economy, transmitted more or less faithfully from one memory to another, must have suffered alteration in its details, as is the fate of all such legends, which the passage of time adapts to the circumstance of time and place.

The Greek, not finding in his country the insect of which the Hindoo spoke, introduced the Cigale, as in Paris, the modern Athens, the Cigale has been replaced by the Grasshopper.  The mistake was made; henceforth indelible.  Entrusted as it is to the memory of childhood, error will prevail against the truth that lies before our eyes.

Let us seek to rehabilitate the songstress so calumniated by the fable.  She is, I grant you, an importunate neighbour.  Every summer she takes up her station in hundreds before my door, attracted thither by the verdure of two great plane-trees; and there, from sunrise to sunset, she hammers on my brain with her strident symphony.  With this deafening concert thought is impossible; the mind is in a whirl, is seized with vertigo, unable to concentrate itself.  If I have not profited by the early morning hours the day is lost.

Ah!  Creature possessed, the plague of my dwelling, which I hoped would be so peaceful!—­the Athenians, they say, used to hang you up in a little cage, the better to enjoy your song.  One were well enough, during the drowsiness of digestion; but hundreds, roaring all at once, assaulting the hearing until thought recoils—­this indeed is torture!  You put forward, as excuse, your rights as the first occupant.  Before my arrival the two plane-trees were yours without reserve; it is I who have intruded, have thrust myself into their shade.  I confess it:  yet muffle your cymbals, moderate your arpeggi, for the sake of your historian!  The truth rejects what the fabulist tells us as an absurd invention.