1

THE whole kitchen-garden was full of caterpillars and one of them was bigger than the others. Day after day, he crawled about on a head of cabbage just at the edge of the walk. He was stout and fat and so green that it hurt one’s eyes to look at him. He ate and ate, positively did nothing else but eat.

“You stupid beast!” said the gardener. “You and your brothers and sisters eat up half my cabbage. If there were not so many of you, I would kill you.”

“The stupid beast!” sang the nightingale who sat in the syringa-bush. “He does not care about flowers or music and singing. Nothing but eat, eat, eat!”

“The stupid beast!” piped the swallow who swept over the kitchen-garden on his long, pointed wings. “He has not the smallest taste for poetry: never thinks of sunshine and summer air. There is not the least go in him. Nothing but eat, eat, eat! And then, into the bargain, he is so full of loathsome poisonous hairs that one can’t eat him one’s self.”

“The stupid beast!” snapped the ant, who ran past with a grain of corn in her mouth. “Does he ever think of house and home? Of his children? Of food for the winter? Nothing but eat, eat, eat!”

“Goodness me!” said the caterpillar.And he said no more for the time being, so overpowered was he with all this scolding. But, all the while that he was eating the green, juicy cabbage, he pondered on what he had heard and most on what the ant had said. And, when the ant next came by, the caterpillar had made it out:

“Hi, you ant!” he cried. “Stop a bit and explain to me what you said about the children. Don’t you know that I am a child myself? I only want time in order to grow big and pretty.”

The ant stood still and dropped the grain of corn she had in her mouth, so great was her amazement:

“Are you a child?” she asked. “A nice child you are! Why, you’re a perfect elephant, fifty times as big as myself. And so you’re a child, are you? Lord knows what you’ll look like when you’re grown up!”

“I don’t know for certain,” said the caterpillar, with an air of mystery. “But I have a suspicion. If I could only tell you what I sometimes notice inside myself! I am quite certain that I shall be something great one day—if only you give me time to grow. I shall fly away over the garden on beautiful wings; I shall be a butterfly: just you wait and see! I know by my dreams that I am related to you others and that I am quite as good as you.”

“Bah!” said the ant and spat on the ground. “It is simply disgusting to listen to such balderdash. Dreams? Suspicions? No, there’s a thing that’s called the family and the ant-hill: that’s what I stick to. Good-bye, you stupid caterpillar.”

Then she ran off, but stopped a little farther away and once more said:

“Bah!”

And the sun blazed and the caterpillar basked in its rays while he ate the green cabbage.

2

It was now past mid-day and the nightingale in the syringa-bush could not bear to sing in so great a heat. So he stopped and took an afternoon nap. The swallow flew up aloft to get a breath of fresh air, the ant carried her little white eggs up into the sun and the gardener sat under the big walnut-tree and had his dinner with his wife and children.But the caterpillar went on eating indefatigably.

Suddenly a multitude of small black dots appeared in the air over the kitchen-garden. They danced up and down and up and down. At last, they hung low down, just above the caterpillar, and he could see that they were nice little animals, with fine, bright wings.

“Who are you? What do you want?” asked the caterpillar.

“We are mothers,” replied the little animals, “and we have come out to look for a place for our children.”

“Well, that’s right and proper enough,” said the caterpillar, who was thinking of what the ant had said. “But I don’t like you, for all that.”

“That’s very sad,” said the animalcules, “for we just happen to be so awfully fond of you.”

And, at that moment, a number of them settled on the caterpillar’s back.

“Oh! Oh!” he screamed. “Murder! Help! Police!”

The little animals flew up again, but remained hovering in the air above the caterpillar.

“But who are you?” he asked and writhed with pain. “What have I done to you that you should ill-treat me so?”

“Every one provides for himself and his,” replied the animalcules, “and we have now provided for our children. We are parasitic flies and our name is Ichneumon: it is not a pretty one, but it happens to be the best we have. For the rest, we are relations of the ants, if you happen to know them.”

“It’s a good enough family,” said the caterpillar and sighed. “But I don’t know why everybody should scold at me and sting me and scoff at me. What is this that you have done to me now?”

“You’ll know soon enough,” said the ichneumons. “Good-bye for the present and thank you.”

Then they soared up aloft and became little black dots again and, at last, disappeared altogether.

But the caterpillar heaved long and deep sighs and ate twice as much cabbage to console himself. Nevertheless, he could not keep from thinking of the uncomfortable visit he had had:

“I have a suspicion,” he said to himself. “An awkward suspicion. If only I could make something of it!”

3

But, when some time had passed, he began to make something of it.

He simply could not satisfy his appetite any longer. The more he ate, the hungrier he became. He munched one piece of cabbage-leaf after another and, nevertheless, he felt quite faint with hunger.

“What is the meaning of this now?” he said, despondently.

“It’s we!” answered something inside him.

“Eh? What?” said the caterpillar and rolled round with terror. “Am I haunted inside, or have I gone mad?”“It’s we, it’s the ichneumon-flies’ young,” came the sound again from deep down in his stomach.

The caterpillar’s head was in a whirl. But, when he had collected himself a little, he began to understand:

“So the ichneumons laid their eggs in my body!” he cried, in despair. “And have I now to feed all their voracious young?”

“That’s it!” said the young ones. “You’ve hit it to a T. Bestir yourself now, you stupid, lazy caterpillar, and eat till you burst, or we’ll eat you!”

So saying, they took a good nip at his flesh.

“Oh, oh!” yelled the caterpillar. “I will, I will, indeed I will.”

“Yes, but hurry up!” said the young ones. “We are so hungry, so hungry!”

And the caterpillar ate ever so much more than before, but it was not the slightest use. He could never eat enough and the ichneumon-flies’ young kept on crying for more. The ant and the swallow and the nightingale mocked at him every day and the gardener beat the cabbage with his rake, so angry was he at all this consumption.

But the caterpillar swallowed it all and reflected that there was not on earth a lot so distressing as his.

“Jeer away!” he thought. “You’re quick at that. If only you knew that I don’t get the food myself which I procure: the benefit of it all goes to the ichneumon-flies’ young.”

He ate and ate desperately. At last, he could bear it no longer. All day long, he noticed how the ichneumons were rummaging about inside him. He rolled round on the cabbage-leaf in despair and turned and twisted and screamed for help.

“Rather eat me up altogether while you’re about it!” he cried. “Rather let me die at once: I can’t endure this life!”

“Tut, tut!” said the young ones inside him and cackled with laughter. “It’s not so easy as that. You’ll be eaten right enough, when the time comes, never fear! But, for the present, all you have to do is to hold your tongue and eat.”

4

Every day, the young ones grew bigger and wanted more food. When they could no longer satisfy themselves with what the caterpillar ate, they began to devour two large lumps of fat which he had saved up in the happy days before the ichneumons came. They were meant to be used for wings and legs, once he had become a butterfly. And, when he noticed that they were gone, he shed bitter tears:

“Alas for my beautiful dreams!” he said. “Now I shall never be a butterfly, never flit in the sun all over the garden.”

“I told you all the time that that was nonsense about the butterfly,” said the ant, who passed at that moment.

“Listen,” said the caterpillar. “If you have a heart beating in your body, then help me, Ant.”Then he told her of his misfortune. The swallow and the nightingale came and listened and the caterpillar implored them for advice and assistance.

“After all, I’m of your race,” he ended by saying. “Believe me, I feel it. If I get time and leisure, I shall turn into something pretty, a butterfly. I have felt that inside myself since the time when I was quite little.”

The swallow and the nightingale looked at each other and shook their heads. But the ant, who was the cleverest of the three, nodded thoughtfully and then said:

“What you say about the relationship may have something in it. To a certain extent. For we are all poor mortals, as the gardener says. But that bit about the butterfly is positively nothing but imagination. I am sorry for you, goodness knows I am, but I can’t help you. You must bear your lot with patience.”

“I can’t bear it!” cried the caterpillar. “It is killing me. Think of the butterflies: are they not beautiful? Don’t you like looking at them? Help me, do you hear! If I die, a butterfly dies. Only think, if one day there were no butterflies!”

“Well,” said the ant, “as for that, the world would go on, even if you are right. There are caterpillars enough in the garden and, if you really are butterflies’ children, there would be plenty left, even though a few did get lost. However, I have no time to speculate on this folly. If you wish to have my opinion in a nutshell, here it is, that your mother must have looked after you foolishly, for you to fall into the ichneumons’ power like this. And now I must go home and look after my children. Good-bye and bless you!”

Then the ant went away. The nightingale flew up into the bush and sang in the warm evening so that all had to listen and admire him and the swallow soared high into the air and prophesied fine weather for the morrow.

But the caterpillar crouched humbly over his cabbage-leaf and ate.

5

“I think there are too many of us in here,” said one of the ichneumon-grubs the next morning. “I can’t breathe.”“There’s a way out of that,” said one of the others. “Let’s bite a hole in the creature’s air-ducts; then we’ll get air enough. But see that he has one or two left, or we shall risk his going and suffocating before his time.”

It was no sooner said than done. But the caterpillar screamed louder than ever.

“Air! Air! I shall die of suffocation!”

“No, you won’t,” replied the young ones. “But you had better accustom yourself to be content with little. Hurry back to the cabbage.”

“Now it’s all up with me,” said the caterpillar, one morning.

“You may be right, this time,” replied the ichneumon-grubs.

That evening, they ate the last remnant of their host. Only the skin was left of the dead caterpillar. It lay dry and shrivelled up outside the grubs, who nestled in it as in a warm fur.

One fine day, they flew out. Pretty little animals they were, with light, bright wings, like their parents.

“Hurrah!” they cried. “Now it’s only a question of finding a caterpillar for our young. Each for himself and the devil take the hindmost: such is nature’s law. We are nature’s police: we see to it that things keep their balance. It would be a hideous world indeed, if it were full of caterpillars!”

“Or of ichneumon-flies!” piped the swallow and gulped down a mouthful of them as he spoke.

THE BEECH AND THE OAK