THE BALM-CRICKET AND THE ANT
BY
MONTEIRO LOBATO
An old fable—how many old fables there are!—in a new garb—and the number and variety of garbs is seemingly inexhaustible!—with a practical application to life, and, especially, to modern life with its universal emphasis on the material and its equally universal hunger and search for the immaterial, the ideal, the noble and the beautiful.—THE EDITOR.
THERE was a young balm-
cricket of very brilliant coloring
that was wont to chirp at the
foot of an ant-hill. She[1] only
stopped when she was tired; and
then her diversion was to observe the
laborious ants in their endless task of stor-
ing the hampers of Antborough.[2]
After a while, however, the good weather
passed, and then came the fine rains of
January. All the animals, huddled to-
gether, lay tucked away in their warrens,
waiting until the frightful downpour should
cease. The poor balm-cricket, shelterless
in her withered crevice, decided to seek help
of some one.
Hobbling along, with one wing dragging, she made her way to Antborough. She knocked.
Up came a shivering ant, swathed in a cotton kerchief.
“What do you wish?” she said, examining the crestfallen beggar, covered with mud, and coughing, coughing. . .
“I came in search of shelter. The driz-
zle never stops, and I. . . .”
The ant eyed her over and over from head to foot, wrinkling her brow:
“And what were you about in the good weather, that you did not build a house of your own?”
The poor balm-cricket, shivering, replied, after a spell of coughing:
“I sang, you know quite well. . . .”.
“Ahem! . . .” exclaimed the ant, recollecting. “It was you then that sang in this dead tree while we were running back and forth storing the hampers.”
“The very one; it was I. . . .”
“Come in then, little friend! Never shall we be able to forget the good hours your music afforded us. Your chirping entertained us and made our work light. We always thought how happy we were to have so charming a singer as a neighbor! Come in therefore, friend; here you have bed and board as long as the bad weather lasts.”
The balm-cricket entered, stopped cough-
ing and again became the singer of the
shining sun and the blue sky; and through-
out the whole rainy season she enlivened
Antborough by the vibrations of her strid-
ent music.
Later, when the sun reappeared and the balm-cricket departed, all the young ants confessed, with sad longing, that it was the pleasantest rainy season they had ever spent.
THERE was, however, a bad ant that
could not understand the balm-cricket,
and she coldly drove her away from her
door. This took place in Europe, in the
middle of winter, when the snow covered
the earth with its mantle of ice.
The balm-cricket, as was her wont, sang without ceasing throughout the livelong summer. When winter came, she found herself in need of everything, without a house to shelter her, and without as much as a bite to eat.
Desperate, she knocked at the ant's door and tried to borrow—borrow, mind you!—some miserable scraps of food. She would pay. She would pay, with loud oaths, for the food lent her, as soon as the weather would permit.
- ↑ Of course the balm-cricket like the ant, introduced just below, had to be females, since, grammatically, cigarra, “balm-cricket,” and formiga, “ant,” are feminine.—The Editor.
- ↑ Formigopolis (formiga, “ant,” and the familiar polis, from the Greek πόλις “city”) in the Portuguese original, a place name, made, doubtless, by the author.—The Editor.
