further into the story,
It was really impossible to keep that invasion of vermin a secret very long . . . The whole field was alive, even on the surface . . . The rot was spreading . . . we weeded, uprooted, hoed more and more, it didn’t do a bit of good . . . In the end the news got around . . . The hicks came snooping . . . They dug up our potatoes to see for themselves . . . They sent samples of our produce to the prefect . . . with a police report on our strange goings-on . . . They even sent whole basketfuls, completely chock-full of grubs, to Paris, to the Museum Director . . . It was getting to be big news . . . Horrible rumors started up . . . we were the criminal originators of a brand-new agricultural pestilence . . . an unprecedented garden blight! . . .
By the effect of intensive waves, of malignant “inductions,” by the diabolical instrumentality of a thousand wire networks, we had corrupted the earth . . . stirred up the jimni of the grubs . . . in the innocent bosom of nature . . . There, in Bleme-le-Petit, we had given birth to a special race of absolutely vicious, unbelievably corrosive maggots, which attacked every kind of seed, every conceivable plant and root . . . trees! harvests! the peasants’ houses! the very structure of the land! even dairy products! sparing absolutely nothing! . . . Corrupting, sucking, dissolving . . . encrusting the plowshares . . . absorbing digesting stone, flint as well as beans! demolishing everything in their path! on the surface, under the ground! Corpses and potatoes alike! Everything without exception! And thriving, mind you, in midwinter! . . . Drawing strength from the bitter cold . . . propagating in swarms, in vast myriads! . . . more and more insatiable . . . crossing mountains! plains! valleys! . . . with the speed of electricity! . . . thanks to the waves generated by our machines! . . . Soon the whole district around Bleme would be one enormous field of rot! . . . a noisome bog! . . . an immense sewer of maggots! . . . a seism of swarming grubs! . . . Then it would be the turn of Persant! . . . and then of Saligons! . . . Such was the outlook . . . It will still too soon to predict how and when it would all end! . . . whether it would ever be possible to circumscribe the disaster! . . . Only the anylses would show . . . It might perfectly well spread to all the roots in France . . . consume the whole countryside . . . until our national soil in its entirety was nothing but stones . . . Our maggots might well make the whole of Europe unfit for cultivation . . . one big desert of rot! . . . Well, if that happened, believe you me, they’d talk about the Great Bleme-le-Petit down through the ages . . . the way we nowadays talk about the ones in the Bible . . .