Seize one of these muscular columns with the forceps and pull it in a series of careful jerks.

The extinct _cri-cri_ comes to life again; at each jerk there is a clash of the cymbal.

The sound is feeble, to be sure, deprived of the amplitude which the living performer is able to give it by means of his resonating chambers; none the less, the fundamental element of the song is produced by this anatomist's trick.
Would you, on the other hand, silence a living Cigale ?--that obstinate melomaniac, who, seized in the fingers, deplores his misfortune as loquaciously as ever he sang the joys of freedom in his tree?
It is useless to violate his chapels, to break his mirrors; the atrocious mutilation would not quiet him.

But introduce a needle by the lateral aperture which we have named the "window" and prick the cymbal at the bottom of the sound-box.

A little touch and the perforated cymbal is silent.