The Life of the Fly 



ratory in the open fields, when harassed by a 

 terrible anxiety about one's daily bread. For 

 forty years have I fought, with steadfast cour- 

 age, against the paltry plagues of life; and the 

 long-wished-for laboratory has come at last. 

 What it has cost me in perseverance and re- 

 lentless work I will not try to say. It has 

 come; and, with it — a more serious condition 

 — perhaps a little leisure. I say perhaps, for 

 my leg is still hampered with a few links of 

 the convict's chain. 



The wish is realized. It Is a little late, 

 O my pretty insects! I greatly fear that the 

 peach is offered to me when I am begin- 

 ning to have no teeth wherewith to eat it. 

 Yes, it is a little late : the wide horizons of the 

 outset have shrunk into a low and stifling can- 

 opy, more and more straitened day by day. 

 Regretting nothing in the past, save those 

 whom I have lost; regretting nothing, not even 

 my first youth; hoping nothing either, I have 

 reached the point at which, worn out by the ex- 

 perience of things, we ask ourselves if life be 

 worth the living. 



Amid the ruins that surround me, one strip 

 of wall remains standing, immovable upon its 

 solid base: my passion for scientific truth. Is 

 that enough, O my busy insects, to enable 



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