MINOTAURUS TYPHŒUS 131 



end to lawful associations. Respectable married life 

 becomes impossible from the moment when the house falls 

 in from day to day. 



No matter : the first three experiments, made when 

 alarms, time after time repeated, had not yet tangled the 

 delicate connecting thread, seem to point to a certain 

 constancy in the Minotaurus household. He and she 

 know each other, find each other in the tumult of events 

 which my mischievous doings force upon them ; thej^ 

 show each other a mutual fidelity, a very unusual quality 

 in the insect class, which is but too prone to forget its 

 matrimonial obligations. 



We recognize one another by our speech, by the sound, 

 the inflection of our voices. They, on the other hand, 

 are dumb, deprived of all means of vocal appeal. There 

 remains the sense of smell. Minotaurus finding his mate 

 makes me think of my friend Tom, the house-dog, who, 

 at his moony periods, lifts his nose m the air, sniffs the 

 breeze and jumps over the garden-walls, eager to obey 

 the distant and magical convocation ; he puts me in mind 

 of the Great Peacock Moth, who swiftly covers several 

 miles to pay his homage to the new-hatched maid. 



The comparison, however, is far from perfect. The 

 dog and the big Moth get wind of the wedding before 

 they know the bride. Minotaurus, on the other hand, has 

 no experience of long pilgrimages, yet makes his way, in 

 a brief circuit, to her whom he has already visited ; he 

 knows her, he distinguishes her from the others by certain 

 emanations, certain individual scents inappreciable to 

 any save the enamoured swain. Of what do these effluvia 

 consist ? The insect did not tell me ; and that is a pity, 

 for it would have taught us things worth knowing about 

 its feats of smell. 



