218 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT 



she persist, crush her with her nippers. She will not come ; 

 and we know the reason : until spring returns, she is 

 underground in the pupa state. 



But, in her absence, there is no lack, among the Muscid 

 rabble, of further sweaters of other insects' labour. There 

 are parasites for every sort of business, for every sort of 

 theft. And yet my daily visits do not catch one of these 

 in the neighbourhood of the July burrows. How well the 

 rascals know their trade ! How well-aware are they of 

 the guard who keeps watch at the Halictus' door ! There 

 is no foul deed possible nowadays ; and the result is that 

 no Muscid puts in an appearance and the tribulations of 

 last spring are not repeated. 



The grandmother who, dispensed by age from maternal 

 worries, mounts guard at the entrance of the home 

 and watches over the safety of the family tells us of 

 sudden births in the genesis of the instincts ; she shows 

 us an immediate capacity which nothing, either in her 

 own past conduct or in the actions of her daughters, 

 could have led us to suspect. Timorous in her prime, in 

 the month of May, when she lived alone in the burrow of 

 her making, she has become gifted, in her decline, with a 

 superb contempt of danger and dares, in her impotence, 

 what she never dared do in her strength. 



Formerly, when her tyrant, the Gnat, entered her 

 home in her presence, or, more often, stood at the entrance, 

 face to face with herself, the silly Bee did not stir, did 

 not even threaten the red-eyed bandit, the dwarf whose 

 doom she could so easily have sealed. Was it terror on 

 her part ? No, for she attended to her duties with her 

 usual punctiliousness ; no, for the strong do not allow 

 themselves to be thus petrified by the weak. It was 

 ignorance of the danger, it was sheer foolishness. 



