The Life of the Grasshopper 



breakable any elsewhere, the wrapper yields 

 at this median point which is kept weaker 

 than the rest. The split is continued some 

 little way back and runs between the fasten- 

 ings of the wings; it goes up the head as far 

 as the base of the antennae, where it sends 

 a short ramification to the right and left. 



Through this break the back is seen, quite 

 soft, pale, hardly tinged with grey. Slowly 

 it swells into a larger and larger hunch. At 

 last it is wholly released. The head follows, 

 extracted from its mask, which remains in 

 its place, intact in the smallest particular, 

 but looking strange with its great glassy eyes 

 that do not see. The sheaths of the an- 

 tennae, with not a wrinkle, with nothing out 

 of order and with their normal position un- 

 changed, hang over this dead face, which is 

 now translucent. 



Therefore, in emerging from their narrow 

 sheaths, which enclosed them with such abso- 

 lute precision, the antennary threads encoun- 

 tered no resistance capable of turning their 

 scabbards inside out, or disturbing their 

 shape, or even wrinkling them. Without in- 

 juring the twisted containers, the contents, 

 equal in size and themselves twisted, have 

 managed to slip out as easily as a smooth, 



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