828 THE MOTHER OF THE PEOPLE. 
as some have asserted, into complete demoralization? Does such a 
calamity entail a furious anarchy, a universal pillage of the people 
by the people themselves? By no means, says M. Debeauvoys. <A few 
hours of trouble, pain, wrath, and apparent delirium follow. The bees 
flutter to and fro in great agitation, and suspend their work; for a 
moment they even neglect the nurslings. But a people so grave and 
dignified at bottom soon resume their dignity, and remember what they 
owe to themselves. The mother is dead? Long live the mother ! 
We know how to create another. What we were yesterday, so are we 
to-day. 
The last will be first. They turn to the youngest child of the people, 
who has barely opened her shell, who has not had time to undergo the 
confinement of a narrow cradle, who has not yet grown lean on the 
scanty fare of an artisan. This fare is not honey, but merely the dust 
of flowers which naturalists call bees’ bread. Those who have been 
previously fed upon poorer fare will remain little; they no longer 
possess the faculty of transformation. 
But this young bee, so soft and so tender, will become whatever 
you will; and in order that she may develop into a true female, a bee 
of love, and a prolific mother, what is necessary? Liberty. Let them 
provide her with a vast cradle where her young life may float, and 
agitate, and develop, at ease. It will cost three cradles destroyed to 
provide for hers, and the lives of three infants, who will perish before 
birth ; but what matter, if in a year she supplies the nation with ten 
thousand ? 
The consecration of the mother of the people is that living nourish- 
ment which the people extract from themselves, and in which they 
mingle their bee-sweetness with the balmy essence of the flowers. <A 
strong and noble nourishment, rich in the intoxicating perfume of aro- 
matic herbs, richer in the virginal love concentrated upon it by thirty 
thousand sisters for the behoof of the marvellous child who belongs to 
them all. 
On the third day the child sees its cradle extended by an ornament 
intended to make it still freer—a pyramid reversed. On the fifth only 
do they seal it up, to the intent that she may sleep peacefully, and 
