The Psyches: the Laying 



into my eye and am careful not to breathe for 

 fear of overturning and sweeping out of ex- 

 istence my cotton-workers. If I need one of 

 them, to focus him under a stronger glass, I 

 lime him as it were, seizing him with the fine 

 point of a needle which I have passed over 

 my lips. Taken away from his work, the 

 tiny caterpillar struggles at the end of the 

 needle, shrivels up, makes himself, small as he 

 is, still smaller; he strives to withdraw as far 

 as possible into his clothing, which as yet is 

 incomplete, the merest flannel vest or even a 

 narrow scarf, covering nothing but the top of 

 his shoulders. Let us leave him to complete 

 his coat. I give a puff; and the creature is 

 swallowed up in the crater of the egg-cup. 



And this speck is alive. It is industrious; 

 it is versed in the art of blanket-making. An 

 orphan, born that moment, it knows how to 

 cut itself out of its dead mother's old clothes 

 the wherewithal to clothe itself in its turn. 

 Soon it will become a carpenter, an assembler 

 of timber, to make a defensive covering for 

 its delicate fabric. What must instinct be, to 

 be capable of awakening such industries in an 

 atom I 



It is at the end of June also that I obtain, 

 203 



