The Psyches: the Laying 



soft rays of a warm sun and always on a sofa 

 of that incomparable down, which disperses 

 and turns to vapour if I merely fan it with 

 my hand. Again no one comes. For the last 

 time the disappointed Moth goes back to her 

 boudoir, never to leave it again. She dies 

 in it, dries up, a useless thing. I hold my bell- 

 jars responsible for this crime against mother- 

 hood. In the open fields, without a doubt, 

 sooner or later wooers would have appeared, 

 coming from the four winds. 



The said bell-jars have an even more piti- 

 ful catastrophe on their conscience. Some- 

 times, leaning too far from her window, mis- 

 calculating the balance between the front of 

 the body, which is at liberty, and the back, 

 which remains sheathed in its case, the Moth 

 allows herself to drop to the ground. It is 

 all up now with the fallen one and her lineage. 

 Still, there is one good thing about it. Acci- 

 dents such as this lay bare the mother Psyche, 

 without our having to break into her house. 



What a miserable creature she is, a great 

 deal uglier than the original caterpillar! 

 Here transfiguration spells disfigurement, 

 progress means retrogression. What we have 

 before our eyes is a wrinkled satchel, an 

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