The Psyches: the Cases 



operations. I take him out of his case and 

 place him, stark naked, on a bed of fine, dry 

 sand. I give him as materials to work with 

 some old stalks of Nimes dandelion, cut up 

 into sticks of the same length as the pieces 

 that make the case. 



The evicted insect disappears under the 

 heap of ligneous straws and hurriedly starts 

 spinning, taking as pegs for its cords anything 

 that its lips encounter: the bed of sand under- 

 foot, the canopy of twigs overhead. So do- 

 ing, it binds together, in extricable confusion, 

 all the pieces touched by the spinneret, long 

 and short, light and heavy, at random. In 

 the centre of this tangled scaffolding, a work 

 is pursued of a quite different nature from 

 that of hut-building. The caterpillar weaves 

 and does nothing else, not even attempting to 

 assemble into a proper roofing the materials 

 of which he is able to dispose. 



The Psyche owning a perfect case, when 

 he resumes his activity with the fine weather, 

 scorns his old trade as an assembler of logs, 

 a trade practised so zealously during the pre- 

 vious summer. Now that his stomach is satis- 

 fied and his silk-glands distended, he devotes 

 his spare time solely to improving the quilting 

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