A Parasite of the Maggot 



a couple of days, becomes a mass of black pu- 

 trescence. 



The Great Peacock, that large Moth who 

 recks little of the Scorpion's poison, is no more 

 able to resist my inoculations than the Sacred 

 Beetle and the others. I prick two in the 

 belly, a male and a female. At first, they 

 seem to bear the operation without distress. 

 They grip the trellis-work of the cage and 

 hang without moving, as though indifferent. 

 But soon the disease has them in its grip. 

 What we see is not the tumultuous ending of 

 the Sacred Beetle; it is the calm advent of 

 death. With wings slackly quivering, softly 

 they die and drop from the wires. Next day, 

 both corpses are remarkably lax; the segments 

 of the abdomen separate and gape at the least 

 touch. Remove the hairs and you shall -see 

 that the skin, which was white, has turned 

 brown and is changing to black. Corruption 

 is quickly doing its work. 



This would be a good opportunity to speak 

 of bacteria and cultures. I shall do nothing 

 of the sort. On the hazy borderland of the 

 visible and the invisible, the microscope inspires 

 me with suspicion. It so easily replaces the 

 eye of reality by the eye of imagination; it is 

 so ready to oblige the theorists with just what 



377 



