PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



small worm. After metamorphosis the male emerges, 

 flies a little, then returns to the female who has remained 

 inside the nymphal envelope, and fecundates her in her 

 wrappings. 



Other exceptions, this time normal, are furnished by 

 butterflies, that is to say by a sort of insect which is 

 very placid, and which, at least in the winged form, is 

 addicted neither to hunting nor to any trade or business 

 function. One gives the name "psyche" to a very small 

 butterfly which flutters out rather clumsily in the morn- 

 ing; it is the male. The female is a huge worm, fifteen 

 times as long, ten times as fat. The lovers are in the 

 proportion of a cock to a cow. Here the feminism is 

 wholly ludicrous. There is the same disproportion in 

 the mulberry bombyx, of which the female is much 

 heavier than the male; she flies with difficulty, a passive 

 beast who submits to a fecundation lasting several hours; 

 likewise in the autumn butterfly, cheimatobia, the male 

 sports two pairs of fine wings on a spindle body, the 

 female is a gross fat keg with rudimentary wings, inca- 

 pable of flight; she climbs difficultly into trees on whose 

 buds her caterpillar feeds itself; in the case of another 

 butterfly which one calls, absurdly, the orgye, the male 

 has all the characteristics of lepidoptera, the female is 

 almost wingless with a heavy and swollen body and a 

 carriage about as pleasing as that of a monstrous wood- 

 louse; there is the same disproportion in the graceful, 

 agile and delicate liparis, known as the zig-zag because 

 of his wing-markings; he would hardly discover his mate 

 without aid from instinct, she being a whitish beast with 

 heavy abdomen ruminating motionless in the tree-bark. 

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