The Life of the Bee 



Let us go on, then, with the story of 

 our hive ; let us take it up where we left 

 it; and raise, as high as we may, a fold of 

 the festooned curtain in whose midst a 

 strange sweat, white as snow and airier 

 than the down of a wing, is beginning to 

 break over the swarm. For the wax that 

 is now being born is not like the wax that 

 we know ; it is immaculate, it has no 

 weight; seeming truly to be the soul of 

 the honey, that itself is the spirit of flowers. 

 And this motionless incantation has called 

 it forth that it may serve us, later in 

 memory of its origin, doubtless, wherein 

 it is one with the azure sky, and heavy 

 with perfumes of magnificence and purity 

 as the fragrant light of the last of 

 our altars. 



180 



