The Life of the Bee 



[85] 



Most creatures have a vague belief that 

 a very precarious hazard, a kind of trans- 

 parent membrane, divides death from 

 love; and that the profound idea of 

 nature demands that the giver of life 

 should die at the moment of giving. 

 Here this idea, whose memory lingers still 

 over the kisses of man, is realised in its 

 primal simplicity. No sooner has the 

 union been accomplished than the male's 

 abdomen opens, the organ detaches itself, 

 dragging with it the mass of the entrails ; 

 the wings relax, and, as though struck by 

 lightning, the emptied body turns and 

 turns on itself and sinks down into the 

 abyss. 



The same idea that, before, in partheno- 

 genesis, sacrificed the future of the hive to 

 the unwonted multiplication of males, now 

 sacrifices the male to the future of the hive. 

 306 



