134 T^^^ Hunting IVasps 



deeply. As they passed by me, I saw one of 

 them tap her forehead and heard her whisper 

 to the others : 



' IJn paoiive inoucent, pecaire ! ' 



And all three made the sign of the Cross. 



An innocent, she had said, un inoucent, an 

 idiot, a poor creature, quite harmless, but half- 

 witted ; and they had all made the sign of the 

 Cross, an idiot being to them one with God's 

 seal stamped upon him. 



' How now ! ' thought I. ' What a cruel 

 mockery of fate ! You, who are so laboriously 

 seeking to discover what is instinct in the 

 animal and what is reason, you yourself do 

 not even possess your reason in these good 

 women's eyes ! What a humiliating reflection ! ' 



No matter : pecaire, that expression of 

 supreme compassion, in the Proven9al dialect, 

 pecaire, coming from the bottom of the heart, 

 soon made me forget inoucent. 



It is in this ravine with its three grape- 

 gathering women that I would meet the reader, 

 if he be not discouraged by the petty annoy- 

 ances of which I have given him a foretaste. 

 The Languedocian Sphex frequents these points, 

 not in tribes congregating at the same spot 

 when nest-building work begins, but as solitary 

 individuals, sparsely distributed, settling wher- 

 ever the chances of their vagabondage lead 



