NEWS OF SPRING 



unparalleled and desperate heroism. Therefore the cautious 

 bee-keeper never displaces the indigent hives without making 

 a preliminary sacrifice to the hungry Furies. His offering is 

 a honey-comb. They hasten up and then, the smoke assisting, 

 they distend and intoxicate themselves : behold them reduced to 

 helplessness like the rich burgesses of the well-filled cells. 



6 



One could find much more to tell of the wrath of the 

 bees and of their singular antipathies. These antipathies are 

 often so strange that they were long attributed — and are still 

 attributed by the peasantry — to moral causes, to profound and 

 mystic intuitions. There is the conviction, for instance, that 

 the vestal vintagers cannot endure the approach of the un- 

 chaste, above all of the adulterous. It would be surprising if 

 the most rational beings that live with us on this incomprehen- 

 sible globe were to attach so much importance to a trespass that 

 is often very harmless. In reality, they give it no thought; but 

 they, whose whole life sways to the nuptial and sumptuous 

 breath of the flowers, abhor the perfumes which we steal from 

 them. 



Are we to believe that chastity exhales fewer odours than 



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