134 A TOUK KOUND MY GARDEN. 



trumpets and drums, surrounded by smoke and the stupifying 

 smell of powder. Glorious and noble, promising honours, 

 ribbons, rank, with the sweet rewards of love and admiration, 

 it invites you to follow it, and intoxicated man throws himself 

 wiUingly into its arms. 



Contemplate it in a bed. The wretched being who awaits it 

 does not breathe the exciting odour of powder, but the debi- 

 litating odour of drugs and plasters. He dies in detail; he 

 dies weak, fearful, idiotical, clinging with all his soul to life, 

 and with his nails to the clothes and curtains of his bed, and 

 to the sheets which will serve for his shroud. 



Who can assure us that the wine in which Clarence died 

 was true Malmsey wine 1 Certainly, the man who had chosen 

 this sort of death, must have felt a last and a bitter pang, if 

 he perceived, at the critical moment, that he had been de- 

 ceived in the quality^of the wine contained in the butt which 

 was to be his coffin. 



Certain little round insects with hard wings, like those of 

 beetles, are amusing themselves on the water in a singular 

 fashion : they form circles with a rapidity that fatigues the 

 eye. This must be a movement that has its charms, since 

 they are not the only people who make a practice of it ; but 

 it is a religious ceremony. The insect is called whirligig* — the 

 priests are styled dervishes. 



Another, larger and of an elliptic shape, is an hydrophilus ; 

 it has six feet, the hinder ones of which are formed like oars, 

 and permit it to come to the surface of the water, from which 

 it takes flight, and to descend to the bottom, where it finds 

 its subsistence. It lays its eggs in a silken bag, which it 

 fastens to the under part of the leaf of an aquatic plant, which 

 it closes when they are laid. The larva, that is to say, the 

 insect, which bears a different form, and which will, at a later 

 period, become a hydrqphilus, comes out of the water when 

 it is born, goes to bury itself in the earth, a little above the 

 water, in a hole, from which it will come out at a future time 

 a perfect hydrophilus. 



When I was speaking about the cress, I forgot to name 

 a circumstance which, perhaps, you would never guess; it is 

 that, with botanists, the cress of the fountain, which grows in 



* Gyrinut naiator, — Ed. 



