THE SWARM 



she will soon be forced to quit this city 

 of hers, where she has reigned. But this 

 city is her work, it is she, herself. She 

 is not its queen in the sense in which men 

 use the word. She issues no orders; she 

 obeys, as meekly as the humblest of her 

 subjects, the masked power, sovereignly 

 wise, that for the present, and till we at- 

 tempt to locate it, we will term the " spirit 

 of the hive." But she is the unique organ 

 of love; she is the mother of the city. 

 She founded it amid uncertainty and pov- 

 erty. She has peopled it with her own 

 substance; and all who move within its 

 walls — workers, males, larvae, nymphs, and 

 the young princesses whose approaching 

 birth will hasten her own departure, one 

 of them being already designed as her suc- 

 [3 3 



