THE SWARM 37 



on ? Little city abounding in faith and mystery and hope, 

 why do your myriad virgins consent to a task that no human 

 slave has ever accepted ? Another spring would be theirs, 

 another summer, were they only a little less wasteful of 

 strength, a little less forgetful of self, in their ardour for 

 toil ; but at the magnificent moment v/hen the flowers all 

 cry to them they seem to be stricken with the fatal ecstasy 

 of work, and in less than five weeks they almost all perish, 

 their wings broken, their bodies shrivelled and covered with 

 wounds. 



" Tantus amor florum, et generandi gloria mellis," 



cries Virgil in the fourth book of the " Georgics," wherein he 

 devotes himself to the bees, and hands down to us the charm- 

 ing errors of the ancients, who looked on nature with eyes 

 still dazzled by the presence of imaginary gods. 



20 



Why do they thus renounce sleep, the delights of honey 

 and love, and the exquisite leisure enjoyed, for instance, by 

 their winged brother, the butterfly ? Why not live as he 

 lives ? It is not hunger that urges them on. Two or 

 three flowers suffice for their nourishment, and in one hour 

 they will visit two or three hundred, to gather a treasure 

 whose sweetness they never will taste. Why all this toil 

 and distress, and whence comes this mighty assurance ? Is 

 it so certain, then, that the new generation whereunto you 

 offer your lives will merit the sacrifice, will be more beauti- 

 ful, happier, will do something you have not done ? Your 



