12 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



Here had he built his refuge, being a little weary : not dis- 

 gusted, for the large aversions are unknown to the sage, but 

 a little weary of interrogating men, whose answers to the only 

 interesting questions one can put concerning nature and her 

 veritable laws are far less simple than those that are given by 

 animals and plants. His happiness, like the Scythian philo- 

 sopher's, lay all in the beauties of his garden ; and best-loved, 

 and visited most often, was the apiary, composed of twelve 

 domes of straw, some of which he had painted a bright pink, 

 and some a clear yellow, but most of all a tender blue ; having 

 noticed, long before Sir John Lubbock's demonstrations, the 

 bees' fondness for this colour. These hives stood against the 

 wall of the house, in the angle formed by one of those pleasant 

 and graceful Dutch kitchens whose earthenware dresser, all 

 bright with copper and tin, reflected itself through the open 

 door on to the peaceful canal. And the water, burdened with 

 these familiar images beneath its curtain of poplars, led one's 

 eyes to a calm horizon of mills and of meadows. 



Here, as in all places, the hives lent a new meaning to the 

 flowers and the silence, the balm of the air and the rays of the 

 sun. One seemed to have drawn very near to the festival spirit 

 of nature. One was content to rest at this radiant cross-road, 

 where the aerial ways converge and divide that the busy and 

 tuneful bearers of all country perfumes unceasingly travel from 

 dawn unto dusk. One heard the musical voice of the garden, 

 whose loveliest hours revealed their rejoicing soul and sang of 

 their gladness. One came hither, to the school of the bees, 

 to be taught the preoccupations of all-powerful nature, the 

 harmonious concord of the three kingdoms, the indefatigable 

 organisation of life, the lesson of ardent and disinterested work : 



