THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY 117 



have traversed the whole circumference of the hive, and 

 returned to the earliest cells. These, by this time, will be 

 empty, for the first generation will have sprung into life, 

 soon to go forth, from their shadowy corner of birth, disperse 

 over the neighbouring blossoms, people the rays of the sun 

 and quicken the smiling hours ; and then sacrifice themselves 

 in their turn to the new generation that already is filling 

 their place in the cradles. 



64 



And whom does the queen-bee obey ? She is ruled by 

 the nourishment given her, for she does not take her own 

 food, but is fed like a child by the very workers whom 

 her fecundity harasses. And the food these workers deal 

 out is nicely proportioned to the abundance of flowers, to the 

 spoil brought back by those who visit the calyces. Here, 

 then, as everywhere else in the world, one part of the circle 

 is folded in darkness ; here, as everywhere, it is from without, 

 from an unknown power, that the supreme order issues ; and 

 the bees, like ourselves, obey the nameless lord of the wheel 

 that incessantly turns on itself and crushes the wills that have 

 set it in motion. 



Some little time back I conducted a friend to one of 

 my hives of glass, and showed him the movements of this 

 wheel, that was as readily perceptible as the great wheel 

 of a clock — showed him, in all its bareness, the universal 

 agitation on every comb, the perpetual, frantic, bewildered 

 haste of the nurses around the brood-cells ; the living 

 gangways and ladders formed by the makers of wax ; the 



