174 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



she lays her first eggs, and her people immediately surround 

 her with the most particular care. From that moment, pos- 

 sessed of a dual sex, having within her an inexhaustible male, 

 she begins her veritable life ; she will never again leave the 

 hive, unless to accompany a swarm ; and her fecundity will 

 cease only at the approach of death. 



90 



Prodigious nuptials these, the most fairy-like that can 

 be conceived, azure and tragic, raised high above life by 

 the impetus of desire ; imperishable and terrible, unique and 

 bewildering, solitary and infinite. An admirable ecstasy, 

 wherein death, supervening in all that our sphere has of most 

 limpid and loveliest, in virginal, limitless space, stamps the 

 instant of happiness on the sublime transparence of the great 

 sky ; purifying in that immaculate light the something of 

 wretchedness that always hovers around love, rendering the 

 kiss one that can never be forgotten ; and, content this time 

 with moderate tithe, proceeding herself, with hands that are 

 almost maternal, to introduce and unite, in one body, for a 

 long and inseparable future, two little fragile lives. 



Profound truth has not this poetry, but possesses another 

 that we are less apt to grasp, which, however, we should end, 

 perhaps, by understanding and loving. Nature has not gone 

 out of her way to provide these two "abbreviated atoms," 

 as Pascal would call them, with a resplendent marriage, or 

 an ideal moment of love. Her concern, as we have said, was 

 merely to improve the race by means of crossed fertilisation. 

 To ensure this she has contrived the organ of the male in 



