The Life of the Bee 
familiar images beneath its curtain of pop- 
lars, 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 
aérial 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; and another lesson, 
too, with a moral as good, that these heroic 
workers taught there, and emphasised, as 
it were, with the fiery darts of their myriad 
Wings, was to appreciate the somewhat 
vague savour of leisure, to enjoy the almost 
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