The Life of the Bee 
enlarging the opening from within. The 
nurses at once come running; they help 
the young bee to emerge from her prison, 
they clean her and brush her, and at 
the tip of their tongue they present the 
first honey of the new life. But the 
bee that has come from another world is 
bewildered still, trembling and pale; she 
wears the feeble look of a little old man 
who might have escaped from his tomb, 
or perhaps of a traveller strewn with the 
powdery dust of the ways that lead unto 
life. She is perfect, however, from head 
to foot; she knows at once all that has 
to be known; and, like the children of 
the people, who learn, as it were, at their 
birth, that for them there shall never be 
time to play or to laugh, she instantly 
makes her way to the cells that are closed, 
and proceeds to beat her wings and to 
dance in cadence, so that she in her turn 
may quicken her buried sisters; nor does 
she for one instant pause to decipher the 
astounding enigma of her destiny, or her 
race. 
192 
