The Nuptial Flight 
millions of germs are floating, which, until 
her last day, will issue one by one, as the 
eggs pass by, and in the obscurity of her 
body accomplish the mysterious union of the 
male and female element, whence the worker 
bees are born. Through a curious inversion, 
it is she who furnishes the male principle, 
and the drone who provides the female. 
Two days after the union she lays her first 
eggs, and her people immediately surround 
her with the most particular care. From 
that moment, possessed 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. 
go 
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 
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