The Life of the Bee 
mirror of wisdom and consciousness —do 
not imagine that either sea or sky is capable 
of lifting their thoughts or widening their 
minds. They have never looked at them. 
Nothing has power to influence or move 
them save three or four circumscribed fears : 
that of hunger, of force, of opinion and 
law, and the terror of hell when they die. 
To show what they are we should have to 
consider them one by one. See that tall 
fellow there on the right who flings up such 
mighty sheaves. Last summer his friends 
broke his right arm in some tavern row. I 
reduced the fracture, which was a bad and 
compound one. I tended him for a long 
time, and gave him the wherewithal to live 
till he should be able to get back to work. 
He came to me every day. He profited by 
this to spread the report in the village that 
he had discovered me in the arms of my 
sister-in-law, and that my mother drank. 
He is not vicious, he bears me no ill-will; 
on the contrary, see what a broad, open 
smile spreads over his face as he sees me. 
It was not social animosity that induced him 
to slander me. The peasant values wealth 
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