The Life of the Bee 
proportion that exists between the gifts 
she rains upon love and her niggardly 
doles to labour; between the favours she 
accords to what shall, in an ecstasy, create 
new life, and the indifference wherewith 
she regards what will patiently have to 
maintain itself by toil. Whoever would 
seek faithfully to depict, the character of 
nature, in accordance with the traits we 
discover here, would design an extraor- 
dinary figure, very foreign to our ideal, 
which nevertheless can only emanate from 
her. But too many things are unknown 
to man for him to essay such a portrait, 
wherein all would be deep shadow save 
one or two points of flickering light. 
[ 84 ] 
Very few, I imagine, have profaned the 
secret of the queen-bee’s wedding, which 
comes to pass in ‘the infinite, radiant 
circles of a beautiful sky. But’ we are 
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