The Life of the Bee 
[85] 
Most creatures have a vague belief that 
a very precarious hazard, a kind of trans- 
parent membrane, divides death from 
love; and that the profound idea of 
nature demands that the giver of life 
should die at the moment of giving. 
Here this idea, whose memory lingers still 
over the kisses of man, is realised in its 
primal simplicity. No sooner has the 
union been accomplished than the male’s 
abdomen opens, the organ detaches itself, 
dragging with it the mass of the entrails; 
the wings relax, and, as though struck by 
lightning, the emptied body turns and 
turns on itself and sinks down into the 
abyss. 
The same idea that, before, in partheno- 
genesis, sacrificed the future of the hive to 
the unwonted multiplication of males, now 
sacrifices the male to the future of the hive. 
306 
