THE PALLADIUM OF THE STATE. 
239 
mortar which closes up the holes, the soldiers attacking the assailants 
and drawing blood with their sharp pincers, clinging to the wound, and 
suffering themselves to be crushed rather than let go. A naked man 
(like the negro) shrinks under these bites, grows discouraged, and is 
conquered. 
If you still persist, if you penetrate, you admire the palace, its 
circuits, its corridors, its aerial bridges, the halls or saloons where the 
population lodge, the nurseries for the eggs, the caves, cellars, or 
magazines. But, above all, search to the centre. There lurks the 
mystery of this little world; there is its palladium, its idol, incessantly 
surrounded by the cares of an enthusiastic crowd. A strange and 
shocking object, which is not the less obeyed, and visibly adored! 
It is the queen, or common mother, frightfully fecund, from whose 
body issues an uninterrupted flood of about sixty eggs per minute, or 
eighty thousand eggs per day ! 
You can conceive of nothing more fantastic. These strange crea¬ 
tures, which we compare to vermin, have nevertheless their moment 
of supreme poesy, their hour of love; for a moment their wings uplift 
them, and almost immediately they sink. The couples thus bereft, 
having neither refuge nor strength, and no means of resistance, are a 
prey for all the insects,—a manna upon which they straightway throw 
themselves. The working termites, which have neither love nor wings, 
endeavour to save a couple of the victims, welcome them,—weak, and 
fallen, and wretched as they are,—and make them monarchs. 
They remove them to the centre of the city, and establish them in 
the saloon on which all the apartments and corridors abut. There 
they are revived, recruited, and nourished day and night; and the 
female gradually assumes an enormous size, until in body and stomach 
she is two thousand times larger than her natural condition,—though, 
by a hideous contrast, the head does not increase. For the rest, immov¬ 
able, and therefore captive, the doors through which she entered have 
become infinitely too narrow to admit of the egress of such a monster. 
Accordingly, there she will remain, pouring out, until she splits asunder, 
that torrent of living matter which the termites day and night collect, 
and which, to-morrow, will be the People. 
