HOW HE WAS DEFEATED 
317 
various systems of defence and fortification. Here they constructed a 
wall of wax, with narrow loopholes, through which the great enemy 
could not pass. There, by a more ingenious expedient, without creating 
a single impediment, they built up some inter-crossing arcades at the 
gates, or tiny cloisters one behind the other, but running in different 
directions,—that is to say, to the void left by the first corresponded 
the substance of the second. Thus was secured a number of openings 
for the impatient buzzing crowd, which might go in and out as usual, 
with no other difficulty than that of moving in a slightly zigzag 
fashion. At the same time, a complete barrier was obtained against the 
great and big enemy, which could no longer enter with expanded wings, 
nor even glide uninjured through the narrow corridors. 
It was the coup cVetat of the brute creation, the revolution of the 
insects, executed by the bees, not only against their plunderers, but 
against the calumniators who had denied their intelligence. The 
theorists who had refused to believe in it, the Malebranches and the 
Buffons, were compelled to own themselves beaten. They had to adopt 
the reserve of eminent observers, like Swammerdam and Reaumur, who, 
far from questioning the genius of insects, furnish us with numerous 
facts in proof of its flexibility, of its rising to the measure of great 
dangers, of its scorn of routine, and of its power to make unexpected 
progress under certain circumstances. 
