than being destined to spring from it! Such
industry and skill in a mere husk which will
shortly wither and be cast to the winds!
However this may be, one fine morning, some
sort of irritation or restlessness, some mysterious
impulse, drives the creature to a new
task. You would say that withinside itself,
another self excites and agitates it, to a given
course already traced out, with the full intention
of becoming—what? Does it know
itself? We cannot say; but we see that it
acts and conducts itself wisely and prudently
exactly as if it did know. The
presentiment of the slumber, which will steal
over it, paralyse it, and expose it unresisting
to all its enemies, causes it all at once
to display fresh activity.

"Let us work well!" it says. "Let us work
quickly! Ah, what a sound sleep I am going
to enjoy!"

The strange drama of metamorphosis, which
the insect performs, and the thoughts of
immortality which it suggested to the sages of
Egypt, have calmed more terrors and dried
more tears than all the mysteries of Canopus
and all the festivals of Eleusis. What is
death? What is life? What is the waking
state, and what is sleep? Behold that miniature
miracle, mute confidant of the grave,
who plays for our instruction the game of
destiny. He sleeps in the egg, and, later on,
he sleeps again in the nymph. Thrice is he
born, and thrice he dies, as larva, nymph, and
scarabæus. In each of his existences, he is
the larva or mask, the figure of the existence
which is to follow. He prepares, brings forth,
and hatches himself. He bursts, shining
brightly, from his sombre sepulchre. On the
grey plains of Egypt, in its moments of
drought, he glitters and eclipses every rival,
Reflected from his jewelled wings, the
all-powerful sun beholds his own image. Where
was he? In unclean darkness, in night and
death. A deity has evoked the beetle from
his grave; he will do the same for a beloved
soul. Happy ray of light!—hope founded on
justice, on the impartial love of the Creator
of all things living. The bereaved on the
earth trust that, to those whom they have
lost, the same measure shall be meted as is
vouchsafed to the insect. Shall man receive
a less degree of favour than is accorded to
the brother of the gnat and the cousin of the
moth?

Modern science, partially and apparently,
broke the spell of this ancient poetic mystery.
Swammerdam tound that the caterpillar
contained the nymph, and even the future
butterfly.

In the caterpillar he detected the sketch
of the wing and of the proboscis of the coming
insect. Nay, more, Réaumur found in a caterpillar
only a few hours' old, the eggs of the future
butterfly. That is to say, the infant insect,
at so early a stage that the caterpillar is
little more than an egg gifted with locomotion
—this infant, this moving egg, contains
eggs and infants. There appears here to be
an identity of the three different beings;
these are no longer intermediate deaths
apparently; one single life goes on. Is the
ancient mystery destroyed? Has man, in
his plentitude, penetrated the secret of things?
Réaumur himself thought not; he confessed
that his most careful observations left very
much to be desired.

In the metamorphosis of the caterpillar,
everything is, and must be, changed. The
legs will be legs no longer; he requires
perfectly slim ones. What does a child of air,
who will scarcely alight on the tips of the
grass, want with short, clumsy paws armed
with hooks, suckers, and all sorts of cumbrous
tools? The head will be the head no
longer; at least the enormous apparatus of
jaw disappears, and with it the muscles,
which set it in motion. All that is cast away
together with the mask. Enormous prodigy!
The creature changes from a masticating to a
sucking animal. A wonderfully flexible trunk
is uncoiled. If anything appeared to be
fundamental in the caterpillar, it was the digestive
organs. Well, this very foundation of
its being is gone! Absorbent gullet, powerful
stomach, greedy entrails, are all suppressed
or are reduced almost to nothing. Of
what use would they be to the new being
which, as in certain species of butterflies,
dispenses with food, and has a mouth merely
for form's sake and the pleasure of sipping a
little honey? It makes no hardship of yielding
up a useless piece of furniture, and
expectorates the skin of its stomach.

With what a marvellous feeling of security
is this creature gifted, who quits everything
belonging to him, who unhesitatingly leaves
behind his former strong and solid existence, the
complicated organisation which, a little while
ago, was himself,—his own proper person! It
is called his larva—his mask; but why? The
personality appears to be at least as energetic
in the vigorous caterpillar as in the delicate
butterfly. It is therefore really his personal
individuality which he courageously allows to
shrivel up to nothing, in order to become,
what? no very reassuring substance—a short,
soft, whitish mass. Open the nymph soon
after she has spun her shroud, and you will
find only a sort of milky fluid, wherein all that
you can trace are doubtful lineaments which
you see or fancy that you see. After a certain
time, you may, with a fine needle, isolate
these ambiguous organs and imagine that
they are the members of the future butterfly.
A fearful interval! In most species, there is
a moment when everything old has
disappeared, and when nothing new has yet
assumed form or shape. When Æson, to
be restored to youth, was cut into pieces
and thrown into Medea's cauldron, you
might have found in the mess the limbs of
Æson ; but here, there is nothing of the
kind.

Nevertheless, the mummy swathes itself in