“I can’t bear it!” cried the caterpillar. “It is killing me. Think of the butterflies: are they not beautiful? Don’t you like looking at them? Help me, do you hear! If I die, a butterfly dies. Only think, if one day there were no butterflies!”
“Well,” said the ant, “as for that, the world would go on, even if you are right. There are caterpillars enough in the garden and, if you really are butterflies’ children, there would be plenty left, even though a few did get lost. However, I have no time to speculate on this folly. If you wish to have my opinion in a nutshell, here it is, that your mother must have looked after you foolishly, for you to fall into the ichneumons’ power like this. And now I must go home and look after my children. Good-bye and bless you!”
Then the ant went away. The nightingale flew up into the bush and sang in the warm evening so that all had to listen and admire him and the swallow soared high into the air and prophesied fine weather for the morrow.
But the caterpillar crouched humbly over his cabbage-leaf and ate.
5
“I think there are too many of us in here,” said one of the ichneumon-grubs the next morning. “I can’t breathe.”
“There’s a way out of that,” said one of the others. “Let’s bite a hole in the creature’s air-ducts; then we’ll get air enough. But see that he has one or two left, or we shall risk his going and suffocating before his time.”
It was no sooner said than done. But the caterpillar screamed louder than ever.
“Air! Air! I shall die of suffocation!”
“No, you won’t,” replied the young ones. “But you had better accustom yourself to be content with little. Hurry back to the cabbage.”