And all this life and beauty, this gay glory and tremorous ecstasy and effort was here for moth-love of one incarnate fever of frail-winged loveliness! Oh! to what unguessed archangelic observation, to what infinite seraphic compassion, may not our own swarming race, who dare not too much pity ourselves, be but just such dainty ephemera! Splendid in purposes, intelligence, and affections as these in colors and grace, glorious when on the wing, and marvellous still, riddles of wonder, even when crawling and quivering, tipping and swerving from the upright and true, like these palpitating flowers of desire, now this way and now that, forever drawn and driven by the sweet tyrannies of instinct and impulse.
So rushed the thought in upon me, and if it was not of the divinest or manliest inspiration, at least it took some uncharity out of me for the moment. As in mechanical silence Fontenette obeyed the busy requests of the entomologist, I presently looked more on those two than on the winged multitude, and thought on, of the myriad true tales of love-weakness and love-wrath for which they and their two pretty mates were just now so unlucky as to stand; of the awful naturalness of such things; of the butterfly beauty and wonder—nay, rather the divine possibilities of the lives such things so naturally speed to wreck; and then of Tom Moore almost too playfully singing:
Ah! did we take for Heaven above
But half such pains as we
Take, day and night, for woman's love,
What Angels we should be!
But while I moralized there came a change. Beneath the entomologist's dark hand, as it searched and hurried throughout the room, the flutter of wings had ceased as under a wind of death.
"You must have a hundred and fifty of them," I said as the last victim ceased to flutter.
"Yes."
"Their sale is slow, of course, but every time you sell one, you ought to get"—I was judging by some prices he had charged me—"you ought to get two dollars." And I secretly rejoiced for Senda.
"I not can afford to sell t'em," he replied, with his back to me.
"Why, how so?"
"No, it iss t'is kind vhat I can exshange for five, six, maybe seven specimenss fon Ahfrica undt Owstrahlia. No, I vill not sell t'em."