The contents of the cellar consist of a single ball, a [[208]]masterpiece of art. It is a copy of the Sacred Beetle’s pear on a very much reduced scale, its smallness making the polish of the surface and the elegance of the curves all the more striking. Its diameter, at the broadest point, measures one-half to three-quarters of an inch.

One more observation about the Sisyphus. Six couples under the wire-gauze cover gave me fifty-seven pears containing one egg each—an average of over nine grubs to each couple. The Sacred Beetle is far from reaching this figure. To what cause are we to attribute this large brood? I can see but one: the fact that the father works as well as the mother. Family burdens that would exceed the strength of one are not too heavy when there are two to bear them. [[209]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER XIV

THE CAPRICORN

[[Contents]]

I

THE GRUB’S HOME

An eighteenth-century philosopher, Condillac, describes an imaginary statue, organised like a man, but with none of a man’s senses. He then pictures the effect of endowing it with the five senses, one by one, and the first sense he gives it is that of smell. The statue, having no sense but smell, inhales the scent of a rose, and out of that single impression creates a whole world of ideas. In my youth I owed some happy moments to that statue. I seemed to see it come to life in that action of the nostrils, acquiring memory, concentration, judgment, and other mental qualities, even as still waters are aroused and rippled by the impact of a grain of sand. I recovered from my illusion under the teaching of my abler master the animal. The Capricorn taught me that the problem is more obscure than the Abbé Condillac led me to suppose.

When my winter supply of firewood is being prepared for me with wedge and mallet, the woodman selects, by my express orders, the oldest and most ravaged trunks [[210]]in his stack. My tastes bring a smile to his lips; he wonders by what whimsy I prefer wood that is worm-eaten to sound wood, which burns so much better. I have my views on the subject, and the worthy man submits to them.