All go straight to the coarse faggot, which I left in contact with the wallet that was the chrysalis. Time presses. Before making your entrance into the world and going agrazing, you must first be clad. All therefore, with equal fury, attack the old sheath and hastily dress themselves in the mother’s cast clothes. Some turn their attention to bits that happen to be open lengthwise and scrape the soft, white inner layer; others, greatly daring, penetrate into the tunnel of a hollow stalk and go and collect their cotton goods in the dark. At such times the materials are first-class; and the garment woven is of a dazzling white. Others bite deep into the piece which they select and make themselves a motley garment, in which dark-coloured particles mar the snowy whiteness of the rest.
The tool which they use for their gleaning consists of the mandibles, shaped like wide shears with five strong teeth apiece. The two planes fit into each other and form an implement capable of seizing and slicing any fibre, however small. Seen under the microscope, it is a wonderful specimen of mechanical precision and power. Were the Sheep similarly equipped in proportion to her size, [[202]]she would browse upon the bottom of the trees instead of cropping the grass.
A very instructive workshop is that of the Psyche-vermin toiling to make themselves a cotton night-cap. There are numbers of things to remark in both the finish of the work and the ingenuity of the methods employed. To avoid repeating ourselves, we will say nothing about these yet, but wait for a little and return to the subject when setting forth the talents of a second Psyche, of larger stature and easier to observe. The two weavers observe exactly the same procedure.
Nevertheless let us take a glance at the bottom of the egg-cup, a general workyard in which I instal my dwarfs as the cases turn them out. There are some hundreds of them, with the sheaths from which they came and an assortment of clipped stalks, chosen from among the driest and richest in pith. What a whirl! What bewildering animation!
In order to see man, Micromégas cut himself a lens out of a diamond of his necklace; he held his breath lest the storm from his nostrils should blow the mite away. I in my turn will be the good giant, newly arriving from Sirius; I screw a magnifying-glass [[203]]into my eye and am careful not to breathe for fear of overturning and sweeping out of existence my cotton-workers. If I need one of them, to focus him under a stronger glass, I lime him as it were, seizing him with the fine point of a needle which I have passed over my lips. Taken away from his work, the tiny caterpillar struggles at the end of the needle, shrivels up, makes himself, small as he is, still smaller; he strives to withdraw as far as possible into his clothing, which as yet is incomplete, the merest flannel vest or even a narrow scarf, covering nothing but the top of his shoulders. Let us leave him to complete his coat. I give a puff; and the creature is swallowed up in the crater of the egg-cup.
And this speck is alive. It is industrious; it is versed in the art of blanket-making. An orphan, born that moment, it knows how to cut itself out of its dead mother’s old clothes the wherewithal to clothe itself in its turn. Soon it will become a carpenter, an assembler of timber, to make a defensive covering for its delicate fabric. What must instinct be, to be capable of awakening such industries in an atom!
It is at the end of June also that I obtain, [[204]]in his adult shape, the Psyche whose scabbard is continued underneath by a long, naked vestibule. Most of the cases are fastened by a silk pad to the trelliswork of the cage and hang vertically, like stalactites. Some few of them have never left the ground. Half immersed in the sand, they stand erect, with their rear in the air and their fore-part buried and firmly anchored to the side of the pan by means of a silky paste.
This inverted position excludes any idea of weight as a guide in the caterpillar’s preparations. An adept at turning round in his cabin, he is careful, before he sinks into the immobility of pupadom, to turn his head now upwards, now downwards, towards the opening, so that the adult insect, which is much less free than the larva in its movements, may reach the outside without obstacle.
Moreover, it is the pupa itself, the unbending chrysalis, incapable of turning and obliged to move all in one piece, which, stubbornly crawling, carries the male to the threshold of the case. It emerges half way at the end of the uncovered silky vestibule and there breaks, obstructing the opening with its slough as it does so. For a time the [[205]]Moth stands still on the roof of the cottage, allowing his humours to evaporate, his wings to spread and gather strength; then at last the gallant takes flight, in search of her for whose sake he has made himself so spruce.
He wears a costume of deepest black, all except the edges of the wings, which, having no scales, remain diaphanous. His antennæ, likewise black, are wide and graceful plumes. Were they on a larger scale, they would throw the feathered beauty of the Marabou and Ostrich into the shade. The bravely beplumed one visits case after case in his tortuous flight, prying into the secrets of those alcoves. If things go as he wishes, he settles, with a quick flutter of his wings, on the extremity of the denuded vestibule. Comes the wedding, as discreet as that of the smaller Psyche. Here is yet another who does not see or at most catches a fleeting glimpse of her for whose sake he has donned Marabou-feathers and a black-velvet cloak.