“I dress myself in my father.”
The young Psyches in the same way dress themselves in their mother: they cover themselves with the clothes left behind by the deceased, they scrape from it the wherewithal to make themselves a cotton frock. The material employed is the pith of the little stalks, [[221]]especially of the pieces which, split lengthwise, are more easily stripped of their contents. The grub first finds a spot to suit it. Having done so, it gleans, it planes with its mandibles. Thus a superbly white wadding is extracted from old logs.
The manner of beginning the garment is worth noting. The tiny creature employs as judicious a method as any which our own industry could hope to discover. The wadding is collected in infinitesimal pellets. How are these little particles to be fixed as and when they are detached by the shears of the mandibles? The manufacturer needs a support, a base; and this support cannot be obtained on the caterpillar’s own body, for any adherence would be seriously embarrassing and would hamper freedom of movement. The difficulty is overcome very cleverly. Scraps of plush are gathered and by degrees fastened to one another with threads of silk. This forms a sort of rectilinear garland in which the particles collected swing from a common rope. When these preparations are deemed sufficient, the little creature passes the garland round its waist, at about the third segment of the thorax, so as to leave its six legs free; [[222]]then it ties the two ends with a bit of silk. The result is a girdle, generally incomplete, but soon completed with other scraps fastened to the silk ribbon that carries everything.
This girdle is the base of the work, the support. Henceforth, to lengthen the piece, to enlarge it into the perfect garment, the grub has only to fix, always at the fore-edge, with the aid of its spinnerets, now at the top, now at the bottom or side, the scraps of pith which the mandibles never cease extracting. Nothing could be better thought out than this initial garland laid out flat and then buckled like a belt around the loins.
Once this base is laid, the weaving-loom is in full swing. The piece woven is first a tiny string around the waist; next, by the addition of fresh pellets, always at the fore-edge, it grows into a scarf, a waistcoat, a short jacket and lastly a sack, which gradually makes its way backwards, not of itself, but through the action of the weaver, who slips forward in the part of the case already made. In a few hours, the garment is completed. It is by that time a conical hood, a cloak of magnificent whiteness and finish. [[223]]
We now know all about it. On leaving the maternal hut, without searching, without distant expeditions which would be so dangerous at that age, the little Psyche finds in the tender beams of the roof the wherewithal to clothe himself. He is spared the perils of roaming in a state of nudity. When he leaves the house, he will be quite warm, thanks to the mother, who takes care to instal her family in the old case and gives it choice materials to work with.
If the grub-worm were to drop out of the hovel, if some gust of wind swept him to a distance, most often the poor mite would be lost. Ligneous straws, rich in pith, dry and retted to a turn, are not to be found everywhere. It would mean the impossibility of any clothing and, in that dire poverty, an early death. But, if suitable materials are encountered, equal in quality to those bequeathed by the mother, how is it that the exile is unable to make use of them? Let us look into this.
I segregate a few new-born grubs in a glass tube and give them for their materials some split pieces of straw, picked from among the old stalks of a sort of dandelion, Pterotheca [[224]]nemausensis. Though robbed of the inheritance of the maternal manor, the grubs seem very well satisfied with my bits. Without the least hesitation, they scrape out of them a superb white pith and make it into a delicious cloak, much handsomer than that which they would have obtained with the ruins of the native house, this latter cloak being always more or less flawed with darker materials, whose colour has been impaired by long exposure to the air. On the other hand, the Nîmes dandelion, a relic of last spring, has its central part, which I myself lay bare, a spotless white; and the cotton nightcap achieves the very perfection of whiteness.
I obtain an even better result with rounds of sorghum-pith taken from the kitchen-broom. This time, the work has glittering crystalline points and looks like a thing built of grains of sugar. It is my manufacturers’ masterpiece.
These two successes authorize me to vary the raw material still further. In the absence of new-born caterpillars, who are not always at my disposal, I employ grubs which I have undressed, that is to say, which I have taken out of their caps. To these divested ones I [[225]]give, as the only thing to work upon, a strip of paper free from paste and easy to pick to pieces, in short, a piece of blotting-paper.