Her nurses, that she may enjoy a complete repose at the sacred moment, take the precaution to close up her cell; erecting over it a little dome, velvety, and of a tawny colour. For ten days she is a nymph, enveloped in a veil of exceeding whiteness and great delicacy, through which you can discern a miniature of mouth, eyes, wings, and feet. Twenty-one days suffice for her development. Then she scratches an opening in the little dome, and thrusts through it her head; next, with her fore-feet resting on the rim, she strenuously endeavours to disengage her whole body. It is a great effort; but the honey is close at hand to recruit her energies. At the first cell she falls in with she plunges into it her proboscis, and initiates herself into life.
She is still humid, gray, and very weak. So she hastens to get dry in the sun, to harden her soft and rumpled wings. There she is welcomed by her numerous kinswomen, who stroke and lick her amorously, and bestow on her a maternal kiss.
No creature is more richly endowed with implements, or more obviously intended for an industrial speciality. Each organ reads her its lesson, and informs her what she has to do. Lighted by five eyes and guided by a couple of antennæ, she carries in front, projecting beyond her mouth, an unique and marvellous instrument of taste,—the proboscis, or long external tongue,—which is of peculiar delicacy, and partly hairy that it may the more readily absorb and imbibe. Protected, when at rest, by a beautiful scaly sheath, the proboscis puts forth its fine point to touch a liquid; and this point wetted, draws it back into its mouth, where lies the internal tongue, a subtle judge of sensation, and the final authority.
To this delicate apparatus add some coarser attributes which indicate their own uses: hairs on every side to catch up the dust of the flowers, brushes on the thighs to sweep together the scattered harvest, and panniers to compress it into pellets of many colours. All these conjoined form the insignia of her trade.—Go, my daughter, and become a reaper!
Thou wilt desire nothing else, and thou wilt be fit for nothing else. The fairy virgins who prepared thy cradle, and feed thee daily, will bring thee up to be what they have been. Sober, laborious, and sterile, they practise a rigid economy; in them and in thee they maintain the pure flame of virginity by fasting, or at least by very scanty nourishment, while they banquet splendidly the future mother, though still a child, and are lavish towards the numerous, and, for the most part, useless tribe of males.
It is here we reach the fundamental strata of the City, the aristocracy of devotion and intelligence. The wax-makers, or bee-architects, if they consulted the wishes of the living queen, would never train up an heiress to her throne. She is blindly jealous, and as soon as the successor is born would have her put to death. They do not listen. Those firm sage heads, remembering that we all die, take counsel on the necessity of perpetuating the race. And, accordingly, by the side of the cells, or close little cradles which receive all the children of the republic, they build some spacious chambers, fifteen, nay, twenty times larger, in which the ordinary egg, favoured by the conditions of ease and liberty, may enlarge and develop at will all its natural faculties. The more certainly to ensure the superior growth of the chosen egg, they prodigalize upon it a stronger and more generous food, which shall give full liberty to its sex, and endow it with fecundity. Such is the efficacy of this potent liquor, that if the nurses accidentally let fall a drop or two on the neighbouring cradles, the little bees, rejoicing in the chance, participate in the queen-mother's fecundity, although in an inferior degree.
Madam,
Kings I have made, but never willed to be one.
[J'ai fait des rois, madame, et n'ai pas voulu l'être.]
This dramatic line perfectly characterizes the disinterestedness of these prudent nurses. They bestow all the world's gifts on their favourite,—a beautiful and ample habitation, a superior regimen, and that paradise of women—motherhood!
To the others, on the contrary,—to their sisters, who are born resembling them,—narrow cradles, coarse food, incessant work, and pain! These will go into the fields to sweat for the people and the mother; those, confined at home, will build incessantly, and attend to the young. No recreation is allowed to them; I do not think they have, like the ants, fêtes and gymnastic games. Their entire feast will be labour (from which the queen-mother is excused). To one alone they give love, and for themselves preserve nothing but wisdom.