“A pet of mine,”—he answered, smiling slightly—“Did you ever see anything like it before?”
[p 55]
VI
I approached and examined the box he held. It was perforated with finely drilled holes for the admission of air, and within it lay a brilliant winged insect coloured with all the tints and half-tints of the rainbow.
“Is it alive?” I asked.
“It is alive, and has a sufficient share of intelligence,”—replied Rimânez. “I feed it and it knows me,—that is the utmost you can say of the most civilized human beings; they know what feeds them. It is quite tame and friendly as you perceive,”—and opening the case he gently advanced his forefinger. The glittering beetle’s body palpitated with the hues of an opal; its radiant wings expanded, and it rose at once to its protector’s hand and clung there. He lifted it out and held it aloft, then shaking it to and fro lightly, he exclaimed—
“Off, Sprite! Fly, and return to me!”
The creature soared away through the room and round and round the ceiling, looking like a beautiful iridescent jewel, the whirr of its wings making a faint buzzing sound as it flew. I watched it fascinated, till after a few graceful movements hither and thither, it returned to its owner’s still outstretched hand, and again settled there making no further attempt to fly.
“There is a well-worn platitude which declares that ‘in the midst of life we are in death’”—said the prince then softly, bending his dark deep eyes on the insect’s quivering wings—“But as a matter of fact that maxim is wrong as so many trite [p 56] human maxims are. It should be ‘in the midst of death we are in life.’ This creature is a rare and curious production of death, but not I believe the only one of its kind. Others have been found under precisely similar circumstances. I took possession of this one myself in rather a weird fashion,—will the story bore you?”
“On the contrary”—I rejoined eagerly, my eyes fixed on the radiant bat-shaped thing that glittered in the light as though its veins were phosphorescent.