This seems to me as difficult to believe as if you told me that John, James, Peter,—in fact, all men,—were only temporary bodies from which more perfect beings would one day emerge. For the medium in which these masked creatures live,—the troubled and muddy medium for which they are adapted by their organisation, and in which they seem destined to live out their life,—differs wholly and absolutely from the aërial medium wherein, you tell me, they will one day rejoice.
Do you see, on the brink of the pond, those dried-up bodies? They are those of your aquatic insects, the mortal remains of Libellulites; they have rent open their vest, as you would do a garment which had become too narrow; the rent is very conspicuous along the back; and through the fissure issue the winged and aërial resuscitated Dragon-flies, summoned to live in a world differing so widely from their former one! Under the tongues were folded up the wings, and the mask that puzzled you so greatly is split open on the level of the sutures, so as to represent a ⟙, wanting only a handle to reproduce one of those hieroglyphics (☥) which are found so frequently on the Egyptian monuments, and which, according to some Egyptologists, signify eternal life.
And here, my friend and companion, we may take leave of
"The great Dragon-fly with gauzy wings."
BOOK III.
——♦——
SUMMER.
Blessed, thrice blessed is the man with whom