"Ah, mademoiselle, fancy! I haff by chance with my cultivator among your potatoes already twenty pupæ of the magnificent moth, Sphinx Atropos, upturned! See! Regard them, mademoiselle! What lucky chance! What fortune for me, an entomologist, this wonderful sphinx moth to discover encased within its chrysalis!" The girl smiled at his enthusiasm: "But, Karl, those funny, smooth brown things which resemble little polished evergreen-cones are not rare in my garden. Often, when spading or hoeing among the potato vines, I uncover them." "Mademoiselle, the caterpillar which makes this chrysalis feeds by night on the leaves of the potato, and, when ready to transform, burrows into the earth to become a chrysalis or pupa, as we call it. That iss why mademoiselle has often disinterred the pupæ of this largest and strangest of our native sphinx-moths." Maryette leaned over and looked into the wooden box, where lay the chrysalides. "What kind of moth do they make?" she asked. He blinked his small, pale eyes: "The Death’s Head," he said, complacently. The girl recoiled involuntarily: "Oh!" she exclaimed under her breath, "--_that_ creature!" For everywhere in France the great moth, with its strange and ominous markings, is perfectly well known. To the superstitious it is a creature of evil omen in its fulvous, black and lead-coloured livery of death. For the broad, furry thorax bears a skull, and the big, mousy body the yellow ribs of a skeleton. Measuring often more than five inches across the expanded wings, its formidable size alone might be sufficient to inspire alarm, but in addition it possesses a horrid attribute unknown among other moths and butterflies; it can utter a cry--a tiny shrill, shuddering complaint. Small wonder, perhaps, that the peasant holds it in horror--this sleek, furry, powerfully winged creature marked with skull and bones, which whirrs through the night and comes thudding against the window, and shrieks horridly when touched by a human hand. "So _that_ is what turns into the Death’s Head moth," said the girl in a low voice as though to herself. "I never knew it. I thought those things were legless cock-chafers when I dug them out of potato hills. Karl, why do you keep them?" "Ah, mademoiselle! To study them. To breed from them the moth. The Death’s Head is magnificent." "God made it," admitted the girl with a faint shudder, "but I am afraid I could not love it. When do they hatch out?" "It is time now. It is not like others of the sphinx family. Incubation requires but a few weeks. These are nearly ready to emerge, mademoiselle." "Oh. And then what do they do?" "They mate." She was silent. "The males seek the females," he said in his pedantic, monotonous voice. "And so ardent are the lovers that although there be no female moth within five, eight, perhaps ten miles, yet will her lover surely search through the night for her and find her."