He marvelled at the prodigality that Nature had displayed--at the treasures she had squandered to accomplish her purpose! She would create a million eggs to make one salmon; and she had created a million emotions to make one baby! What poems she had written for them--what songs she had composed for them! She had emptied the cornucopiae of her gifts into their lap! She had strewn the pathway with roses before them, she had filled their mouths with honey, and their ears with the sound of sweet music; she had blinded them, she had stunned them, she had sent them drunken and reeling to their fate! And the elaborate set of pretenses and illusions that she had invented for them! The devices to lull their suspicions--the virtues and renunciations, the humilities and the consecrations! Corydon had been frightened and evasive; Nature had made him suffer, so as to break her down! And he had been proud and defiant; and so Corydon, the meek and gentle, had been turned into a heroine of revolt! Nay, worse than that; those very powers and supremacies that he had thought were his protection--were they not, also, a part of the Snare? His culture and his artistry, his visions and his exaltations--what had they been but a lure for the female? The iris of the burnished dove, the ruff about the grouse’s neck, the gold and purple of the butterfly’s wing! Even his genius, his miraculous, ineffable genius--that had been the plume of the partridge, the crowning glory before which his mate had capitulated! These images came to Thyrsis, until he burst into wild, sardonic laughter. He saw himself in new and grotesque lights; he was the peacock, spreading his gorgeousness before a dazzled and wondering world; he was the young rooster, strutting before his mate, and thrilling with the knowledge of his own importance! He was each of the barnyard creatures by turn, and Corydon was each of the fascinated females. And somewhere, perhaps, stood the farmer, smiling complacently--for should there not be somewhere a farmer in this universal barnyard? But then, the laughter died; for he thought of Maeterlinck’s “Life of the Bee”, and shuddered at the fate of the male-creature. He was a mere accident in the scheme of Nature--she wasted all his splendors to accomplish the purpose of an hour. And now it had been accomplished. He had had his moment of ecstasy, his dizzy flight into the empyrean; and now behold him falling, disembowelled and torn, an empty shell! But no--it was not quite that way, Thyrsis told himself, after further reflection. In the human hive the male creature was not only the bearer of the seed he was also the worker. And so there was one more function he had to perform. All those fine frenzies of his, his ideals and his enthusiasms--they had served their purpose, and would fade; but before him there was still a future--a drab and dreary future of perpetual pot-boiling!