"One morning, the faithful servant who aided him in all his experiments informed him that the bees had already solved the problem for themselves. They had in various hives conceived and carried out divers systems of defence and fortification. Here they had constructed a waxen wall, with narrow windows, through which the huge enemy could not pass; and there, by a more ingenious invention, without stirring anything, they had placed at their gates intersecting arcades or little partitions, one behind another, but alternating, so that opposite the empty spaces between those of the first row stood the partitions of the second row. Thus were contrived numerous openings for the impatient crowd of bees, who could go out and come in as usual, and without any other obstacle than the slight one of going a little zigzag; but limits, absolute obstructions, for the great, clumsy enemy, who could not enter with his unfolded wings, nor even insinuate himself without bruises between the narrow corridors. "This was the _coup d'état_ of the lower orders, the revolution of insects, executed by the bees, not only against those that robbed them, but against those that denied their intelligence. The theorists who refuse that to them, the Malebranches and the Buffons, must consider themselves conquered. We go back to the reserve of the great students of Nature, the Swammerdams, the Réaumurs, who, far from contesting the genius of insects, give us numberless facts to prove that it is flexible, that it can increase with dangers and with obstacles, that it can quit routine, and in certain circumstances make unexpected progress."