That is what I saw with all the leisure and ease that an observation needs in order to be above reproach. The Wasp acts with a precision that would make science turn green with envy; she knows what man hardly ever knows; she knows her victim’s complex nervous system and reserves her successive dagger-thrusts for the successive ganglia of her caterpillar. I said, she knows; what I should say is, she behaves as though she knew. Her act is simple inspiration. Animals obey their compelling instinct, without realizing what they do. But whence comes that sublime inspiration? Can theories of atavism, of natural selection, of the struggle for life interpret it reasonably? To me and my friend, this was and remained one of the most eloquent revelations of the unutterable logic that rules the world and guides the ignorant by the laws of its inspiration. Stirred to our innermost being by this flash of truth, both of us felt tears of undefinable emotion spring to our eyes. CHAPTER XIV THE BEMBEX One of my favourite spots for the observations which I will now describe is not far from Avignon, on the right bank of the Rhône, opposite the mouth of the Durance. It is the Bois des Issarts. Let not the reader mistake the value of this word bois, which usually suggests a carpet of cool moss and the shade of tall trees, with a dim light filtering through the leaves. The scorched plains where the Cicada grates out his ditty on the pale olive-tree know none of these delicious retreats filled with cool shadow. The Bois des Issarts is a coppice of holm-oaks no higher than one’s head and sparingly distributed in scanty clumps which, even at their feet, hardly temper the force of the sun’s rays. When I used to settle myself in some part of the coppice suitable for my observations, on certain afternoons in the dog-days of July and August, I had the shelter of a large umbrella, which later, in the most unexpected fashion, lent me a very precious aid of a different kind, as my story will show in good time. If I neglected to furnish myself with this embarrassing adjunct to a long walk, my only resource against sunstroke was to lie down at full length behind some sandy knoll; and, when the veins in my temples were throbbing to bursting point, my last hope lay in putting my head down a Rabbit-burrow. Such are one’s means of keeping cool in the Bois des Issarts.