Our virgins of Tauris do not wait until Nature lays upon them her heavy hand and the ignoble leaden shroud of winter. They have borne the sword; they will die by the sword. The republic ends in a general massacre. The children, recently, ay, and still, so dear, are slain; dilatory children whom cold and want would kill to-morrow; their sisters, aunts, and affectionate nurses securing them at least the advantage of dying by the hands of those who love them. This latter gift, a speedy death, is freely bestowed on numerous unfortunates who had no thought of soliciting it,--on little useless males, even on young workers who were born late, and cannot boast of a constitution sufficiently strong to resist the winter. Let it not be said that the heroic race of wasps is ever seen to request the humiliating hospitality of the smoky roofs of man, and, for the sake of living a little longer, to expose its melancholy remains in the shambles of a spider's web! No, children! No, sisters! Die! The republic is immortal. Some one of us, favoured by the yearly miracle and great lottery of Nature, will be called upon to recommence the entire work. And if but one remains, it is enough. Should the world perish, a single true heart would suffice to re-create it. [Illustration] [Illustration: VI.--THE BEES: A TOMB AT PÈRE-LACHAISE.] [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. "THE BEES" OF VIRGIL. All modern writers have triumphed over the ignorance displayed by the poet Virgil in his fable of Aristæus, who draws life out of the womb of death, and causes his bees to spring from the entrails of immolated bulls.[Q] But, for myself, I have never laughed at it. I know, I feel, that every word of this great sacred poet has a weighty value, an authority which I would designate as that of an augur and a pontiff. And the fourth book of the _Georgics_, particularly, was a holy work, issuing from the inmost recesses of the heart. It was a pious homage rendered to sorrow and to friendship; an eulogium on the proscribed Gallus, Virgil's dearest friend. This eulogium, undoubtedly, was struck out by the prudent Mæcenas; and Virgil then substituted his Resurrection of the Bees: a song full of immortality, which, in the mystery of Nature's transformations, embodies our highest hope, that death is not a death, but the beginning of a new life. [Footnote Q: The passage to which Michelet refers is found in the fourth book of the _Georgics_, and is thus translated by Dryden:--