It is pleasant to watch the intercourse between these charming creatures. The docile flower inclines and yields to the insect's unquiet movements. The shrine which it had closed against the winds, and the inquisitive glance, it opens to the beloved bee, which, impregnated by it, speeds afar on her message of love. The delicious precautions which Nature has taken to veil from profane eyes the mysteries enacted therein, do not delay for a moment the audacious seeker, who is completely at home, so to speak, and has no fear of being considered an intruder. One flower, for example, is protected by a couple of petals which join together in the form of an arch (as, for instance, the iris on the border of the waters, which in this manner defends from the rain its delicate little lovers). Another, like the sweet-pea, dons a kind of helmet, whose vizor must be lifted by its suitor. [Illustration] The bee takes its stand at the bottom of these recesses worthy of the fairies, covered with the softest tapestry, under fantastic pavilions, with walls of topaz, and roofs of sapphire. Paltry comparisons these, for they are borrowed from dead gems, while the flowers live, and feel, and desire, and wait. And if the happy conqueror of the little hidden kingdoms,--if the imperious violator of their innocent barriers, the insect, mingles and confuses everything, they readily whisper its pardon, overwhelm it with their sweetnesses, and load it with their honey. There are favoured localities, and there are happy hours, where and when the bee, while gathering its harvest, accomplishes--chaste toiler!--myriads of marriages. On the coasts, for example, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the savage sea, where one would hardly expect to meet with such pacific idyls, should there be but one shadowy, secure, and warm recess, Nature never fails, in the warm and humid mildness of that maternal retreat, to create a little chosen world; and there the flower distils to the bee its sweetest nectar,--there the bee assuages the impetuous yearning of the flower. Genial, bland, and still is the hour which precedes the evening. Caressed by the last rays of the sun, whose warmth it preserves within its bosom, besprinkled in its corolla by the light and already radiant mist, the flower becomes conscious of two lives and a twofold electricity; it is urged to love, and it loves! The stamens blaze forth, and scatter abroad their cloud of incense. Then at that charming and sacred hour let the mediatrix come; let the Samaritan bee appear! Let her collect the sweet odours dispersed by the evening breeze; let her redivide them with wise forethought, giving here and taking there! The blossoms are no longer solitary; through the agency of the bee, the meadow has been converted into a society where all understand and all love each other, initiated into the hymeneal rites by their friendly little high-priest.