"Who would not respect the misfortune of such blameless and over-eager workers? I lent them not only a roof, and the warmth of an apartment closed to the wind and open to the sun, but immediately improvised for them a friendly repast. Where? At the bottom of a sugar-basin. "The chilly creatures, having revived at a genial beam their lost warmth, and restored to a good condition all the little electric world of hairs with which they bristle, began the exploration of their temporary prison, and were agreeably surprised to find the crystal a dining-hall. With a good appetite, seating themselves at the table, they attacked a fragment of sugar, and sucked up with their proboscis all the sweetness they could find. When they had finished their repast, and were completely restored, were fluttering to and fro, demanding the way out, I set them free, without causing them to lose one moment of a day already far advanced. With a rapid flight, charmed by the noonday sun, they returned to their occupations, distinctly humming:--'Farewell, madam, and many thanks!'" [Illustration] [Illustration: VIII.--THE BEES AS ARCHITECTS.] [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII. THE BEES AS ARCHITECTS: THE CITY. If the wasp's nest resemble Sparta, the bee-hive is the veritable Athens of the Insect World. There, all is art. The people--the artist-élite of the people--incessantly create two things; on the one hand, the City, the country,--on the other, the Universal Mother, whose task it is not only to perpetuate the race, but to become its idol, its _fetish_, the living god of the community. The bees share with the wasps, the ants, and all the sociable insects, the disinterested life of aunts and sisters,--laborious virgins, who devote themselves entirely to an adoptive maternity. But from these analogous peoples the bee differs in the necessity it is under of creating a national idol, the love of which impels it to work. All this has been long misunderstood. It was at first supposed that this State was a monarchy, _that it possessed a king_. Not at all; the king is a female. Thereupon one is driven to say, _This female is a queen_. Another error. Not only does she not govern, or reign, or control, but in certain conjunctions she is governed, and sometimes even placed in private confinement. She is at once something more and something less than a queen. She is an object of legal and public adoration; I should say legal and constitutional, for this adoration is not so blind but that the idol, in some cases, as we shall see, may be treated very severely.