Unity is thus secured. The survivor, who, if conquered, would have been flung aside without regret, now that she is victorious becomes the idol and living deity of the commonwealth; but let her remember, on the express condition of perpetuating the people and proving continuously prolific. Let us suppose a deplorable misfortune,--that every mother has perished. What then becomes of the orphaned world? Does it fall, as some have asserted, into complete demoralization? Does such a calamity entail a furious anarchy, a universal pillage of the people by the people themselves? By no means, says M. Debeauvoys. A few hours of trouble, pain, wrath, and apparent delirium follow. The bees flutter to and fro in great agitation, and suspend their work; for a moment they even neglect the nurslings. But a people so grave and dignified at bottom soon resume their dignity, and remember what they owe to themselves. The mother is dead? Long live the mother! We know how to create another. What we were yesterday, so are we to-day. The last will be first. They turn to the youngest child of the people, who has barely opened her shell, who has not had time to undergo the confinement of a narrow cradle, who has not yet grown lean on the scanty fare of an artisan. This fare is not honey, but merely the dust of flowers which naturalists call _bees' bread_. Those who have been previously fed upon poorer fare will remain little; they no longer possess the faculty of transformation. But this young bee, so soft and so tender, will become whatever you will; and in order that she may develop into a true female, a bee of love, and a prolific mother, what is necessary? Liberty. Let them provide her with a vast cradle where her young life may float, and agitate, and develop, at ease. It will cost three cradles destroyed to provide for hers, and the lives of three infants, who will perish before birth; but what matter, if in a year she supplies the nation with ten thousand? The consecration of the mother of the people is that living nourishment which the people extract from themselves, and in which they mingle their bee-sweetness with the balmy essence of the flowers. A strong and noble nourishment, rich in the intoxicating perfume of aromatic herbs, richer in the virginal love concentrated upon it by thirty thousand sisters for the behoof of the marvellous child who belongs to them all.