If either the exertion or the pain inspire it with a transient gleam of thought, it would say, on each painful occasion: "Now it is ended! I have finished my task; I will rest in peace; this is my last change." To which Nature would respond: "Not yet! not yet! Thou art not yet engendered. What art thou? Nothing but a larva, a mask which is about to fall." What! A mask! and yet it wills and toils, strives and suffers, and sometimes seems more advanced than will be the being produced from it! So much industry and skill imprisoned in a skin which will immediately dry up and be blown away by the breeze! However this may be, it is seized one morning by an undefinable kind of irritability and disquiet,--by a mysterious impulse which excites it to undertake a new task. You would say that within itself another self exists, moving, and stirring, and following up a distinct purpose, and yearning to become--what? does it know? This I cannot assert; but after awhile you may see it acting, and acting sagaciously, as if inspired by a perfect knowledge. Its presentiment of the slumber which will shortly seize upon it, paralyze its forces, and surrender it helplessly to all its enemies, incites it to the sudden display of a novel activity. "Let us work well! Let us work quickly! For soon I shall sleep soundly." [Illustration] [Illustration: VI.--THE MUMMY, NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS.] [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. THE MUMMY, NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS. Let us respect the childhood of the world. Let us pardon the early ages for the consolations and hopes which they drew from the strange drama represented by the Insect, the thoughts of immortality which grave Egypt founded upon it. This drama tranquillized more hearts and wiped away more tears than all the mysteries of Canopus or the revels of Eleusis. When the mourning widow, the eternal Isis, ever reproducing herself in eternal anguish, was snatched from her beloved Osiris, she reposed her hope of a future reunion on the sacred beetle, and hushed her sobs. What is death? What is life? What is the awakening, or what the slumber? Do you not see this little miracle, this dumb confidant of the grave, which makes us the mock of destiny? It sleeps in the egg, and afterwards sleeps again in the nymph. It is thrice born; and it dies thrice--as larva, nymph, and beetle. In each of these existences the larva or mask is the prefigurement of the succeeding existence. It prepares, begets, and hatches itself. From the most repulsive sepulchre it emerges sparkling. On the dust it shines; on the gray Egyptian plain, in its season of aridity, it shimmers, and eclipses everything. Its jewelled wing mirrors the all-powerful sun. Where was it? In the foul shadow, in night and death. A deity has summoned it forth, and will yet do much more for this beloved soul! Sweet, tender ray! The hope was surely founded upon justice, on the impartial love of the Creator of all life.