On the morning of the next day, the mass has disappeared underground. There is nothing left outside, or very nearly nothing. I am able to make a fairly close estimate and I find that each of my Geotrupes, presuming each of the twelve to have done an equal share of the work, has stowed away very nearly a cubic decimetre [23] of matter. A Titanic task, if we remember the insignificant size of the animal, which, moreover, has to dig the warehouse to which the booty must be lowered. And all this is done in the space of a night. So well provided, will they remain quietly underground with their treasure? Not they! The weather is magnificent. The hour of twilight comes, gentle and calm. This is the time of the great flights, the mirthful hummings, the distant explorations on the roads by which the herds have lately passed. My lodgers abandon their cellars and mount to the surface. I hear them buzzing, climbing up the wirework, knocking themselves wildly against the walls. I have anticipated this twilight animation. Provisions have been collected during the day, plentiful as those of yesterday. I serve them. There is the same disappearance during the night. On the morrow, the place is once again swept clean. And this would continue indefinitely, so fine are the evenings, if I always had at my disposal the wherewithal to satisfy those insatiable hoarders. Rich though his booty be, the Geotrupe leaves it at sunset to sport in the last gleams of daylight and to go in search of a new workplace. With him, one would say, the wealth acquired does not count; the only valid thing is that to be acquired. Then what does he do with his warehouses, renewed, in favourable times, at each new twilight? It is obvious that Stercorarius is incapable of consuming provisions so plentiful in a single night. He has such a superabundance of victuals in his larder that he does not know how to dispose of them; he is surfeited with good things by which he will not profit; and, not satisfied with having his store crammed, the acquisitive plutocrat slaves, night after night, to store away more. From each warehouse, set up here, set up there, as things happen, he deducts the daily meal beforehand; the rest, that is to say, almost the whole, he abandons. My voleries testify to the fact that this instinct for burying is more exacting than the consumer’s appetite. The ground is soon raised, in consequence; and I am obliged, from time to time, to lower the level to the desired limits. If I dig it up, I find it choked, throughout its depth, with hoards that have remained intact. The original earth has become an inextricable conglomerate, which I must prune with a free hand, if I would not go astray in my future observations.