This fourfold occupation of one dwelling is not an isolated instance: groups, regardless of sex, are not infrequent under the potsherds in the glass cage. I have already said that, in their original homes, I have never found two Scorpions under one stone. We must not infer from this that unsociable habits prohibit all intercourse among neighbours; we should be making a mistake: the glazed enclosure tells us so. There are cabins in more than sufficient numbers; each Scorpion would be able to choose himself a dwelling and thenceforth to occupy it as the jealous owner. Nothing of the kind takes place. Once the nocturnal excitement sets in, there is no such thing as a home respected by others. Everything is common property. Whoever wishes to slip under the first tile that offers does so without protest from the occupant. The Scorpions go abroad, walk about and enter any house they may chance upon. In this way, when the twilight diversions are over, groups of three, four, or sometimes more are formed without distinction of sex and, packed pretty closely in the narrow home, spend the rest of the night and the whole of the following day together. For that matter, theirs is only a temporary shanty, which is exchanged next evening for another, according to the strollers’ fancy. And these roving gipsies live quite peaceably. There is never any serious strife between them, even when they are five or six in the same messroom. Now this tolerance prevails only in the adults, due, no doubt, to some degree, to the fear of reprisals. There is another and more imperative reason for peaceful relations: concord is a necessity in assemblies at which the future is being prepared. The Scorpions’ characters therefore become assuaged, but not entirely: there are always perverse appetites among the females who are about to enter upon the period of gestation. I have always present in my mind the memory of the following odious spectacles. A heedless male, who has attained hardly a third or a fourth of his final size, is passing, unthinking, of evil, before the door of a dwelling. The fat matron comes out, accosts the poor wretch, picks him up in her claws, kills him with her sting and then quietly eats him. Scorpion lads and lasses, the one sooner, the other later, perish in the same manner in the glass cage. I scruple to replace the deceased: it would be providing fresh food for the slaughter. There were a dozen of them; and in a few days I have not one left. Without the excuse of hunger, for the regular victuals are plentiful, the females have devoured them all. Youth is certainly a beautiful thing, but it has terrible drawbacks in the society of these ogresses.