For lack of taking this precaution, I very nearly wasted a year. Relying on what I had read, I did not look for the family of the Languedocian Scorpion until September; and I obtained it quite unexpectedly in July. The difference between the real and the anticipated date I ascribe to the disparity of the climates: my observations were all made in Provence and my informant, Léon Dufour, [47] made his in Spain. Notwithstanding the master’s high authority, I ought to have been on my guard. I was not; and I should have lost the opportunity if, as luck would have it, the Common Black Scorpion had not taught me. Ah, how right was Pasteur not to know the chrysalis! The Common Scorpion, smaller and much less active than the other, was reared, for purposes of comparison, in some humble glass jam-pots standing on the table in my study. These unassuming receptacles did not take up much room and were easy to examine and I made a point of visiting them daily. Every morning, before sitting down to blacken a few pages of my diary with prose, I invariably lifted the piece of cardboard which I employed to shelter my boarders and enquired into the happenings of the night. These daily inspections were not so feasible in the large glass cage, whose numerous dwellings would all be thrown into confusion, if they were to be examined one by one and then methodically set in order as discovered. With my pots of Black Scorpions, the inspection was the matter of a moment. It was well for me that I always had this auxiliary establishment before my eyes. On the 22nd of July, at six o’clock in the morning, raising the cardboard screen, I found a mother beneath it, with her little ones clustering on her back like a sort of white cloak. I experienced one of those moments of sweet contentment which, at intervals, reward the long-suffering observer. For the first time I had before my eyes the fine spectacle of the Scorpioness clad in her young. The delivery was quite recent: it must have taken place during the night, for, on the previous evening, the mother was naked. Further successes awaited me: on the next day, a second mother is whitened with her brood: the day after that, two others at a time are in the same condition. That makes four. It is more than my ambition hoped for. With four families of Scorpions and a few quiet days before me, we may find some pleasure in life. All the more so as fortune loads me with her favours. Ever since the first discovery in the jars, I have been thinking of the glass jars and asking myself whether the Languedocian Scorpion might not be as forward as her black sister. Let us make haste and see.