the earth to become a chrysalis or pupa, as we call it. That iss why
mademoiselle has often disinterred the pupae of this largest and strangest
of our native sphinx-moths."

Maryette leaned over and looked into the wooden box, where lay the
chrysalides.

"What kind of moth do they make?" she asked.

He blinked his small, pale eyes:

"The Death's Head," he said, complacently.

The girl recoiled involuntarily:

"Oh!" she exclaimed under her breath, "--_that_ creature!"

For everywhere in France the great moth, with its strange and ominous
markings, is perfectly well known. To the superstitious it is a creature
of evil omen in its fulvous, black and lead-coloured livery of death. For
the broad, furry thorax bears a skull, and the big, mousy body the yellow
ribs of a skeleton.

Measuring often more than five inches across the expanded wings, its
formidable size alone might be sufficient to inspire alarm, but in
addition it possesses a horrid attribute unknown among other moths and
butterflies; it can utter a cry--a tiny shrill, shuddering complaint.
Small wonder, perhaps, that the peasant holds it in horror--this sleek,
furry, powerfully winged creature marked with skull and bones, which
whirrs through the night and comes thudding against the window, and
shrieks horridly when touched by a human hand.

"So _that_ is what turns into the Death's Head moth," said the girl in a
low voice as though to herself. "I never knew it. I thought those things
were legless cock-chafers when I dug them out of potato hills. Karl, why
do you keep them?"

"Ah, mademoiselle! To study them. To breed from them the moth. The Death's
Head is magnificent."

"God made it," admitted the girl with a faint shudder, "but I am afraid I
could not love it. When do they hatch out?"

"It is time now. It is not like others of the sphinx family. Incubation
requires but a few weeks. These are nearly ready to emerge, mademoiselle."

"Oh. And then what do they do?"

"They mate."

She was silent.

"The males seek the females," he said in his pedantic, monotonous voice.
"And so ardent are the lovers that although there be no female moth within
five, eight, perhaps ten miles, yet will her lover surely search through
the night for her and find her."

Maryette shuddered again in spite of herself. The thought of this creature
marked with the emblems of death and possessed of ardour, too, was
distasteful.

"Amour macabre--what an unpleasant though