thers--numbers of them--were
flying across the ceiling.

This astonishing sight recalled the prisoner of the morning to my mind.
"Put on your togs, kiddy!" I told my son; "put down your cage, and come
with me. We shall see something worth seeing."

We had to go downstairs to reach my study, which occupies the right wing
of the house. In the kitchen we met the servant; she too was bewildered
by the state of affairs. She was pursuing the huge butterflies with her
apron, having taken them at first for bats.

It seemed as though the Great Peacock had taken possession of my whole
house, more or less. What would it be upstairs, where the prisoner was,
the cause of this invasion? Happily one of the two study windows had
been left ajar; the road was open.

[Illustration: THE GREAT PEACOCK OR EMPEROR MOTH.]

Candle in hand, we entered the room. What we saw is unforgettable. With
a soft _flic-flac_ the great night-moths were flying round the
wire-gauze cover, alighting, taking flight, returning, mounting to the
ceiling, re-descending. They rushed at the candle and extinguished it
with a flap of the wing; they fluttered on our shoulders, clung to our
clothing, grazed our faces. My study had become a cave of a necromancer,
the darkness alive with creatures of the night! Little Paul, to reassure
himself, held my hand much tighter than usual.

How many were there? About twenty. To these add those which had strayed
into the kitchen, the nursery, and other rooms in the house, and the
total must have been nearly forty. It was a memorable sight--the Night
of the Great Peacock! Come from all points of the compass, warned I know
not how, here were forty lovers eager to do homage to the maiden
princess that morning born in the sacred precincts of my study.

For the time being I troubled the swarm of pretenders no further. The
flame of the candle endangered the visitors; they threw themselves into
it stupidly and singed themselves slightly. On the morrow we could
resume our study of them, and make certain carefully devised
experiments.

To clear the ground a little for what is to follow, let me speak of what
was repeated every night during the eight nights my observations lasted.
Every night, when it was quite dark, between eight and ten o'clock, the
butterflies arrived one by one. The weather was stormy; the sky heavily
clouded; the darkness was so profound that out of doors, in the garden
and away from the trees, one could scarcel