the left, in wild disorder, incapable of keeping his
balance or making progress. And this happens with sudden jerks and
jolts, with a vigor no whit inferior to that of the animal in perfect
health. It is a displacement of all the works, a storm that uproots the
mutual relations of the muscles.

Seldom have I witnessed such sufferings, in my career as a
cross-examiner of animals and, therefore, as a torturer. I should feel a
scruple, did I not foresee that the grain of sand shifted today may one
day help us by taking its place in the edifice of knowledge. Life is
everywhere the same, in the Dung beetle's body as in man's. To consult
it in the insect means consulting it in ourselves, means moving towards
vistas which we cannot afford to neglect. That hope justifies my cruel
studies, which, though apparently so puerile, are in reality worthy of
serious consideration.

Of my dozen sufferers, some rapidly succumb, others linger for a few
hours. They are all dead by tomorrow. I leave the corpses on the
table, exposed to the air. Instead of drying and stiffening, like the
asphyxiated insects intended for our collections, my patients, on the
contrary, turn soft and slacken in the joints, notwithstanding the
dryness of the surrounding air; they become disjointed and separate into
loose pieces, which are easily removed.

The results are the same with the Capricorn, the cockchafer, the
Procrustes [a large ground beetle], the Carabus [the true ground beetle,
including the gold beetle]. In all of them there is a sudden break-up,
followed by speedy death, a slackening of the joints and swift
putrefaction. In a non-horny victim, the quick chemical changes of
the tissues are even more striking. A Cetonia grub, which resists the
scorpion's sting, even though repeatedly administered, dies in a very
short time if I inject a tiny drop of my terrible fluid into any part
of its body. Moreover, it turns very brown and, in a couple of days,
becomes a mass of black putrescence.

The great peacock, that large moth who recks little of the scorpion's
poison, is no more able to resist my inoculations than the sacred beetle
and the others. I prick two in the belly, a male and a female. At first,
they seem to bear the operation without distress. They grip the trellis
work of the cage and hang without moving, as though indifferent. But
soon the disease has them in its grip. What we see is not the tumultuous
ending of the sacred beetle; it is the c