u and try to convince yourself of a
truth which has been proved indisputable by the experience of the
centuries. And that truth is this: so long as a man has life, there is
no need for him to despair. He may pass from the greatest misery to
the greatest joy, from the greatest misfortune to the highest
felicity. Take courage and, as though you were this very day beginning
to recognize the value of life, strive at every moment to make the
most of it."

This humdrum Chinese philosophy is not without merit. It suggests the
moralizing of the fabulist:

"_... Qu'on me rende impotent,
Cul-de-jatte, goutteux, manchot, pourvu qu'en somme
Je vive, c'est assez: je suis plus que content._"[2]

[Footnote 2: "... So powerless let me lie,
Gout-ridden, legless, armless; if only, after all,
I live, it is enough: more than content am I."]

Yes, yes, La Fontaine and Kung the philosopher are right: life is a
serious matter, which it will not do to throw away into the first bush
by the roadside like a useless garment. We must look upon it not as a
pleasure, nor yet as a punishment, but as a duty of which we have to
acquit ourselves as well as we can until we are given leave to depart.

To anticipate this leave is cowardly and foolish. The power to
disappear at will through death's trap-door does not justify us in
deserting our post; but it opens to us certain vistas which are
absolutely unknown to the animal.

We alone know how life's pageant closes, we alone can foresee our end,
we alone profess devotion to the dead. Of these high matters none
other has any suspicion. When would-be scientists proclaim aloud, when
they declare that a wretched insect knows the trick of simulating
death, we will ask them to look more closely and not to confound the
hypnosis due to terror with the pretence of a condition unknown to the
animal world.

Ours alone is the clear vision of an end, ours alone the glorious
instinct of the beyond. Here, filling its modest part, speaks the
voice of entomology, saying:

"Have confidence; never did an instinct fail to keep its promises."

CHAPTER XVI
THE CRIOCERES

I am a stubborn disciple of St. Thomas the Apostle and, before I agree
to anything, I want to see and touch it, not once, but twice, thrice,
an indefinite number of times, until my incredulity bows beneath the
weight of evidence. Well, the Rhynchites[1] have told us that the
build does not determine the instinc