rpillars, and we would creep along the ground
upon our stomachs and our knees and hunt for leaves to eat. After having
done that for some time we played that we were very very sleepy, and we
would lie down in a corner under the trees and cover our heads with our
white aprons--we had become cocoons. We remained in this condition for
some time, and so thoroughly did we enter into the role of insects in
a state of metamorphosis, that any one listening would have heard pass
between us, in a tone of the utmost seriousness, conversations of this
nature:

"Do you think that you will soon be able to fly?"

"Oh yes! I'll be flying very soon; I feel them growing in my shoulders
now . . . they'll soon unfold." ("They" naturally referred to wings.)

Finally we would wake up, stretch ourselves, and without saying anything
we conveyed by our manner our astonishment at the great transformation
in our condition. . . .

Then suddenly we began to run lightly and very nimbly in our tiny shoes;
in our hands we held the corners of our pinafores which we waved as if
they were wings; we ran and ran, and chased each other, and flew about
making sharp and fantastic curves as we went. We hastened from flower
to flower and smelled all of them, and we continually imitated the
restlessness of giddy moths; we imagined too that we were imitating
their buzzing when we exclaimed: "Hou ou ou!" a noise we made by filling
the cheeks with air and puffing it out quickly through the half-closed
mouth.

CHAPTER XVI.

The butterflies, the poor butterflies that have gone out of fashion in
these days, played, I am ashamed to say, a large part in my life during
my childhood, as did also the flies, beetles and lady-bugs and all the
insects that are found upon flowers and in the grass. Although it gave
me a great deal of pain to kill them, I was making a collection of them,
and I was almost always seen with a butterfly net in my hand. Those
flying about in our yard, that had strayed our way from the country,
were not very beautiful it must be confessed, but I had the garden and
woods of Limoise which all the summer long was a hunting-ground ever
full of surprises and wonders.

But the caricatures by Topffer upon this subject made me thoughtful; and
when Lucette one day caught me with several butterflies in my hat, and
in her incomparably mocking voice called me, "Mr. Cryptogram," I was
much humiliated.

CHAPTER XVII.

The poor old gr