The entomologist had lighted up the room,
and it was filled, filled! with gorgeous moths as large as my hand and all
of a kind, dancing across one another's airy paths in a bewildering maze
or alighting and quivering on this thing and that. The mosquito-net,
draping almost from ceiling to floor, was beflowered with them
majestically displaying in splendid alternation their upper and under
colors, or, with wings lifted and vibrant, tipping to one side and another
as they crept up the white mesh, like painted and gilded sails in a
fairies' regatta.
And all this life and beauty, this gay glory and tremorous ecstasy and
effort was here for moth-love of one incarnate fever of frail-winged
loveliness! Oh! to what unguessed archangelic observation, to what
infinite seraphic compassion, may not our own swarming race, who dare not
too much pity ourselves, be but just such dainty ephemera! Splendid in
purposes, intelligence, and affections as these in colors and grace,
glorious when on the wing, and marvellous still, riddles of wonder, even
when crawling and quivering, tipping and swerving from the upright and
true, like these palpitating flowers of desire, now this way and now that,
forever drawn and driven by the sweet tyrannies of instinct and impulse.
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