awkwardness, I have turned an elegant vase into a wretched cracked
pot.

I was right in my conjecture: the Bee's intention was to break open
the door. Straight away, without heeding the raggedness of the
orifice, she settles down in the cell which I have opened for her.
Time after time, she fetches honey and pollen, though the larder is
already fully stocked. Lastly, she lays her egg in this cell which
already contains an egg that is not hers, having done which she closes
the broken aperture to the best of her ability. So this purveyor had
neither the knowledge nor the power to bow to the inevitable. I had
made it impossible for her to go on with her purveying, unless she
first completed the unfinished cell substituted for her own. But she
did not retreat before that impossible task. She accomplished her
work, but in the absurdest way: by injuriously trespassing upon
another's property, by continuing to store provisions in a cupboard
already full to overflowing, by laying her egg in a cell in which the
real owner had already laid and lastly by hurriedly closing an orifice
that called for serious repairs. What better proof could be wished of
the irresistible propensity which the insect obeys?

Lastly, there are certain swift and consecutive actions so closely
interlinked that the performance of the second demands a previous
repetition of the first, even when this action has become useless. I
have already described how the Yellow-winged Sphex (Cf. "Insect Life":
chapters 6 to 9.--Translator's Note.) persists in descending into her
burrow alone, after depositing at its edge the Cricket whom I
maliciously at once remove. Her repeated discomfitures do not make her
abandon the preliminary inspection of the home, an inspection which
becomes quite useless when renewed for the tenth or twentieth time.