word he does with them what he will, he obtains what he will,
provided always that what he seeks be in accordance with their laws
and their virtues; for beyond all the desires of this strange god
who has taken possession of them, who is too vast to be seen and too
alien to be understood, their eyes see further than the eyes of the
god himself; and their one thought is the accomplishment, with
untiring sacrifice, of the mysterious duty of their race.

[4]

Let us now, having learned from books all that they had to teach us
of a very ancient history, leave the science others have acquired
and look at the bees with our own eyes. An hour spent in the midst
of the apiary will be less instructive, perhaps; but the things we
shall see will be infinitely more stimulating and more actual.

I have not yet forgotten the first apiary I saw, where I learned to
love the bees. It was many years ago, in a large village of Dutch
Flanders, the sweet and pleasant country whose love for brilliant
colour rivals that of Zealand even, the concave mirror of Holland; a
country that gladly spreads out before us, as so many pretty,
thoughtful toys, her illuminated gables, and waggons, and towers;
her cupboards and clocks that gleam at the end of the passage; her
little trees marshalled in line along quays and canal-banks,
waiting, one almost might think, for some quiet, beneficent
ceremony; her boats and her barges with sculptured poops, her
flower-like doors and windows, immaculate dams, and elaborate,
many-coloured drawbridges; and her little varnished houses, bright
as new pottery, from which bell-shaped dames come forth, all
a-glitter with silver and gold, to milk the cows in the white-hedged