glass, wanting to be out in that splendour and renew their
life after so long a period of suspension. But the glass was
between them and their world of blue heavens and woods and
meadow flowers; then I thought that after the service I would
make an attempt to get them out; but soon reflected that to
release them it would be necessary to capture them first, and
that that could not be done without a ladder and butterfly
net. Among the women (ladies) on either side of and before me
there were no fewer than five wearing aigrettes of egret and
bird-of-paradise plumes in their hats or bonnets, and these
five all remained to take part in that ceremony of eating
bread and drinking wine in remembrance of an event supposed to
be of importance to their souls, here and hereafter. It
saddened me to leave my poor red admirals in their prison,
beating their red wings against the coloured glass--to leave
them too in such company, where the aigrette wearers were
worshipping a little god of their own little imaginations, who
did not create and does not regard the swallow and dove and
white egret and bird-of-paradise, and who was therefore not my
god and whose will as they understood it was nothing to me.

It was a consolation when I went out, still thinking of the
butterflies in their prison, and stood by the old ruined walls
grown over with ivy and crowned with oak and holly trees, to
think that in another two thousand years there will be no
archaeologist and no soul in Silchester, or anywhere else in
Britain, or in the world, who would take the trouble to dig up
the remains of aigrette-wearers and their works, and who would
care what had become of their pitiful little souls--their
immortal part.