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