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.

So rushed the thought in upon me, and if it was not of the divinest or
manliest inspiration, at least it took some uncharity out of me for the
moment. As in mechanical silence Fontenette obeyed the busy requests of
the entomologist, I presently looked more on those two than on the winged
multitude, and thought on, of the myriad true tales of love-weakness and
love-wrath for which they and their two pretty mates were just now so
unlucky as to stand; of the awful naturalness of such things; of the
butterfly beauty and wonder--nay, rather the divine possibilities of the
lives such things so naturally speed to wreck; and then of Tom Moore
almost too playfully singing:


Ah! did we take for Heaven above
But half such pains as we
Take, day and night, for woman's love,