第77章

The little dried-up specialist did not dilate into fighting dimensions as--perhaps, again--the Master may have thought he would.

He looked a mild surprise, but remained as quiet as one of his own beetles when you touch him and he makes believe he is dead.The blank silence became oppressive.Was the Scarabee crushed, as so many of his namesakes are crushed, under the heel of this trampling omniscient?

At last the Scarabee creaked out very slowly, "Did I understand you to ask the following question, to wit?" and so forth; for I was quite out of my depth, and only know that he repeated the Master's somewhat complex inquiry, word for word.

--That was exactly my question,--said the Master,--and I hope it is not uncivil to ask one which seems to me to be a puzzler.

Not uncivil in the least,--said the Scarabee, with something as much like a look of triumph as his dry face permitted,--not uncivil at all, but a rather extraordinary question to ask at this date of entomological history.I settled that question some years ago, by a series of dissections, six-and-thirty in number, reported in an essay I can show you and would give you a copy of, but that I am a little restricted in my revenue, and our Society has to be economical, so Ihave but this one.You see, sir,--and he went on with elytra and antennae and tarsi and metatarsi and tracheae and stomata and wing-muscles and leg-muscles and ganglions,--all plain enough, I do not doubt, to those accustomed to handling dor-bugs and squash-bugs and such undesirable objects of affection to all but naturalists.

He paused when he got through, not for an answer, for there evidently was none, but to see how the Master would take it.The Scarabee had had it all his own way.

The Master was loyal to his own generous nature.He felt as a peaceful citizen might feel who had squared off at a stranger for some supposed wrong, and suddenly discovered that he was undertaking to chastise Mr.Dick Curtis, "the pet of the Fancy," or Mr.Joshua Hudson; "the John Bull fighter."He felt the absurdity of his discomfiture, for he turned to me good-naturedly, and said, "Poor Johnny Raw! What madness could impel So rum a flat to face so prime a swell?"To tell the truth, I rather think the Master enjoyed his own defeat.

The Scarabee had a right to his victory; a man does not give his life to the study of a single limited subject for nothing, and the moment we come across a first-class expert we begin to take a pride in his superiority.It cannot offend us, who have no right at all to be his match on his own ground.Besides, there is a very curious sense of satisfaction in getting a fair chance to sneer at ourselves and scoff at our own pretensions.The first person of our dual consciousness has been smirking and rubbing his hands and felicitating himself on his innumerable superiorities, until we have grown a little tired of him.Then, when the other fellow, the critic, the cynic, the Shimei, who has been quiet, letting self-love and self-glorification have their perfect work, opens fire upon the first half of our personality and overwhelms it with that wonderful vocabulary of abuse of which he is the unrivalled master, there is no denying that he enjoys it immensely; and as he is ourself for the moment, or at least the chief portion of ourself (the other half-self retiring into a dim corner of semiconsciousness and cowering under the storm of sneers and contumely,--you follow me perfectly, Beloved,--the way is as plain as the path of the babe to the maternal fount), as, I say, the abusive fellow is the chief part of us for the time, and he likes to exercise his slanderous vocabulary, we on the whole enjoy a brief season of self-depreciation and self-scolding very heartily.

It is quite certain that both of us, the Master and myself, conceived on the instant a respect for the Scarabee which we had not before felt.He had grappled with one difficulty at any rate and mastered it.He had settled one thing, at least, so it appeared, in such a way that it was not to be brought up again.And now he was determined, if it cost him the effort of all his remaining days, to close another discussion and put forever to rest the anxious doubts about the larva of meloe.

--Your thirty-six dissections must have cost you a deal of time and labor,--the Master said.

--What have I to do with time, but to fill it up with labor?--answered the Scarabee.---It is my meat and drink to work over my beetles.My holidays are when I get a rare specimen.My rest is to watch the habits of insects, those that I do not pretend to study.

Here is my muscarium, my home for house-flies; very interesting creatures; here they breed and buzz and feed and enjoy themselves, and die in a good old age of a few months.My favorite insect lives in this other case; she is at home, but in her private-chamber; you shall see her.

He tapped on the glass lightly, and a large, gray, hairy spider came forth from the hollow of a funnel-like web.

--And this is all the friend you have to love? said the Master, with a tenderness in his voice which made the question very significant.

--Nothing else loves me better than she does, that I know of,--he answered.

--To think of it! Not even a dog to lick his hand, or a cat to purr and rub her fur against him! Oh, these boarding-houses, these boarding-houses! What forlorn people one sees stranded on their desolate shores! Decayed gentlewomen with the poor wrecks of what once made their households beautiful, disposed around them in narrow chambers as they best may be, coming down day after day, poor souls!