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When the Pelopaeus "has stored her lair with game," when the Cerceris has sealed the crypt to which she has confided the future of her race, neither one nor the other can foresee "the future offspring which their faceted eyes will never behold, and the very object of their labours is to them occult." With them, as with all, life can only be a perpetual illusion.
What can be the psychology of a creature possessing such a powerful digestive organism combined with such a feeble set of senses? A vain wish has often come to me in my dreams: it is to be able to think, for a few minutes, with the crude brain of my Dog, to see the world with the faceted eyes of a Gnat. How things would change in appearance!
Did the ice fields of the Glacial epoch bear heavy surface moraines like the medial and lateral moraines of valley glaciers? Where was the greater part of the load of these ice fields carried, judging from what you know of the glaciers of Greenland? Many of the stones of the till are dressed as only glacier ice can do; their sharp edges have been blunted and their sides faceted and scored.
An industrious person has counted more than one hundred and fifty patterns in the Hall of the Ambassadors, impressed with iron moulds on the moist plaster of the walls. The roof is a low dome of larch wood, intricately carved and inlaid with ivory and with mother-of-pearl; it has been likened to the faceted surface of an elaborately cut gem.
We were shadows and yet we had substance; we were incorporated with, a part of, the rock and yet we were living flesh and blood; we stretched nor will I qualify this we stretched through mile upon mile of space that weirdly enough gave at one and the same time an absolute certainty of immense horizontal lengths and a vertical concentration that contained nothing of length, nothing of space whatever; we stood there upon the face of the stone and still we were here within the faceted oval before the screen of radiance!
Its glory lay in its durability, the lovely colour to be got in it, the play of light on its faceted and gleaming surface, and the clearness mingled with softness, with which forms were relieved on the lustrous gold which was so freely used in its best days.
A voice sings in my ear, an untranslatable voice, softer than any language and bewildering as a dream. It speaks to me for the first time of the mysteries of the pond; it glorifies the heavenly insect which I hear moving in the empty snail shell, its temporary cage; it whispers the secrets of the rock, the gold filings, the faceted jewels, the ram's horn turned to stone.
For this reason he busily endeavoured to provide her with pleasant distractions, bringing home curious objects which he found in the heath, such as white trumpet-shaped mosses, redheaded lichens, stone arrowheads used by the old tribes on Egdon, and faceted crystals from the hollows of flints. These he deposited on the premises in such positions that she should see them as if by accident.
The chimneys of the houses, the battlements of the walls, the faceted gables of the roofs, the spire of the Augustines, the tower of Nesle, all these projections which broke the profile of the colossal obelisk added to the illusion by displaying in eccentric fashion to the eye the indentations of a luxuriant and fantastic sculpture.
I worked steadily until the night. And when all was over I waited until the stars came out, until again the City of Light shone like some huge, myriad faceted stone, and then there came, while Chapman and my friend stood mute beside me, your faint response. "I scarcely caught the lisping ticks, but they came, and it seemed indeed as if the power of the Creator had passed into the hands of men.
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