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Updated: May 23, 2025
Out of a dozen butterfly chrysalids collected, six were worthless; they were stiff, and when opened were stuffed full of small white larvae, which had eaten away the coming butterfly in its shell. They were the offspring of a parasite insect, which thus provided for the sustenance of its young by eating up other young, after the cruel way of nature.
Thou reasonest, said my guide, as one of thine own degree, who to the eyes of the full-born ever look like chrysalids, closed round in a web of their own weaving; and who shall blame thee until thou thyself shinest within thyself? Understand that it is never advantage to himself that moveth a man in this kingdom to undertake this or that.
All the graves had been thrown into confusion by the violence of innumerable explosions. Bits of bone femurs, ribs, lower jaws lay scattered about. The hip of a soldier who had been buried in his clothes projected from the soil with the brown mass of maggot chrysalids still clinging to it. Two bent knees of a greenish-grey colour, that had only begun to decay, emerged from a patch of trodden mud.
There stood the long worktable, with orderly piles of work on it; the microscope in its place; the books he had opened and pushed aside last night; and some half-dozen small card-board boxes in a row, containing the chrysalids he had been experimenting with, trying the effect of cold upon color. The cover of one box had been partially pushed off, possibly when he had moved the books.
This painful restless "becoming" has taken the place of harmony, equilibrium, joy, that is to say, of "being." We are all fauns and satyrs aspiring to become angels, ugly creatures labouring at our embellishment, monstrous chrysalids trying to become butterflies. Our ideal is no longer the tranquil beauty of the soul, it is the anguish of Laocoon fighting with the hydra of evil.
Two or three yards away there was a booted leg and beyond that a severed hand lying beside a heap of rotting flesh, bone and sodden clothing, all covered with thick brown masses made up of the innumerable empty cases of maggot chrysalids. We struck a main road. It was dotted with shell-holes that had recently been filled in with bricks and pieces of stone.
As a bell rang they were changed in a twinkling and, amid chatter and laughter, like breaking chrysalids, they flung off their basset aprons and dun overalls, to emerge in brighter colours. Blouses of pink and blue and red flashed out, straw hats and sun-bonnets appeared, and all streamed away like magic to their neighbouring houses.
While, on the one hand, this organism offers many points of resemblance to the pupæ of the Flies in its horny consistency, in the complete immobility of its various segments, in the all but absolute absence of relief which would enable one to distinguish the parts of the perfect insect; while, on the other hand, it approximates to the chrysalids, because the creature, to attain this condition, has to shed its skin, as the caterpillars do, it differs from the pupa because it has for covering not the surface skin, which has become horny, but rather one of the inner skins of the larva; and it differs from the chrysalids by the absence of mouldings which in the latter betray the appendages of the perfect insect.
There were silky-haired, lop-eared rabbits, that could be hugged in small arms without offering any remonstrances; bright-eyed little guinea-pigs, which often caused exciting chases by escaping from their owners' embraces and hiding away behind the cages; a family of piebald mice, consisting of a mother and five young ones, which generally went to bed in the daytime, and had to be poked out of their sleeping quarters with a lead pencil to make them show themselves; a morose-looking tortoise that would allow Wilfred to scratch its head, but spat indignantly at the others; and a whole box full of silkworms in various stages, from tiny, wriggling black threads to chrysalids in cocoons.
And as the butterflies came forth from their chrysalids in all their gaiety and splendour, so did every humbled and suppressed aspiration and hope free itself, and boldly launch into the open and flowing sea of spring.
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