--The Scarabee did not smile; he took no interest in trivial matters like
this.
--Lives on a bumblebee. When you come to think of it, he must lead a
pleasant kind of life. Sails through the air without the trouble of
flying. Free pass everywhere that the bee goes. No fear of being
dislodged; look at those six grappling-hooks. Helps himself to such
juices of the bee as he likes best; the bee feeds on the choicest
vegetable nectars, and he feeds on the bee. Lives either in the air or
in the perfumed pavilion of the fairest and sweetest flowers. Think what
tents the hollyhocks and the great lilies spread for him! And wherever he
travels a band of music goes with him, for this hum which wanders by us
is doubtless to him a vast and inspiring strain of melody.--I thought all
this, while the Scarabee supposed I was studying the minute characters of
the enigmatical specimen.
--I know what I consider your pediculus melittae, I said at length.
Do you think it really the larva of meloe?
--Oh, I don't know much about that, but I think he is the best cared for,
on the whole, of any animal that I know of; and if I wasn't a man I
believe I had rather be that little sybarite than anything that feasts at
the board of nature.
--The question is, whether he is the larva of meloe,--the Scarabee said,
as if he had not heard a word of what I had just been saying.
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