in a low tone, full of meaning, "Let them eat!"

It appeared that this was one of those slow, insidious poisons. It did
not kill the beetle off immediately, but it undermined his constitution.
Day by day he would sink and droop without being able to tell what was
the matter with himself, until one morning we should enter the kitchen to
find him lying cold and very still.

So we made more stuff and laid it round each night, and the blackbeetles
from all about the parish swarmed to it. Each night they came in greater
quantities. They fetched up all their friends and relations. Strange
beetles--beetles from other families, with no claim on us whatever--got
to hear about the thing, and came in hordes, and tried to rob our
blackbeetles of it. By the end of a week we had lured into our kitchen
every beetle that wasn't lame for miles round.

MacShaughnassy said it was a good thing. We should clear the suburb at
one swoop. The beetles had now been eating this poison steadily for ten
days, and he said that the end could not be far off. I was glad to hear
it, because I was beginning to find this unlimited hospitality expensive.
It was a dear poison that we were giving them, and they were hearty
eaters.

We went downstairs to see how they were getting on. MacShaughnassy
thought they seemed queer, and was of opinion that they were breaking up.
Speaking for myself, I can only say that a healthier-looking lot of
beetles I never wish to see.

One, it is true, did die that very evening. He was detected in the act
of trying to make off with an unfairly large portion of the poison, and
three or four of the others set upon him savagely and killed him.

But he was the only one, so far as I could ever discover, to whom
MacShaughnassy's recipe proved fatal. As for the others, they grew fat
and sleek upon it. Some of them, indeed, began to acquire quite a
figure. We lessened their numbers eventually by the help of some common
oil-shop stuff. But such vast numbers, attracted by MacShaughnassy's
poison, had settled in the house, that to finally exterminate them now
was hopeless.

I have not heard of MacShaughnassy's aunt lately. Possibly, one of
MacShaughnassy's bosom friends has found out her address and has gone
down and murdered her. If so, I should like to thank him.

I tried a little while ago to cure MacShaughnassy of his fatal passion
for advice-giving, by repeating to him a very sad story that was told to
me by