wing his body over that burning soil, as a swimmer does
on the surface of the water.

Useless trouble! His two hands always closed on nothing. The insect
escaped him while playing with him, and soon, arrived under the fresh
branches, it arose, after throwing into Cousin Benedict's ear, which
it touched lightly, the most intense but also the most ironical
buzzing of its coleopter wings.

"Malediction!" exclaimed Cousin Benedict, a second time. "It escapes
me. Ungrateful hexapode! Thou to whom I reserved a place of honor in
my collection! Well, no, I shall not give thee up! I shall follow thee
till I reach thee!"

He forgot, this discomfited cousin, that his nearsighted eyes would
not enable him to perceive the _manticore_ among the foliage. But he
was no longer master of himself. Vexation, anger, made him a fool. It
was himself, and only himself, that he must blame for his loss. If he
had taken possession of the insect at first, instead of following it
"in its independent ways," nothing of all that would have happened,
and he would possess that admirable specimen of African _manticores_,
the name of which is that of a fabulous animal, having a man's head
and a lion's body.

Cousin Benedict had lost his head. He little thought that the most
unforeseen of circumstances had just restored him to liberty. He did
not dream that the ant-hill, into which he had just entered, had opened
to him an escape, and that he had just left Alvez's establishment.
The forest was there, and under the trees was his _manticore_, flying
away! At any price, he wanted to see it again.

See him, then, running across the thick forest, no longer conscious
even of what he was doing, always imagining he saw the precious
insect, beating the air with his long arms like a gigantic
field-spider. Where he was going, how he would return, and if he
should return, he did not even ask himself, and for a good mile
he made his way thus, at the risk of being met by some native, or
attacked by some beast.

Suddenly, as he passed near a thicket, a gigantic being sprang out and
threw himself on him. Then, as Cousin Benedict would have done with
the _manticore_, that being seized him with one hand by the nape of
the neck, with the other by the lower part of the back, and before he
had time to know what was happening, he was carried across the forest.

Truly, Cousin Benedict had that day lost a fine occasion of being able
to proclaim himself the happiest entom