e's discovery, and
assured us, not only that from the egg of a worker a queen could at any
time be produced, but enlightened us as to the manner of conducting the
experiment. The queen is dead? It is lamentable, but nothing so easy as
to make another. There is only to tear down some dozen cells, to set the
youngest embryo afloat in royal jelly, and a queen appears, who, if not
in the legitimate line, is capable of performing perfectly all the
office of a sovereign. There is a moment of intense despair, great riot,
and agitation; work is suspended; the temperature of the hive mounts
many degrees. All at once the old art is remembered,--the administration
of that delicious medicament, of so astonishingly affluent nature that
it can make a queen out of a commoner, the enlargement of the narrow
cradle to that ampler space which forbids the atrophy of a single fibre
of the body. The preparations are made; and, with tranquillity restored,
the people await the event. One day there comes a singular piping
sound,--it is the cry of the royal babe,--the hive is filled with
rejoicing,--there is no longer any interregnum of the purple,--the queen
is born! Perhaps the queen-makers have been too much in earnest, and at
nearly the same moment the inmates of two royal cells issue together.
Then is the time to try one's mettle,--no shrinking, no bias, nothing
but pure patriotism. Let a ring be formed, and she who proves herself
victor is worthy of homage. Is one of the two a coward? The impartial
circle bring her back to the encounter, bite her, tease her, tumble her,
worry her, tell her plainly that life is possible to her on no terms but
those of conquest. At length the matter decides itself; the brilliant
and victorious Amazon bends her long, slender body, and with her royal
poniard pierces the abject pretender through and through. Then these
satisfied subjects surround her, load her with endearments, cleanse her,
brush her, lick her, offer her honey on the end of their proboscides,
and, if there are yet remaining other royal apartments whose tenants
give notice of timely appearance, they conduct her on an Elizabethan
progress, in which, filled with instinctive dismay, she pauses at every
cell, and stabs her young rivals to death with her sting. As the story
runs, there are still other conditions to be fulfilled by the aspiring
princess,--she must give her people the assurance of a populous empire.
Should she fail in this, they have rec