tomb of wax;
but it is impossible to look at the benevolent, bland face in any
picture of Huber, with its sweetness of expression, and its innocent,
wide, wandering eyes, and not wish to believe every word he says. M.
Michelet tells the story so pleasantly that it would be difficult to
quote it, especially as it is well to be credulous in good company.

"About the time of the American Revolution, a little before that of the
French, there appeared and multiplied a thing unknown to our Europe, a
being of frightful shape, a large and powerful moth, marked plainly
enough in yellowish gray, with an ugly death's head. This sinister
creature, that had never before been seen, alarmed the rural regions,
and appeared to be an augury of the greatest misfortunes. In reality,
those who were terrified by it had brought it upon themselves. It had
entered the country as a caterpillar upon its natal plant, the American
potato, the fashionable vegetable of the time, extolled by Parmentier,
protected by Louis XVI., and spreading everywhere. The _savans_
christened this stranger by a name not too reassuring,--the Sphinx
Atropos.

"This animal was terrible indeed,--but only to honey. Of that it was
gluttonous, and capable of everything in order to obtain it. A hive of
thirty thousand bees did not appall it. In the depth of midnight, the
voracious monster, profiting by that hour when the outskirts of the city
are weakly guarded, with a little dull lugubrious noise, muffled as if
by the smooth down which covered him, invaded the hive, sought the
combs, gorged himself, pillaged, spoiled, overthrew the stores and the
brood. In vain might the attacked party awaken, assemble, and riot;
stings could not pierce the covering,--the species of soft, elastic
mattress with which he was everywhere garnished, like the Mexicans of
the time of Cortes in their cotton armor that no Spanish weapon could
penetrate.

"Huber took counsel with himself for some means of protecting his bees
from this daring robber. Should he make gratings? should he make doors?
and how? That was his doubt. The best imagined closure possible had the
inconvenience of hindering the great movement of exit and entrance
always going on at the sill of the hive. Their impatience rendered these
barriers, in which they would entangle themselves and break their wings,
intolerable to the bees.

"One morning, the faithful servant who aided him in all his experiments
informed him that the be