’"Marvellous!” he repeated, looking up at me.  “Look!  The beauty—­but that is nothing—­look at the accuracy, the harmony.  And so fragile!  And so strong!  And so exact!  This is Nature—­the balance of colossal forces.  Every star is so—­and every blade of grass stands so—­and the mighty Kosmos il perfect equilibrium produces—­this.  This wonder; this masterpiece of Nature—­the great artist.”

’"Never heard an entomologist go on like this,” I observed cheerfully.  “Masterpiece!  And what of man?”

’"Man is amazing, but he is not a masterpiece,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the glass case.  “Perhaps the artist was a little mad.  Eh?  What do you think?  Sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is not wanted, where there is no place for him; for if not, why should he want all the place?  Why should he run about here and there making a great noise about himself, talking about the stars, disturbing the blades of grass? . . .”

’"Catching butterflies,” I chimed in.

’He smiled, threw himself back in his chair, and stretched his legs.  “Sit down,” he said.  “I captured this rare specimen myself one very fine morning.  And I had a very big emotion.  You don’t know what it is for a collector to capture such a rare specimen.  You can’t know.”

’I smiled at my ease in a rocking-chair.  His eyes seemed to look far beyond the wall at which they stared; and he narrated how, one night, a messenger arrived from his “poor Mohammed,” requiring his presence at the “residenz”—­as he called it—­which was distant some nine or ten miles by a bridle-path over a cultivated plain, with patches of forest here and there.  Early in the morning he started from his fortified house, after embracing his little Emma, and leaving the “princess,” his wife, in command.  He described how she came with him as far as the gate, walking with one hand on the neck of his horse; she had on a white jacket, gold pins in her hair, and a brown leather belt over her left shoulder with a revolver in it.  “She talked as women will talk,” he said, “telling me to be careful, and to try to get back before dark, and what a great wikedness it was for me to go alone.  We were at war, and the country was not safe; my men were putting up bullet-proof shutters to the house and loading their rifles, and she begged me to have no fear for her.  She could defend the house against anybody till I returned.  And I laughed with pleasure a little.  I liked to see her so brave and young and strong.  I too was young then.  At the gate she caught hold of my hand and gave it one squeeze and fell back.  I made my horse stand still outside till I heard the bars of the gate put up behind me.  There was a great enemy of mine, a great noble—­and a great rascal too—­roaming with a band in the neighbourhood.  I cantered for four or five miles; there had been rain in the night, but the musts had gone up, up—­and the face of the earth was clean; it lay smiling to me, so fresh and innocent—­like