In this way the old worms lived five days. By this time they had grown enormously, and would eat ten times as much as at first.
I knew that on the fifth day it was time for them to roll themselves up, and I was on the watch for this to begin. In the evening of the fifth day one of the old worms stretched himself out on the paper and ceased to eat or to move.
During the next twenty-four hours I watched him for a long time. I knew that the worms shed their skins a number of times, when they have grown so large that their shells are too small for them, and then they put on new ones.
One of my companions took turns with me in watch-ing the process. In the evening he cried :
“ Come; he is beginning to undress ! “
I went over to the shelf, and was just in time to see that this worm had fastened his old shell to the paper and had made a rent near his mouth, was thrusting out his head, and was struggling and twisting so as to get out; but his old shirt would not let him go.
I looked at him for a long time struggling there and unable to extricate himself, and I felt a desire to help him.
I tried to pick him out by means of my finger-nail, but instantly saw that I had done a foolish thing. A sort of liquid gushed over my finger-nail, and the worm died.
I thought that it was his blood; but then I saw that the worm had under his skin a watery juice for the pur-pose of facilitating the process of slipping out of the shirt. My finger-nail had evidently disturbed the forma-tion of the new shirt, for the worm, though he was loosened, speedily perished.
I did not touch any of the others, and in the same way they all came out of their shirts. A few of them, however, died; but all of them, after a long and pain-ful struggle, at last emerged from their old shirts.
After they had moulted, the worms began to eat more voraciously than ever, and I had to bring them still more mulberry leaves. In the course of four days they went to sleep again, and again went through the change of skin.
Then they ate still more leaves, and they measured as much as an eighth of a vershok x in length.
Then at the end of six days they again went to sleep, and once more the transformation from old shells into new ones took place, and they began to be very large and fat, and we had really considerable trouble to keep them supplied with leaves.
On the ninth day the old worms entirely ceased to feed, and they went crawling up on the shelf and the supports. I caught some of them and gave them fresh leaves, but they turned their heads away from the leaves and crawled off again.
I then recollected that the silkworms, when they are about to spin their cocoons, 2 absolutely cease to feed, and go to climbing.
I put them back, and began to watch what they would do.
Some of the old ones crawled up on the ceiling, took up positions aPart, each by himself, crawled around a little, and then began to fasten a web in various directions.
I watched one in Particular. He went into a corner, extended a half-dozen threads at a distance of a vershok from him in every direction; then he hung himself to them, doubled himself almost in two, like a horseshoe, and began to move his head round and round, and to send out a silken web in such a way that the web began to whip itself around him.
By evening he was, as it were, in a mist of his own weaving. He could be scarcely seen, and on the next day he was entirely invisible in his cocoon. He was entirely enwrapped in silk, and yet he still kept spin-ning. At the end of three days he ceased to spin, and died.
Afterward I learned how long a thread he had spun in those three days. If the whole cocoon be unwound, it will sometimes give a thread more than a verst 1 in length, and rarely less; and it is easy to reckon how many times the worm has to turn his head during these three days to spin such a thread; it will be not less than three hundred thousand times. In other words, he turns his head round without ceasing once every second for seventy-two hours. We noticed also after this labor was finished, when we took a few of the cocoons and cut them open, that the worms were perfectly dry and white as wax.
I was aware that from these cocoons, with their dry, white, wax-like insides, butterflies would come forth; but as I looked at them, I could not believe it. Still, on the twentieth day, I began to watch what would happen to those that I had left.
I knew that on the twentieth day the change would take place. As yet nothing was to be seen, and I even began to think that there was some mistake about it, when suddenly I noticed that the end of one of the cocoons had grown dark and moist. I was even in-clined to believe that it was spoiled, and was inclined to throw it away.
But then I thought, “ May it not be the beginning of the change ? “ And so I kept watching it to see what would happen.
And, in fact, from the moist spot something moved. For a long time I could not make out what it was. But then something appeared like a head with feelers.
( The feelers moved. Then I perceived that a leg was thrust through the hole, then another, and the leg was clinging hold and trying to get loose from the cocoon. Something came out farther and farther, and at last I perceived a moist butterfly.
When all its six legs were freed, the tail followed; when it was entirely out, it sat there. When the butter-fly became dry, it was white; it spread its wings, flew up, circled around, and lighted on the window-pane.
At the end of two days the butterfly laid its eggs on the window-sill, and fastened them together. The eggs were yellowish in color. Twenty-five butterflies laid their eggs : I collected five thousand of them.
The next year I raised still more silkworms, and spun off still more silk.
Three Parables
Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole 1895
PARABLE THE FIRST
A WEED had spread over a beautiful meadow. And in order to get rid of it the tenants of the meadow mowed it, but the weed only increased in consequence. And now the kind, wise master came to visit the tenants of the meadow, and among the other good counsels which he gave them, he told them they ought not to mow the weed, since that only made it grow the more luxuriantly, but that they must pull it up by the roots.
But either because the tenants of the meadow did not, amongst the other prescriptions of the good master, take heed of his advice not to mow down the weed, but to pull it up, or because they did not understand him, or because, according to their calculations, it seemed foolish to obey, the result was that his advice not to mow the weed but to pull it up was not followed, just as if he had never proffered it, and the men went on mowing the weed and spreading it.
And although, during the succeeding years, there were men that reminded the tenants of the meadow of the advice of the kind, wise master, they did not heed them, and continued to do as before, so that mowing of the weed as soon as it began to appear became not only a custom but even a sacred tradition, and the meadow grew more and more infested. And the matter went so far that the meadow grew nothing but weeds, and men lamented this and invented all kinds of means to correct the evil; but the only one they did not use was that which had long ago been prescribed by their kind, wise master.
And now, as time went on, it occurred to one man who saw the wretched condition into which the meadow had fallen, and who found among the master’s forgotten prescriptions the rule not to mow the weed, but to pull it up by the root it occurred to the man, I say, to remind the tenants of the meadow that they were acting foolishly, and that their folly had long ago been pointed out by the kind, wise master.
But what do you think instead of putting credence in the correctness of this man’s recollections, and in case they proved to be reliable ceasing to mow the weed, and in case he were mistaken proving to him the incorrectness of his recollections, or stigmatizing the good, wise master’s recommendations as impracticable and not obligatory upon them, the tenants of the meadow did nothing’ of the sort; but they took exception to this man’s recollections and began to abuse him.
Some called
