Page:A book of the Cevennes (-1907-).djvu/296

218 The cocoons destined for filature are not suffered to remain many days with the worms alive within them. Those containing male moths are distinguished as being lighter than those that hold the female. Only so many of each are retained as are required for the propagation of the worm. The rest are plunged in boiling water or put into an oven to extinguish the life in the chrysalis. The reeling off of the silk is the next process.

The cocoons are softened by immersion in warm water, and then the reeler stirs them with brushes, to which the loose threads adhere, and are thus drawn out of the water. They are taken up four or five together and twisted by the fingers into one thread, passed through a metal loop, and reeled off. The silk husbandry is completed within six weeks from the end of April.

The life of the insect from leaving the egg has been about fifty days, and in that period what a series of changes—transformations even—it has gone through; and all for what, but the produce of one of the most beautiful imaginable textures for the adornment of womankind! Verily Nature has made laborious provision that she should be coquette.

Even the severe Quakeress, objecting on principle to all adornment, must don a pearl-grey silk bonnet.

On the Place de la République is a bronze statue to Florian (Jean Pierre Claris), born in the château of Florian, near Sauve, in 1755, and who died in 1794. He wrote plays, stories, verses, and fables. Not