A young shepherd
Too Long; Didn't Read
A young shepherd, who had been told in his spare time to watch the doings of the Sacred Beetle, came to me in high spirits, one Sunday, in the second half of June, to say that he thought the time had come to commence a search. He had detected the insect issuing from the ground, had dug at the spot where it made its appearance and had found, at no great depth, the queer thing which he was bringing me.
Queer it was and calculated to upset the little which I thought I knew. In shape, it was exactly like a tiny pear that had lost all the colour of its freshness and turned brown in rotting. What could this curious object be, this pretty plaything that seemed to come from a turner’s workshop? Was it made by human hands? Was it a model of the fruit of the pear-tree intended for some child’s collection? One would say so.