Sentence out of letter from May (who is staying with Isabel just
now at Cassel), dated 15th June, 1877:--
"I am reading the Ethics with a nice Irish girl who is staying
here, and she's just as puzzled as I've always been about the
fireflies, and we both want to know so much.--Please be a very
nice old Lecturer, and tell us, won't you?"
Well, May, you never were a vain girl; so could scarcely guess
that I meant them for the light, unpursued vanities, which yet
blind us, confused among the stars. One evening, as I came late
into Siena, the fireflies were flying high on a stormy sirocco
wind,--the stars themselves no brighter, and all their host
seeming, at moments, to fade as the insects faded.