A few hours, for two or three nights, are given to its search, its nuptial flights.

If it cannot profit by them, all is ended; the compass fails, the lamp expires.

What profit could life hold henceforth?
Stoically the creature withdraws into a corner and sleeps the last sleep, the end of illusions and the end of suffering.
The Great Peacock exists as a butterfly only to perpetuate itself.

It knows nothing of food.

While so many others, joyful banqueters, fly from flower to flower, unrolling their spiral trunks to plunge them into honeyed blossoms, this incomparable ascetic, completely freed from the servitude of the stomach, has no means of restoring its strength.