With a soft _flic-flac_ the great night-moths were flying round the wire-gauze cover, alighting, taking flight, returning, mounting to the ceiling, re-descending.

They rushed at the candle and extinguished it with a flap of the wing; they fluttered on our shoulders, clung to our clothing, grazed our faces.

My study had become a cave of a necromancer, the darkness alive with creatures of the night! Little Paul, to reassure himself, held my hand much tighter than usual.
How many were there?
About twenty.

To these add those which had strayed into the kitchen, the nursery, and other rooms in the house, and the total must have been nearly forty.

It was a memorable sight--the Night of the Great Peacock! Come from all points of the compass, warned I know not how, here were forty lovers eager to do homage to the maiden princess that morning born in the sacred precincts of my study.
For the time being I troubled the swarm of pretenders no further.