CHAPTER XVI.
Dr.Aubertin received one day a note from a publishing bookseller, to inquire whether he still thought of giving the world his valuable work on insects.

The doctor was amazed.

"My valuable work! Why, Rose, they all refused it, and this person in particular recoiled from it as if my insects could sting on paper." The above led to a correspondence, in which the convert to insects explained that the work must be published at the author's expense, the publisher contenting himself with the profits.

The author, thirsting for the public, consented.

Then the publisher wrote again to say that the immortal treatise must be spiced; a little politics flung in: "Nothing goes down, else." The author answered in some heat that he would not dilute things everlasting with the fleeting topics of the day, nor defile science with politics.