The Master was loyal to his own generous nature.  He felt as a peaceful citizen might feel who had squared off at a stranger for some supposed wrong, and suddenly discovered that he was undertaking to chastise Mr. Dick Curtis, “the pet of the Fancy,” or Mr. Joshua Hudson; “the John Bull fighter.”

He felt the absurdity of his discomfiture, for he turned to me good-naturedly, and said,

    “Poor Johnny Raw!  What madness could impel
     So rum a flat to face so prime a swell?”

To tell the truth, I rather think the Master enjoyed his own defeat.  The Scarabee had a right to his victory; a man does not give his life to the study of a single limited subject for nothing, and the moment we come across a first-class expert we begin to take a pride in his superiority.  It cannot offend us, who have no right at all to be his match on his own ground.  Besides, there is a very curious sense of satisfaction in getting a fair chance to sneer at ourselves and scoff at our own pretensions.  The first person of our dual consciousness has been smirking and rubbing his hands and felicitating himself on his innumerable superiorities, until we have grown a little tired of him.  Then, when the other fellow, the critic, the cynic, the Shimei, who has been quiet, letting self-love and self-glorification have their perfect work, opens fire upon the first half of our personality and overwhelms it with that wonderful vocabulary of abuse of which he is the unrivalled master, there is no denying that he enjoys it immensely; and as he is ourself for the moment, or at least the chief portion of ourself (the other half-self retiring into a dim corner of semiconsciousness and cowering under the storm of sneers and contumely,—­you follow me perfectly, Beloved,—­the way is as plain as the path of the babe to the maternal fount), as, I say, the abusive fellow is the chief part of us for the time, and he likes to exercise his slanderous vocabulary, we on the whole enjoy a brief season of self-depreciation and self-scolding very heartily.

It is quite certain that both of us, the Master and myself, conceived on the instant a respect for the Scarabee which we had not before felt.  He had grappled with one difficulty at any rate and mastered it.  He had settled one thing, at least, so it appeared, in such a way that it was not to be brought up again.  And now he was determined, if it cost him the effort of all his remaining days, to close another discussion and put forever to rest the anxious doubts about the larva of meloe.

—­Your thirty-six dissections must have cost you a deal of time and labor,—­the Master said.

—­What have I to do with time, but to fill it up with labor?—­answered the Scarabee.—–­It is my meat and drink to work over my beetles.  My holidays are when I get a rare specimen.  My rest is to watch the habits of insects, those that I do not pretend to study.  Here is my muscarium, my home for house-flies; very interesting creatures; here they breed and buzz and feed and enjoy themselves, and die in a good old age of a few months.  My favorite insect lives in this other case; she is at home, but in her private-chamber; you shall see her.