The Invisible Fly

The story of the invisible fly was known throughout the palace. With new zest as if he were returning to an earlier and more exuberant period of his life, the middle-aged but still vigorous master devoted himself to a series of miniatures that in every way surpassed his finest efforts of the past. From the pit of a cherry, he carved a ring of thirty-six elephants, each holding in its trunk the tail of the elephant before it. Every elephant possessed a pair of nearly invisible tusks carved out of ivory. His first masterpiece in the realm of the invisible was a stag with branching antlers. Through a powerful glass he watched the invisible sharpen into the visible.