"Did you see him?" the midges asked each other. "That's the old may-beetle," some of them hummed. Others said, "All of his offspring are dead. Only one is still alive. Only one." "How long will he live?" a number of midges asked. The others answered, "We don't know. Some of his offspring live a long time. They live forever almost... They see the sun thirty or forty times, we don't know exactly how many. Our lives are long enough, but we see the daylight only once or twice."