"The Sphinx" by Edgar Allan Poe

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The picture used is a photograph taken by Didier Descouens of an acherontia lachesis - dorsal side, from the collection of the mathematician Laurent Schwartz, as part of the Muséum de Toulouse collection, and licensed for reused under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)

To follow along: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2151/2151-h/2151-h.htm#chap5.3