A few more efforts, and the ball disappears underground with the two miners.
What follows will be, for a time at least, only a repetition of what we have seen.

Let us wait half a day or so.
If our vigilance is not relaxed we shall see the father regain the surface alone, and crouch in the sand near the mouth of the burrow.
Retained by duties in the performance of which her companion can be of no assistance, the mother habitually delays her reappearance until the following day.

When she finally emerges the father wakes up, leaves his hiding place, and rejoins her.

The reunited couple return to their pasturage, refresh themselves, and then cut out another ball of dung.
As before, both share the work; the hewing and shaping, the transport, and the burial in ensilage.
This conjugal fidelity is delightful; but is it really the rule?
I should not dare to affirm that it is.

There must be flighty individuals who, in the confusion under a large cake of droppings, forget the fair confectioners for whom they have worked as journeymen, and devote themselves to the services of others, encountered by chance; there must be temporary unions, and divorces after the burial of a single pellet.
No matter: the little I myself have seen gives me a high opinion of the domestic morals of the Sisyphus.
Let us consider these domestic habits a little further before coming to the contents of the burrow.