THE LIFE OF JEAN HENRI FABRE

BOOKS BY J. HENRI FABRE

THE LIFE OF THE SPIDER
THE LIFE OF THE FLY

THE MASON-BEES
BRAMBLE-BEES AND OTHERS

THE HUNTING WASPS

THE LIFE OF THE CATERPILLAR

THE LIFE OF THE GRASSHOPPER

THE SACRED BEETLE AND OTHERS

THE MASON-WASPS

THE GLOW-WORM AND OTHER
BEETLES

MORE HUNTING WASPS

THE LIFE OF THE WEEVIL

INSECT ADVENTURES

THE LIFE OF

JEAN HENRI FABRE

THE ENTOMOLOGIST
1823-1910

BY THE ABBE

AUGUSTIN FABRE

TRANSLATED BY
BERNARD MIALL

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1921

COPYRIGHT 1921
BY DODD. MEAD AND COMPANY. INC.

PRINTED IN TH« U S A BY

TO MY PARENTS

IN TOKEN OF GRATITUDE AND ADMIRATION

FOR THE LABOURS AND THE EXAMPLE

OF THEIR LIVES

NOTE BY TRANSLATOR

THOSE who wish to become more fully ac-
quainted with Jean-Henri Fabre's delightful
Souvenirs Entomologiques will find them,
arranged in a different order, in the admira-
ble series of translations from the pen of
Mr. Teixeira de Mattos, published by
Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Company, New
York; a series which will, before long, be
complete and contain the whole of the ten
volumes of Souvenirs. Other translations
are The Life and Love of the Insect, trans-
lated by Mr. Teixeira de Mattos ; Social Life
in the Insect World, translated by myself;
Wonders of Instinct, translated by Mr.
Teixeira and myself; and Fabre, Poet of
Science (another biography), by Dr. G. V.
Legros, translated by myself.

Post-war conditions have made it neces-
sary somewhat to abridge the author's text,
which fills two volumes. If, however, as I
hope, these pages send the reader to my
friend Mr. Teixeira's delightful versions of
the Souvenirs, their principal aim will be
fulfilled.

BERNARD MIALL.

1921.

vii

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

I WAS eighteen years old; I was dreaming
of diplomas, of a doctor's degree, of a
brilliant university career. To encourage
me and incite me to emulation, one of my
uncles, rather more well-informed than those
about him, addressed me much as follows:

" Put your back into it, my boy ! Go
ahead; follow the footsteps of your fellow-
countryman and kinsman, Henri Fabre of
Malaval, who has done what you want to
do, and has become an eminent professor
and a learned writer."

It is hardly credible, but this was the first
time I had heard any one mention this fa-
mous namesake of mine, whose family, nev-
ertheless, used to live on the opposite slope
of the puech against which my tiny native
mas was built.

His remark was not unheeded, and the
name then engraved upon my memory has
never been erased from it.

A few years later, having secured my doc-
tor's degree, I was teaching philosophy, not
in the University, but in the Grand Semi-
naire * of Lyons. The problem of instinct,
which enters into the province of psychology,
led me to consult the works of J. H. Fabre,

1 The higher clerical seminary. — B. M.

ix

Author's Preface

which were recommended to me by the pro-
fessor of Science. My worthy colleague re-
garded the author of the Souvenirs Ento-
mologiques with a sort of worship, and it
was with positive delight that he used to
read aloud to me the finest passages of those
masterly " Essays upon the Instincts and
Habits of Insects."

A little later 1 chanced, in the course of
my reading, on the Revue Scientifique de
Bruxelles, which contained abundant extracts
from the sixth volume of the Souvenirs, in
which the author becomes confidential, and
tells us, in the most delightful fashion, of
his earliest childhood in the home of his
grandparents " who tilled a poor holding on
the cold granite backbone of the Rouergue
tableland." Hullo! I said to myself: so the
prince of entomologists is a child of the
Rouergue! What a discovery!

For a long time I thought of publishing,
in the local press, a short biography of Fabre
with a few extracts from his writings. I was
only waiting an opportunity and a little
leisure.

This leisure I had not yet found, when
the opportunity offered itself in a decisive
and urgent fashion, in the scientific jubilee of
the great naturalist, which was celebrated

Author's Preface

at Serignan on April 3, 1910. When all
Provence was agog to celebrate the great
man, when from all parts of France and from
beyond her frontiers evidences of sympathy
and admiration were pouring in, was it not
only fitting that a voice should be upraised
from the heart of Aveyron, and, above all,
from that corner of Aveyron in which he first
saw the light of day; if only to echo so many
other voices, and to restore to his native
countryside this unrivalled son of the Rou-
ergue who had perhaps too readily been natu-
ralised a Provencal? Moreover, in these
times of overweening atheism, when so many
pseudo-scientists are striving to persuade the
ignorant that science is learning to dispense
with God, would it not be a most timely thing
to reveal, to the eyes of all, a scientist of un-
doubted genius who finds in science fresh
arguments for belief, and manifold occasions
for affirming his faith in the God who has
created and rules the world?

And that was the origin of this book, the
genesis of which will explain its character.
Written especially for local readers, and con-
sisting entirely of articles which appeared in
the Journal d' Aveyron, it is fitting that it
should piously gather up the most trivial lo-
cal reminiscences of J. H. Fabre, and that it
xi

Author's Preface

should be full of allusions to the men and
the things of Aveyron. Written solely to call
attention to the life and labours of Fabre,
the writer seeks to co-ordinate in a single
book the biographical data scattered through-
out the ten volumes and four thousand pages
of the Souvenirs.

The reader must not take exception to the
all but invariable praise of their author nor
to that spirit of enthusiasm which he will
perhaps detect behind the pages of this vol-
ume. This is not to say that everything in
the life and work of our hero is equally per-
fect and worthy of admiration. Whether
knowledge or virtue be in question human
activity must always fall short somewhere,
must always in some degree be defective.
Omnis consummationis vidi finem, said the
Psalmist. But apart from the fact that it
is not yet time, perhaps, to form a final judg-
ment, the reader, I trust, will remember that
this book comes to him with an echo of the
jubilee celebrations of Serignan, and the hom-
age, still touched with enthusiasm, of a son
of Aveyron and the Vezins countryside to
the most illustrious of his fellow-country-
men.

LA GRIFFOULETTE, near VEZINS,
August 28, 1910.

xii

CONTENTS

CHAFTB.

I THE SERIGNAN JUBILEE . . I
II THE URCHIN OF MALAVEL . IO

III THE SCHOOLBOY: SAINT-LEONS 24

IV THE SCHOOLBOY: SAINT-LEONS 39

V AT THE COLLEGE OF RODEZ . 65
VI THE PUPIL TEACHER: AVI-
GNON (1841-43) ( ;. • 74

VII THE SCHOOLMASTER: CARPEN-

TRAS ... . -87

VIII THE SCHOOLMASTER: CARPEN-

TRAS (continued) . . 99

IX THE PROFESSOR : AJACCO . 1 1 8

X THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON

(1852-1870) . . .128

XI THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON

(continued) .. . .143

XII THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON

(continued) • . . .166

XIII RETIREMENT: ORANGE . . 199

xiii

Contents

CHAPTER PAG1

XIV THE HERMIT OF SERIGNAN

(1879-1910) . . . 209

XV THE HERMIT OF SERIGNAN

(continued) . . . 223

XVI THE HERMIT OF SERIGNAN

(continued) . . .232

XVII THE COLLABORATORS . .253

XVIII THE COLLABORATORS (contin-
ued) 274

XIX FABRE'S WRITINGS . . . 293
XX FABRE'S WRITINGS (continued) 324

XXI A GREAT PREPARATION . -358

XXII THE LAST HEIGHTS (1910-

• 366

XIV

THE LIFE OF JEAN HENRI FABRE

CHAPTER I

THE SERIGNAN JUBILEE

TN a few days' time x naturalists, poets, and
•^ philosophers will repair in company to
Serignan, in the neighbourhood of Orange.
What is calling them from every point of the
intellectual horizon, from the most distant
cities and capitals, to a little Provencal vil-
lage? Moussu Fabre f they would tell you
yonder, in a tone of respectful sympathy.

But who is the Moussu Fabre thus cher-
ished by the simplest as well as by the most
cultivated minds? He is a sturdy old man
of all but ninety years, who has spent almost
the whole of his life in the company of
Wasps, Bees, Gnats, Beetles, Spiders, and
Ants, and has described the doings of these
tiny creatures in a most wonderful fashion
in ten large volumes entitled Souvenirs En-
tomologiques or Etudes sur I'Instmct et les
Mceurs des Insectes?

1 The great entomologist's jubilee was celebrated on
the April 3, 1910. — AUTHOR'S NOTE.

2 Paris, Delagrave. The Souvenirs, translated by
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, are in course of publica-

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

One might say of this achievement what
the author of Lettres Persanes said of his
book: Proles sine matre. It is a child with-
out a mother. It is, in short, unprecedented.1
It has not its fellow, either in the Machal of
Solomon, or the apologues of the old fabu-
lists, or the treatises on natural history writ-
ten by our modern scientists. The fabulists
look to find man in the animal, which for
them is little more than a pretext for com-
parisons and moral narratives, and the sci-
entists commonly confine their curiosity to
the dissection of the insect's organs, the anal-
ysis of its functions, and the classification of
species. We might even say that the insect
is the least of their cares, for, like Solomon,

tion by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton in England and
Messrs. Dodd, Mead and Co. in the United States. The
arrangement of the essays has been altered in the Eng-
lish series. See also The Life and Love of the Insect,
translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (A. and C.
Black), Social Life in the Insect World, translated by
Bernard Miall (T. Fisher Unwin)^and Wonders of In-
stinct, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos and
Bernard Miall (T. Fisher Unwin).— B. M.

1 It must in justice be admitted that Fabre had certain
precursors, among whom mention must be made of the
famous Reaumur and Leon Dufour, a physician who
lived in the Landes (died 1865), and who was the occa-
sion and the subject of his first entomological publica-
tion. This does not alter the fact that his great work
is not only absolutely original, but an achievement sui
generis which cannot be compared with the mere
sketches of his predecessors.
2

The Serignan Jubilee

they delight in holding forth upon all the
creatures upon the earth or in the heavens
above, and all the plants " from the cedar
tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop
that springeth out of the wall " (i Kings iv:

32-33)-

Fabre, on the contrary, has eyes only for

the insect. He observes it by and for itself,
in the most trivial manifestations of its life:
the living, active insect, with its labours and
its habits, is the thing that interests him
before all else, guiding his investigation of
the infinite host of these tiny lives, which
claim his attention on every hand; and in this
world of insects wealth of artifice and capaci-
ties of the mental order seem to be in an
inverse ratio to beauty of form and brilliance
of colour. For this reason Fabre learns to
disdain the magnificent Butterfly, applying
himself by preference to the modest Fly:
the two-winged Flies, which are relatives of
our common House-fly, or the four-winged
Flies, the numerous and infinitely various
cousins of the Wasps and Bees; the Spiders,
ugly indeed, but such skilful spinners, and
even the Dung-beetles and Scarabaeidae of
every species, those wonderful agents of ter-
restrial purification.

In this singular world, which affords him
3

The Life of Jean Henri Fab re

the society which he prefers, he has gath-
ered an ample harvest of unexpected facts
and highly perplexing actions on the part of
these little so-called inferior animals. No
one has excelled him in detecting their slight-
est movements, and in surprising all the se-
crets of their lives. Darwin declared, and
many others have repeated his words, that
Fabre was " an incomparable observer."
The verdict is all the more significant in that
the French entomologist did not scruple to
oppose his observations to the theories of the
famous English naturalist.

Not only in the certainty and the detailed
nature of his facts, but also in the colour
and reality of his descriptions is his mastery
revealed. In him the naturalist is redupli-
cated by a man of letters and a poet, who
" understands how to cast over the naked
truth the magic mantle of his picturesque
language," x making each of his humble pro-
tagonists live again before our eyes, each
with its characteristic achievements. So
striking is this power of his that Victor Hugo
described him as " the insects' Homer,"
while one of the most accomplished of our

1 Souvenirs, Series vi., p. 65, The Life of the Fly, chap.
vi., "My Schooling." This is Fabrc's verdict upon an-
other naturalist, Moquin-Tandon.

4

The Serignan Jubilee

scientists, Mr. Edmond Perrier, Director of
the Museum of Natural History, not content
with saluting him as " one of the princes of
natural history," speaks of his literary work
in the following terms :

The ten volumes of his Souvenirs Entomologiques
will remain one of the most intensely interesting
works which have ever been written concerning
the habits of insects, and also one of the most
remarkable records of the psychology of a great
observer of the latter part of the nineteenth cen-
tury. In them the author depicts to the life not
only the habits and the instincts of the insects;
he gives us a full-length portrait of himself. He
makes us share his busy life, amid the subjects of
observation which incessantly claim his attention.
The world of insects hums and buzzes about him,
obsesses him, calling his attention from all direc-
tions, exciting his curiosity; he does not know
which way to turn. Overwhelmed by the innum-
erable winged army of the drinkers of nectar who,
on the fine summer days, invade his field of obser-
vation, he calls to his aid his whole household: his
daughters, Claire, Aglae, and Anna, his son Paul,
his workmen, and above all his man-servant Favier,
an old countryman who has spent his life in the
barracks of the French colonies, a man of a thou-
sand expedients, who watches his master with an
incredulous yet admiring eye, listening to him but
refusing to be convinced, and shocking him by
5

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

the assertion, which nothing will induce him to
retract, that the bat is a rat which has grown
wings, the slug an old snail which has lost its
shell, the night-jar a toad with a passion for milk,
which has sprouted feathers the better to suck the
goats' udders at night, and so forth. The cats and
the dog join the company at times, and one al-
most regrets that one is not within reach of the
sturdy old man, so that one might respond to his
call.

See him lying on the sand where everything is
grilling in the burning rays of the sun, watching
some wasp that is digging its burrow, noting its least
movement, trying to divine its intentions, to make
it confess the secret of its actions, following the
labours of the innumerable Scarabaei that clean the
surface of the soil of all that might defile it —
the droppings of large animals, the decomposing
bodies of small birds, moles, or water-rats; putting
unexpected difficulties in their way, slily giving
these tiny life-companions of his problems of his
own devising to solve.1

That is well-expressed, and it gives us a
fairly correct idea of the vital and poetic
charm of the Souvenirs.

The same writer asks, speaking of the well-
defined tasks performed by all these little
creatures beloved of the worthy biologist of

1 Souvenirs, vi., pp. 76-97 ; The Glow-worm and Other
Beetles, chap, ix., " Dung-beetles of the Pampas."

6

The Serignan Jubilee

Serignan: "Who has taught each one its
trade, to the exclusion of any other, and
allotted the parts which they fill, as a rule
with a completeness unequalled, save by
' their absolute unconsciousness of the goal
at which they are aiming?' This is a very
important problem: it is the problem of the
origin of things. Henri Fabre has no de-
sire to grapple with it. Living in perpetual
amazement, amid the miracles revealed by
his genius, he observes, but he does not ex-
plain."

For the moment we can no longer sub-
scribe to the assertions of the learned Aca-
demician,1 nor to his fashion of writing his-
tory, which is decidedly too free. The truth
is that Fabre, who delights in the pageant of
the living world, does not always confine him-
self to recording it; he readily passes from
the smallest details of observation to the
wide purviews of reason, and he is at times
as much a philosopher as a poet and a natu-
ralist. The truth is that he often considers
the question of the origins of life, and he
answers it unequivocally like the believer that
he is. It is enough to cite one passage among
others, a passage which testifies to a brief
uplifting of the heart that presupposes many

1 M. E. Perrier is a Member of the Institut de France.

7

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

others: "The eternal question, if one does
not rise above the doctrine of dust to dust:
how did the insect acquire so discerning an
art?" And the following lines from the
close of the same chapter: " The pill-maker's
work confronts the reflective mind with a
serious problem. It offers us these alter-
natives: either we must grant the flattened
cranium of the Dung-beetle the distinguished
honour of having solved for itself the geo-
metrical problem of the alimentary pill, or
we must refer it to a harmony that governs
all things beneath the eye of an Intelligence
which, knowing all things, has provided for
all?"1

And indeed, when we consider closely, with
the author of the Souvenirs, all the prodigies
of art, all the marks of ingenuity displayed
by these sorry creatures, so inept in other re-
spects, then, whatever hypothesis we may
prefer as to the formation of species,
whether with Fabre we believe them fixed
and unchanging, or whether with Gaudry 2

1 Souvenirs, VI., pp. 76, 97 ; The Glo<w-ivorm, chap. ix.

2 M. Albert Gaudry is a sometime professor of pal-
aeontology in the Museum of Natural History, who, by
virtue of his palaeontological discoveries and works, has
acquired a great authority in the scientific world. His
Enchainements du Monde Animal dans les Temps Geolo-
ffiques is especially valued and often cited. Gaudry, who
is a good Catholic as well as a scientist of the first rank,

8

' The Serignan Jubilee

we believe in their evolution, we cannot re-
frain from proclaiming the necessity of a
sovereign Mind, the creator and instigator
of order and harmony, and we are quite natu-
rally led to repeat, to the glory of God the
Creator, the beautiful saying of Saint Au-
gustine: "Fecit in ccelis angelos et in terris
vermiculos, nee major in illis nee minor in
istis."

Now this venerable nonagenarian whom
naturalists, poets, and philosophers are so
justly about to honour in Serignan, because
his brow is radiant with the purest rays of
science, poetry, and philosophy: this ento-
mologist of real genius, he whom Edmond
Perrier ranks among " the princes of natural
history," he whom Victor Hugo called " the
insects' Homer," he whom Darwin pro-
claimed " an incomparable observer" : who is
there in Aveyron, knowing that he was born
beneath our skies and that he has dwelt upon
our soil, but will rejoice to feel that he be-
longs to us by his birth and the whole of his
youth ?

very definitely accepts the evolution of species; but for
him, as for Fabre, the activity of the animal kingdom,
like that of the world in general, is inconceivable apart
from a sovereign mind which has foreseen all things
and provided for all things.

CHAPTER II

THE URCHIN OF MALAVAL

JEAN-HENRI FABRE was born at Saint-
Leons, the market-town and adminis-
trative centre of the canton of Vezins. In
witness of which behold this extract from the
register of baptisms, a certified copy tran-
scribed by the Abbe Lafon, cure of Saint-
Leons :

In the year 1823, on the 22nd September, was
baptised Jean-Henri-Casimir Fabre, of the afore-
said Saint-Leons, the legitimate son of Antoine
Fabre and Victoire Salgues, inhabitants of the same
place: — His godfather was Pierre Ricard, primary
schoolmaster. In proof of which — Fabre, vicar.1

Jean-Henri Casimir's mother, by birth
Victoire Salgues, was the daughter of the
bailiff of Saint-Leons. His father, Antoine
Fabre, was born in a little mas in the parish
of Lavaysse, Malaval, where his parents
were still cultivating the old family property

1 Those journals which claim him as a native of Serig-

nan are therefore mistaken. "At Serignan (Vaucluse),

his native countryside, the peasants familiarly call him

Moufsu FabrS (Univers, March 3, 1910).

10

The Urchin of Malaval

which since then has passed to the head of
the Vaissiere family.

It was thus at Malaval that the future en-
tomologist " passed his earliest childhood,"
as he told me when writing to me ten years
ago.1 There was no wallowing in abundance
at Saint-Leons. In order to relieve the poor
household of one mouth, he was confided to
the care of his grandmother and sent to
Malaval. " There, in solitude, amid the
geese, the calves, and the sheep, my mind first
awoke to consciousness. What went before
is for me shrouded in impenetrable dark-
ness."

The spot which was the scene of this first
awakening deserves description. When one
follows the road from Laissac to Vezins,
a short distance after passing Vaysse-Rodie,
just as one has almost reached the crest of
the height which by reason of its rocky hel-
met is called the puech del Roucas, on the
line of the watershed dividing the limestone
basin of the Aveyron from the granitic basin

1 In the reminiscences of his childhood, which are in-
termingled with his entomological memoirs, Fabre does
not mention a single proper name, whether of person
or place; only the vague expression, "the table-land
of the Rouergue," which he once incidentally employs,
might give an attentive reader a hint as to the place of
his origin. Souvenirs, vi., p. 38; The Life of the Fly,
chap, v., " Heredity."

II

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

of the Viaur, on turning sharply to the right
one sees before one the austere Malavallis,
dominated on the one hand by the height
of Lavaysse with its ancient church, and en-
livened a little on the other side by the tiny
hamlet of Malaval, which consists, to-day,
of two farm-houses ; one whiter, more cheer-
ful-looking, and on lower ground; the other
standing higher, greyer in hue, and more dif-
ficult to discover in the shade of the oak-
trees and thickets of broom and blackthorn
which form a dense mantle of green about
it. It was there, amid these trees, in this
house, three thousand feet above the sea,
in sight of the sturdy belfry of Lavaysse,
that Jean-Henri Fabre was "born into the
true life," the life of the mind. Here, on
this hillside, which directly faces the east,
he made his earliest discoveries; here, one
fine morning, as he will presently tell us, he
discovered the sun; here, he saw not only
the dawn of day, but also " that inward
dawn, so far swept clear of the clouds of un-
consciousness as to leave him a lasting mem-
ory."

Nothing could take the place of the pic-
turesqueness and sincerity of the narrative
in which he has related these earliest im-
pressions of his childhood:
12

The Urchin of Malaval

My grandparents1 were people whose quarrel
with the alphabet was so great that they had never
opened a book in their lives; and they kept a lean
farm on the cold granite ridge of the Rouergue

1 These paternal grandparents, of whom our hero has
retained so vivid a recollection, bore the names of Jean-
Pierre Fabre and Elisabeth Poujade. Patient searching
of the archives, assisted, fortunately, by the goodwill of
M. Toscan, registrar to the Justice of the Peace for
Vezins, has enabled us to reproduce their marriage con-
tract, which is full of information hitherto unpublished,
and curious details of domestic life which will not fail
to interest the reader:

"In the year 1791 and on the isth day of the month
of February, in the locality of Segur, province of Avei-
ron, in the presence of me, Raymond Rous, man of law
and notary royal . . . have been devised and concluded
the following articles of marriage between Pierre-Jean
Fabre, legitimate son of Pierre Fabre, landowner and
farmer, and Anne Fages, husband and wife of the village
of Malaval, on the one part, and Elisabeth Poujade,
legitimate daughter of Antoine Poujade, landowner, and
Franchise Azemar, husband and wife of the village of
Mont, parish of Notre-Dame d'Arques, on the other part
— the said parties acting, namely, the said future hus-
band with the knowledge and consent of his father and
mother here present, and the said future wife, she being
absent, but the said Poujade for her, being here pres-
ent stipulating and accepting— have in the first place
promised that the said marriage shall be solemnised be-
fore the Church at the first demand of one of the par-
ties, under penalty of all expenses, damages, and inter-
ests— in the second place, the said Fabre and Fages,
husband and wife, favouring and contemplating the
present marriage have given and are giving by dona-
tion, declared between living persons, to the aforesaid
their son, the future husband, all and each of their pos-
sessions, movable and immovable, present and future,
under the clauses, conditions, and reserves hereafter fol-
lowing: firstly, to be fed at the same table of the same
victuals as the said donor; secondly, and in case of in-

13

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

table-land. The house, standing alone amidst the
heath and broom, with no neighbour for many a
mile around and visited at intervals by the wolves,
was to them the hub of the universe. But for a

compatibility, they reserve to themselves the same in-
come as Jean Fabre and Franchise Fabre, father and
mother of the donor, reserved to themselves in the mar-
riage contract of the said Fabre received by M. Dufieu,
notary . . . ; thirdly, to settle upon their other children
a portion such as by law shall pertain to them out of
their possessions in money when they accept a settle-
ment; and in case Franchise and Anne Fabre should
not desire so to do, they shall enjoy the annual pension
... of three setters each of rye, two quarters each of
oats, five pounds each of butter, and five pounds each
of cheese; the use of their usual bed, and of their spin-
ning-wheel ; the use of their clothes-press and the small
articles of furniture necessary according to their con-
dition; . . . the said Fages, the mother, reserves to her-
self the sum of thirty francs to be paid once at her will
to employ and dispose as she shall see fit. In the third
place, the said Poujade, the father, favouring and con-
templating the present marriage, has given and con-
stituted as the dowry of his daughter, the future wife,
to take the place of any right to a portion which she
might claim against his goods and those of the mother
aforesaid, a clothes-press with apparel valued at a hun-
dred livres, a heifer and a cow valued the two at eighty
francs, two sheep, and the sum of fifteen hundred livres,
the said sum being made up of one hundred and fifty
livres of the maternal parent's and the rest of the pa-
ternal parent's money. . . .

Devised and rehearsed in the presence of the sieur
Joseph Dejean, burgher of Moulin-Savi, and the sieur
Andre Bourles, practitioner of Segur, signed by the afore-
said Fabre, father and son, and the aforesaid Poujade,
father, and not the aforesaid Fages, who, being requested
to sign, has stated that she is not able to do so. ...

Forwarded by us, the notary undersigned, holder of
the draft at Segur, the i2th April 1807.

Rous, notary,''

14

The Urchin of Malaval

few surrounding villages, whither the calves were
driven upon fair-days, the rest was only very
vaguely known by hearsay. In this wild solitude,
the mossy fens, with their quagmires oozing with
iridescent pools, supplied the cows, the principal
source of wealth, with plentiful pasture. In sum-
mer, on the short sward of the slopes, the sheep
were penned day and night, protected from beasts
of prey by a fence of hurdles propped up with
pitchforks. When the grass was cropped close at
one spot, the fold was shifted elsewhither. In the
centre was the shepherd's rolling hut, a straw cabin.
Two watch-dogs, equipped with spiked collars,
were answerable for tranquillity if the thieving
wolf appeared in the night from out the neigh-
bouring woods.

Padded with a perpetual layer of cow-dung, in
which I sank to my knees, broken up shimmering
puddles of dark-brown liquid manure, the farm-
yard also boasted a numerous population. Here
the lambs skipped, the geese trumpeted, the
fowls scratched the ground, and the sow grunted
with her swarm of little pigs hanging to her
dugs.

The harshness of the climate did not give hus-
bandry the same chances. In a propitious season
they would set fire to a stretch of moorland bris-
tling with gorse and send the swing-plough across
the ground enriched by the cinders from the fire.
This yielded a few acres of rye, oats, and potatoes.
The best corners were kept for hemp, which fur-
nished the distaffs and spindles of the house with
IS

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

the material for cloth, and was looked upon as
grandmother's private crop.

Grandfather, therefore, was, before all, a herds-
man versed in the love of cows and sheep, but com-
pletely ignorant of aught else. How dumbfounded
he would have been to learn that, in the remote
future, one of his family would become enamoured
of those insignificant animals to which he had never
vouchsafed a glance in his life! Had he guessed
that that lunatic was myself, the scapegrace seated
at the table by his side, what a smack of the
head I should have caught, what a wrathful
look!

" The idea of wasting one's time with that non-
sense ! " he would have thundered.

For the patriarch was not given to joking. I
can still see his serious face, his undipped head
of hair, often brought back behind his ears with
a flick of the thumb and spreading its ancient
Gallic mane over his shoulders. I see his little
three-cornered hat, his small-clothes buckled at the
knees, his wooden shoes, stuffed with straw, that
echoed as he walked. Ah, no! Once childhood's
games were past, it would never have done to rear
the Grasshopper and unearth the Dung-beetle from
his natural surroundings.

Grandmother, pious soul, used to wear the ec-
centric headdress of the Rouergue highlanders: a
large disk of black felt, stiff as a plank, adorned
in the middle with a crown a finger's-breadth high
and hardly wider across than a six-franc piece. A
black ribbon fastened under the chin maintained

16

The Urchin of Malaval

the equilibrium of this elegant, but unstable circle.
Pickles, hemp, chickens, curds and whey, butter;
washing the clothes, minding the children, seeing
to the meals of the household: say that and you
have summed up the strenuous woman's round of
ideas. On her left side, the distaff, with its load
of tow ; in her right hand, the spindle turning under
a quick twist of her thumb, moistened at intervals
with her tongue: so she went through life, un-
weariedly, attending to the order and the welfare
of the house. I see her in my mind's eye, particu-
larly on winter evenings, which were more favour-
able to family talk. When the hour came for
meals, all of us, big and little, would take our
seats round a long table, on a couple of benches,
deal planks supported by four rickety legs. Each
found his wooden bowl and his tin spoon in front
of him. At one end of the table there always
stood an enormous rye-loaf, the size of a cart-
wheel, wrapped in a linen cloth with a pleasant
smell of washing, and there it remained until
nothing was left of it. With a vigorous stroke,
grandfather would cut off enough for the needs
of the moment; then he would divide the piece
among us with the one knife which he alone was
entitled to wield. It was now each one's business
to break up his bit with his fingers and to fill his
bowl as he pleased.

Next came grandmother's turn. A capacious pot
bubbled lustily and sang upon the flames in the
hearth, exhaling an appetising savour of bacon and
turnips. Armed with a long metal ladle, grand-

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

mother would take from it, for each of us in turn,
first the broth, wherein to soak the bread, and
next the ration of turnips and bacon, partly fat
and partly lean, filling the bowl to the top. At
the other end of the table was the pitcher, from
which the thirsty were free to drink at will. What
appetites we had, and what festive meals those
were, especially when a cream-cheese, home-made,
was there to complete the banquet!

Near us blazed the huge fire-place, in which
whole tree-trunks were consumed in the extreme
cold weather. From a corner of that monumental,
soot-glazed chimney, projected, at a convenient
height, a slate shelf, which served to light the
kitchen when we sat up late. On this we burnt
slips of pine-wood, selected among the most trans-
lucent, those containing the most resin. They shed
over the room a lurid red light, which saved the
walnut-oil in the lamp.

When the bowls were emptied and the last
crumb of cheese scraped up, grandam went back
to her distaff, on a stool by the chimney-corner.
We children, boys and girls, squatting on our
heels and putting out our hands to the cheerful
fire of furze, formed a circle round her and listened
to her with eager ears. She told us stories, not
greatly varied, it is true, but still wonderful, for
the wolf often played a part in them. I should
have very much liked to see this wolf, the hero
of so many tales that made our flesh creep; but
the shepherd always refused to take me into his
straw hut, In the middle of the fold, at night.
18

The Urchin of Malaval

When we had done talking about the horrid wolf,
the dragon, and the serpent, and when the resinous
splinters had given out their last gleams, we went
to sleep the sweet sleep that toil gives. As the
youngest of the household, I had a right to the
mattress, a sack stuffed with oat-chaff. The others
had to be content with straw.

I owe a great deal to you, dear grandmother:
it was in your lap that I found consolation for my
first sorrows. You have handed down to me, per-
haps, a little of your physical vigour, a little of
your love of work; but certainly you were no more
accountable than grandfather for my passion for
insects.

And yet in me, the observer, the inquirer into
things, began to take shape almost in infancy. Why
should I not describe my first discoveries? They
are ingenuous in the extreme, but will serve not-
withstanding to tell us something of the way in
which tendencies first show themselves.

I was five or six years old. That the poor
household might have one mouth less to feed, I
had been placed in grandmother's care. Here, in
solitude, my first gleams of intelligence were awak-
ened amidst the geese, the calves, and the sheep.
Everything before that is impenetrable darkness.
My real birth was at the moment when the dawn
of personality rises, dispersing the mists of uncon-
sciousness and leaving a lasting memory. I can
see myself plainly, clad in a soiled frieze frock
flapping against my bare heels; I remember the
handkerchief hanging from my waist by a bit pf
19

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

string, a handkerchief often lost and replaced by
the back of my sleeve.

There I stand one day, a pensive urchin, with
my hands behind my back and my face turned
to the sun. The dazzling splendour fascinates
me. I am the Moth attracted by the light of
the lamp. With what am I enjoying the glori-
ous radiance: with my mouth or my eyes? That
is the question put by my budding scientific curi-
osity. Reader, do not smile! the future observer
is already practising and experimenting. I open
my mouth wide and close my eyes: the glory dis-
appears. I open my eyes and shut my mouth:
the glory reappears. I repeat the performance,
with the same result. The question's solved: I
have learnt by deduction that I see the sun with
my eyes. What a discovery! That evening I
told the whole house all about it. Grandmother
smiled fondly at my simplicity: the others laughed
at it. 'Tis the way of the world.

Another find. At nightfall, amidst the neigh-
bouring bushes, a sort of jingle attracted my atten-
tion, sounding very faintly and softly through the
evening silence. Who is making that noise? Is
it a little bird chirping in his nest? We must
look into the matter, and that quickly. True,
there is the wolf, who comes out of the woods
at this time, so they tell me. Let's go all the
same, but not too far: just there, behind that
clump of broom. I stand on the look-out for long,
but all in vain. At the faintest sound of move-
ment in the brushwood, the jingle ceases. I try
2O

The Urchin of Malaval

again next day and the day after. This time my
stubborn watch succeeds. Whoosh! A grab of
my hand and I hold the singer. It is not a bird;
it is a kind of Grasshopper whose hind-legs my
playfellows have taught me to relish : a poor recom-
pense for my prolonged ambush. The best part
of the business is not the two haunches with the
shrimpy flavour, but what I have just learnt. I now
know, from personal observation, that the Grass-
hopper sings. I did not publish my discovery for
fear of the same laughter that greeted my story
about the sun.

Oh, what pretty flowers, in a field close to
the house! They seem to smile to me with their
great violet eyes. Later on I see, in their place,
bunches of big red cherries. I taste them. They
are not nice, and they have no stones. What can
those cherries be? At the end of the summer,
grandfather walks up with a spade and turns my
field of observation topsy-turvy. From under
ground there comes, by the basketful and sackful,
a sort of round root. I know that root ; it abounds
in the house; time after time I have cooked it in
the peat-stove. It is the potato. Its violet flower
and its red fruit are pigeon-holed in my memory
for good and all.

With an ever-watchful eye for animals and
plants, the future observer, the little six-year-old
monkey, practised by himself, all unawares. He
went to the flower, he went to the insect, even as
the Large White Butterfly goes to the cabbage,
and the Red Admiral to the thistle.
21

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

It would be impossible to describe more
delightfully the gradual development of
tastes and aptitudes in the dawn of life.

The same freshness of impression and the
same affinity for natural objects will be
found in another recollection of the same
period: the recollection of "a certain har-
monica," whose music to the " ear of a child
of six " sounded as sweet and strange as that
of the frog whom he heard emitting his lim-
pid note in the neighbourhood of the soli-
tary farm as the last light of evening faded
from the heights. " A series of glass slips,
of unequal length, fixed upon two tightly-
stretched tapes, and a cork on the end of a
wire, which served as a striker " : such was
the instrument which some one brought the
child from the latest fair. " Imagine an un-
tutored hand striking at random upon this
key-board, with the most riotous unexpected-
ness of octaves, discords, and inverted har-
monies " : such was the chiming of the bell-
ringer frogs on the sunken lanes of Malaval.
"As a song it had neither head nor tail;
but the purity of the sound was delightful."
How much more delightful, in the first radi-
ance of his spontaneous childhood, this little
scrap of a fellow who was beginning to play
his part in the great concert of the world,
22

The Urchin of Malaval

in which he was one day to fill so notable a
place and to sing a new song to the glory of
the Master of Nature ! i

1 This account of the naturalist's childhood is drawn
principally from The Souvenirs, vi., 32-45; see The Life
of the Fly, chap, v., " Heredity."

CHAPTER III

THE SCHOOLBOY: SAINT-LEONS

"1T7ITH his seventh year the time came for
* * him to go to school. The school-
master of Saint-Leons was the child's god-
father. Everything pointed to him as the
child's first teacher. So Jean-Henri left the
ancestral home at Malaval to return to his
father's house at Saint-Leons and attend the
local school, which was kept by his godfather,
Pierre Ricard. He could not have done bet-
ter as a start in life. Let us leave him to
paint one picture of this second phase of his
life. He begins with a description of the
school :

What shall I call the room in which I was to
become acquainted with the alphabet? It would
be difficult to find the exact word, because the
room served for every purpose. It was at once
a school, a kitchen, a bedroom, a dining-room, and,
at times, a chicken-house and a piggery. Palatial
schools were not dreamt of in those days; any
wretched hovel was thought good enough.

A broad fixed ladder led to the floor above.
24

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

Under the ladder stood a big bed in a boarded
recess. What was there upstairs? I never quite
knew. I would see the master sometimes bring
down an armful of hay for the ass, sometimes a
basket of potatoes which the housewife emptied
into the pot in which the little porker's food was
cooked. It must have been a loft of sorts, a store-
house of provisions for man and beast. Those
two apartments composed the whole building.

To return to the lower one, the schoolroom: a
window faces south, the only window in the house,
a long, narrow window whose frame you can touch
at the same time with your head and both your
shoulders. This sunny aperture is the only lively
spot in the dwelling; it overlooks the greater part
of the village, which straggles along the slopes of
a tapering valley. In the window-recess is the
master's little table.

The opposite wall contains a niche in which
stands a gleaming copper pail full of water. Here
the parched children can relieve their thirst when
they please, with a cup left within their reach.
At the top of the niche are a few shelves bright
with pewter plates, dishes, and drinking-vessels,
which are taken down from their sanctuary on
great occasions only.

More or less everywhere, at any spot which the
light touches, are crudely-coloured pictures, pasted
on the walls. Here is Our Lady of the Seven
Dolours, the disconsolate Mother of God, opening
her blue cloak to show her heart pierced with seven
daggers. Between the sun and moon, which stare

25

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

at you with their great, round eyes, is the Eternal
Father, Whose robe swells as though puffed out
with the storm. To the right of the window, in
the embrasure, is the Wandering Jew. He wears
a three-cornered hat, a large, white, leather apron,
hobnailed shoes, and carries a stout stick. " Never
was such a bearded man seen before or after,"
says the legend that surrounds the picture. The
draughtsman has not forgotten this detail; the old
man's beard spreads in a snowy avalanche over the
apron and comes down to his knees. On the left
is Genevieve of Brabant, accompanied by the roe;
with cruel Golo hiding in the bushes, sword in
hand. Above hangs The Death of Mr. Credit,
slain by defaulters at the door of his inn; and
so on and so on, in every variety of subject, at
all the unoccupied spots of the four walls.

I was filled with admiration of this picture-
gallery, which held one's eyes with its great patches
of red, blue, green, and yellow. The master, how-
ever, had not set up his collection with a view
to training our minds and hearts. That was the
last and least of the worthy man's ambitions. An
artist in his fashion, he had adorned his house ac-
cording to his taste; and we benefited by the
scheme of decoration.

While the gallery of halfpenny pictures made
me happy all the year round, there was another
entertainment which I found particularly attrac-
tive in winter, in frosty weather, when the snow
lay long on the ground. Against the far wall
stands the fire-place, as monumental in size as at
26

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

my grandmother's. Its arched cornice occupies the
whole width of the room, for the enormous re-
doubt fulfils more than one purpose. In the mid-
dle is the hearth, but on the right and the left
are two breast-high recesses, half wood and half
stone. Each of them is a bed, with a mattress
stuffed with husks of winnowed corn. Two slid-
ing boards serve as shutters and close the chest if
the sleeper would be alone. This dormitory, shel-
tered under the chimney breast, supplies couches
for the favoured ones of the house, the boarders.
They must lie snug in them at night, when the
north wind howls at the mouth of the dark valley
and sends the snow awhirl. The rest is occupied
by the hearth and its accessories: the three-legged
stools; the salt-box, hanging against the wall to
keep its contents dry; the heavy shovel which it
takes two hands to wield ; lastly, the bellows, sim-
ilar to those with which I used to blow out my
cheeks in grandfather's house. They consist of a
big branch of pine, hollowed throughout its length
with a red-hot iron. By means of this channel
one's breath is applied, from a convenient distance,
to the spot which is to be revived. With a couple
of stones for supports, the master's bundle of sticks
and our own logs blaze and flicker, for each of
us has to bring a log of wood in the morning,
if he would share in the treat.

Nevertheless, the fire was not exactly lit for

us, but, most of all, to warm a row of three pots

in which simmered the pigs' food, a mixture of

potatoes and bran. That, despite the tribute of

27

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

a log, was the real object of the brushwood fire.
The two boarders, on their stools, in the best places,
and we others, sitting on our heels, formed a semi-
circle around those big cauldrons full to the brim
and giving off little jets of steam, with puff-puff-
puffing sounds. The bolder among us, when the
master's eyes were engaged elsewhere, would dig a
knife into a well-cooked potato and add it to their
bit of bread; for I must say that, if we did little
work at my school, at least we did a deal of eat-
ing. It was the regular custom to crack a few
nuts and nibble at a crust while writing our page
or setting out our rows of figures.

We, the smaller ones, in addition to the com-
fort of studying with our mouths full, had every
now and then two other delights, which were quite
as good as cracking nuts. The back-door com-
municated with the yard where the hen, surrounded
by her brood of chicks, scratched at the dung-hill,
while the little porkers, of whom there were a
dozen, wallowed in their stone trough. This door
would open sometimes to let one of us out, a priv-
ilege which we abused, for the sly ones among
us were careful not to close it on returning. Forth-
with the porkers would come running in, one after
the other, attracted by the smell of the boiled pota-
toes. My bench, the one where the youngsters
sat, stood against the wall, under the copper pail
to which we used to go for water when the nuts
had made us thirsty, and was right in the way
of the pigs. Up they came trotting and grunting,
curling their little tails; they rubbeo against our
28

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

legs; they poked their cold, pink snouts into our
hands in search of a scrap of crust; they questioned
us with their sharp little eyes to learn if we hap-
pened to have a dry chestnut for them in our
pockets. When they had gone the round, some
this way and some that, they went back to the
farmyard, driven away by a friendly flick of the
master's handkerchief. Next came the Visit of the
hen, bringing her velvet-coated chicks to see us.
All of us eagerly crumbled a little bread for our
pretty visitors. We vied with one another in call-
ing them to us and tickling with our fingers their
soft and downy backs. No, there was certainly no
lack of distraction.1

Now we know the school, with all its
amenities, and our curiosity, aroused to the
highest pitch, inquires, not without some
alarm, what was taught in such a place and
in such company. After the description of
the class-room, we have the programme of
studies :

Let us first speak of the young ones, of whom
I was one. Each of us had, or rather was sup-
posed to have, in his hands a little penny book,
the alphabet, printed on grey paper. It began, on
the cover, with a pigeon or something like it.
Next came a cross, followed by the letters in their

1 Souvenirs, vi., pp. 46-68 ; The Life of the Fly, chap,
vi., " My Schooling."

29

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

order. When we turned over, our eyes encoun-
tered the terrible ba, be, bi, bo, bu, the stumbling-
block of most of us. When we had mastered that
formidable page we were considered to know how
to read and were admitted among the big ones.
But if the little book was to be of any use, the least
that was required was that the master should in-
terest himself in us to some extent and show us
how to set about things. For this the worthy
man, too much taken up with the big boys, had
not the time. The famous alphabet with the pigeon
was thrust upon us only to give us the air of
scholars. We were to contemplate it on our bench,
to decipher it with the help of our next neigh-
bours, in case he might know one or two of the
letters. Our contemplation came to nothing, being
every moment disturbed by a visit to the potatoes
in the stewpots, a quarrel among playmates about
a marble, the grunting invasion of the porkers, or
the arrival of the chicks. With the aid of these
diversions we would wait patiently until it was
time for us to go home. That was our most
serious work.

The big ones used to write. They had the benefit
of the small amount of light in the room, by the
narrow window where the Wandering Jew and
ruthless Golo faced each other, and of the large
and only table with its circle of seats. The school
supplied nothing, not even a drop of ink; every
one had to come with a full set of utensils. The
ink-horn of those days, a relic of the ancient pen-
case of which Rabelais speaks, was a long card-

30

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

board box divided into two stages. The upper
compartment held the pens, made of goose-quill
trimmed with a penknife; the lower contained, in
a tiny well, ink made of soot mixed with vinegar.

The master's great business was to mend the
pens — a delicate task, not without danger for in-
experienced ringers — and then to trace at the head
of the white page a line of strokes, single letters,
or words according to the scholar's capabilities.
When that is over, keep an eye on the work of
art which is coming to adorn the copy ! With what
undulating movements of the wrist does the hand,
resting on the little ringer, prepare and plan its
flight ! All at once the hand starts off, flies, whirls ;
and lo and behold, under the line of writing is
unfurled a garland of circles, spirals, and flourishes,
framing a bird with outspread wings; the whole,
if you please, in red ink, the only kind worthy of
such a pen. Large and small, we stood awestruck
in the presence of such marvels. The family, in
the evening, after supper, would pass from hand
to hand the masterpiece brought back from
school : —

" What a man ! " was the comment. " What a
man, to draw you a Holy Ghost with one stroke
of the pen ! "

What was read at my school? At most, in
French, a few selections from sacred history. Latin
recurred oftener, to teach us to sing vespers prop-
erly. The more advanced pupils tried to decipher
manuscript, a deed of sale, the hieroglyphics of
some scrivener.

31

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

And history, geography? No one ever heard of
them. What difference did it make to us whether
the earth was round or square! In either case,
it was just as hard to make it bring forth any-
thing.

And grammar? The master troubled his head
very little about that, and we still less. We should
have been greatly surprised by the novelty and the
forbidding look of such words in the grammatical
jargon as substantive, indicative, and subjunctive.
Accuracy of language, whether of speech or writ-
ing, must be learnt by practice. And none of us
was troubled by scruples in this respect. What
was the use of all these subtleties, when, on com-
ing out of school, a lad went back to his flock
of sheep!

And arithmetic? Yes, we did a little of this,
but not under that learned name. We called it
sums. To put down rows of figures, not too long,
add them and subtract them one from the other
was more or less familiar work. On Saturday
evenings, to finish up the week, there was a gen-
eral orgy of sums. The top boy stood up and,
in a loud voice, recited the multiplication table
up to twelve times. I say twelve times, for, in
those days, because of our old duodecimal meas-
ures, it was the custom to count as far as the
twelve-times table, instead of the ten-times of the
metric system. When this recital was over, the
whole class, the little ones included, shouted it in
chorus, creating such an uproar that chicks and
porkers took to flight if they happened to be there.
22

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

And this went on to twelve times twelve, the first
in the row starting the next table and the whole
class repeating it as loud as it could yell. Of all
that we were taught in school, the multiplication
table was what we knew best, for this noisy method
ended by dinning the different numbers into our
ears. This does not mean that we became skilful
reckoners. The cleverest of us easily got muddled
with the figures to be carried in a multiplication
sum. As for division, rare indeed were they who
reached such heights. In short, the moment a prob-
lem, however insignificant, had to be solved, we
had recourse to mental gymnastics much rather than
to the learned aid of arithmetic.

This account cannot be suspected of any
malicious exaggeration: the narrator is too
full of sympathy for his old master to do
him anything less than justice. In any case
he bears him no grudge in respect of the de-
ficiencies of his teaching:

When all is said, our master was an excellent
man who could have kept school very well but for
his lack of one thing: and that was time. He de-
voted to us all the little leisure which his numerous
functions left him. And first of all, he managed
the property of an absentee landowner, who only
occasionally set foot in the village. He had under
his care an old castle with four towers, which had

33

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

become so many pigeon-houses; he directed the get-
ting-in of the hay, the walnuts, the apples, and
the oats. We used to help him during the sum-
mer, when the school, which was well attended
in winter, was almost deserted. The few who re-
mained, because they were not yet big enough to
work in the fields, were small children, including
him who was one day to set down these memorable
facts. Lessons were less dull at that time of year.
They were often given on the hay or the straw;
oftener still, lesson-time was spent in cleaning out
the dovecot or stamping on the snails that had
sallied in rainy weather from their ramparts, the
tall box borders of the garden belonging to the
castle.

Our master was a barber. With his light hand,
which was so clever at beautifying our copies with
curlicue birds, he shaved the notabilities of the
place: the mayor, the parish priest, the notary.
Our master was a bell-ringer. A wedding or a
christening interrupted the lessons; he had to ring
a peal. A gathering storm gave us a holiday: the
great bell must be tolled to ward off the lightning
and the hail. Our master was a choir-singer.
With his mighty voice he filled the church where
he led the Magnificat at vespers. Our master
wound up the village clock. This was his proudest
function. Giving a glance at the sun, to ascertain
the time more or less nearly, he would climb to
the top of the steeple, open a huge cage of rafters,
and find himself in a maze of wheels and springs
whereof the secret was known to him alone.
34

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

In this picture of the schoolmaster and
the school we have lost sight for a time of
our little Jean-Henri. What becomes of
him? What does he do in such a school,
under such a master? To begin with, no
one takes a greater interest in the visits of
hens and piglings, no one appreciates more
keenly the delights of school in the open air.
In the meanwhile, his love of plants and ani-
mals finds expression in all directions, even
on the cover of his penny spelling-book:

Embellished with a crude picture of a pigeon
which I study and contemplate much more zeal-
ously than the A, B, C. Its round eye, with its
circlet of dots, seems to smile upon me. Its wing,
of which I count the feathers one by one, tells
me of flights on high, among the beautiful clouds;
it carries me to the beeches, raising their smooth
trunks above a mossy carpet studded with white
mushrooms that look like eggs dropped by some
vagrant hen; it takes me to the snow-clad peaks
where the birds leave the starry print of their
red feet. He is a fine fellow, my pigeon-friend:
he consoles me for the woes hidden behind the
cover of my book. Thanks to him, I sit quietly
on my bench and wait more or less till school
is over.

School out of doors has other charms. When
the master takes us to kill the snails in the box
borders, I do not always scrupulously fulfil my

35

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

office as exterminator. My heel sometimes hesi-
tates before coming down upon the handful which
I have gathered. They are so pretty! Just think,
there are yellow ones and pink, white ones and
brown, all with dark spiral streaks. I fill my
pockets with the handsomest so as to feast my
eyes upon them at my leisure.

On haymaking days in the master's field, I strike
up an acquaintance with the Frog. Flayed and
stuck at the end of a split stick, he serves as live
bait to tempt the Crayfish from his retreat by the
edge of the brook. On the alder-tree I catch the
Hoplia, the splendid Beetle who pales the azure
of the heavens. I pick the narcissus and learn
to gather, with the tip of my tongue, the tiny
drops of honey that lie right at the bottom of
the cleft corolla. I also learn that too-long in-
dulgence in this quest always brings a headache;
but this discomfort in no way impairs my admira-
tion for the glorious white flower, which wears
a narrow red collar at the throat of its funnel.
When we go to beat the walnut-trees, the barren
grass-plots provide me with Locusts, spreading their
wings, some into a blue fan, others into a red.

And thus the rustic school, even in the heart
of winter, furnished continuous food for my inter-
est in things.

But while the love of plants and animals
developed automatically, without guide or ex-
ample, in the child predestined to entomology,
36

The Schoolboy: Samt-Leons

there was one respect in which he did not
make progress: the knowledge of the alpha-
bet, which was indeed neglected for the
pigeon. Consequently neither the school-
master nor the spelling-book had much to do
with the earliest stage of his education. He
tells us how he learned to read, not at Mas-
ter Ricard's, but, thanks to his father, in the
school of the animals and nature:

I was still at the same stage, hopelessly behind-
hand with the intractable alphabet, when my father,
by a chance inspiration, brought me home from the
town what was destined to give me a start along
the road of reading. Despite the not insignificant
part which it played in my intellectual awakening,
the purchase was by no means a ruinous one. It
was a large print, price six farthings, coloured and
divided into compartments in which animals of all
sorts taught the A, B, C by means of the first
letters of their names.

I made such rapid progress that, in a few days,
I was able to turn in good earnest to the pages
of my little pigeon-book, hitherto so undecipher-
able. I was initiated ; I knew how to spell. My
parents marvelled. I can explain this unexpected
progress to-day. Those speaking pictures, which
brought me among my friends the beasts, were
in harmony with my instincts. If the animal has
not fulfilled all that it promised in so far as I
am concerned, I have at least to thank it for teach-
37

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

ing me to read. I should have succeeded by other
means, I do not doubt, but not so quickly or pleas-
antly. Animals for ever!

Luck favoured me a second time. As a reward
for my prowess I was given La Fontaine's Fables,
in a popular, cheap edition, crammed with pic-
tures, small, I admit, and very inaccurate, but
still delightful. Here were the crow, the fox, the
wolf, the magpie, the frog, the rabbit, the ass, the
dog, the cat; all persons of my acquaintance. The
glorious book was immensely to my taste, with its
skimpy illustrations in which the animal walked
and talked. As to understanding what it said,
that was another story. Never mind, my lad!
Put together syllables that say nothing to you yet;
they will speak to you later and La Fontaine will
always remain your friend.1

1 Souvenirs, iv., pp. 50-60 ; The Life of the Fly., chap.
vi., " My Schooling."

CHAPTER IV

THE SCHOOLBOY: SAINT-LEONS

know a pupil thoroughly, it is not
enough to study him in class; one must
watch him at play, for it is then especially
that his nascent tastes reveal themselves, and
the outlines of his future personality are
more plainly discerned.

We have seen Jean-Henri bending over
his task under the eye of the schoolmaster,
or of his father; now let us follow him in
the free play of his activities, absorbed in
intimate communion with the children of na-
ture. He himself will tell us what were his
favourite pastimes in the garden, by the pond,
or in the fields.

All the reminiscences of the little Jean-
Henri's schooldays pall before the memory
of his father's garden:

A tiny hanging garden of some thirty paces by
ten, situated right at the top of the village. The
only spot that overlooks it is a little esplanade on
which stands the old castle x with the four turrets

1 The Chateau de Saint-Leons standing just outside
and above the village of Saint-Leons, where the author

39

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

that have now become dovecotes. A steep path
takes you up to this open space. From my house
on, it is more like a precipice than a slope. Gar-
dens buttressed by walls are staged in terraces on
the sides of the funnel-shaped valley. Ours is the
highest; it is also the smallest.

There are no trees. Even a solitary apple-tree
would crowd it. There is a patch of cabbages,
with a border of sorrel, a patch of turnips, and an-
other of lettuces. That is all we have in the way
of garden-stuff; there is no room for more.
Against the upper supporting-wall, facing due
south, is a vine-arbour which, at intervals, when
the sun is generous, provides half a basketful of
white muscatel grapes. These are a luxury of
our own, greatly envied by the neighbours, for
the vine is unknown outside this corner, the warm-
est in the village.

A hedge of currant-bushes, the only safeguard
against a terrible fall, forms a parapet above the
next terrace. When our parents' watchful eyes
are off us, we lie flat on our stomachs, my brother 1
and I, and look into the abyss at the foot of the
wall bulging under the thrust of the soil. It is
the garden of monsieur le notaire.

There are beds with box-borders in that gar-
was born in 1823. Cf. The Life of the Fly, chaps, vi. and
vii.— A. T. DE M.

1 The brother whom Fabre here associates with the
memories of his childhood has also proved a credit to
his name and his vocation. M. Frederic Fabre is to-day
Director of the Crillon Canal and assistant justice for
the southern canton of Avignon.
40

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

den ; there are pear-trees reputed to give pears, real
pears, more or less good to eat when they have
ripened on the straw all through the late autumn.
In our imagination, it is a spot of perpetual de-
light, a paradise, but a paradise seen the wrong
way up: instead of contemplating it from below,
we gaze at it from above. How happy they must
be with so much space and all those pears!

We look at the hives, around which the hover-
ing Bees make a sort of russet smoke. They stand
under the shelter of a great hazel. The tree has
sprung up all of itself in a fissure of the wall,
almost on the level of our currant-bushes. While
it spreads its mighty branches over the notary's
hives, its roots, at least, are in our soil. It be-
longs to us. The trouble is to gather the nuts.

I creep along astride the strong branches pro-
jecting horizontally into space. If I slip, or if the
support breaks, I shall come to grief in the midst
of the angry Bees. I do not slip, and the support
does not break. With the crooked stick which
my brother hands me, I bring the finest clusters
within my reach. I soon fill my pockets. Mov-
ing backwards, still straddling my branch, I re-
cover terra firma. O wondrous days of litheness
and assurance, when, for a few filberts, on a per-
ilous perch we braved the abyss ! 1

I confess I love this little sketch of the
garden, which gives evidence of a singular

1 Souvenirs, vin., pp. 126, 127 ; Bramble-Bees, chap,
xiii, "The Halicti."

41

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

clearness of perception in the gaze which this
child already turns upon the things about
him.

But I like still better the history of the
duck-pond, graceful as an idyll and touching
as an elegy, the idyll of a rustic childhood
which becomes aware, simultaneously, of the
family secrets and the secrets of nature; the
elegy of a father's tenderness and a son's
piety cramped and mortified by poverty, the
elegy of intelligence, nay, of genius, ready
to spread its wings and fettered in its flight
by the heavy chains and harsh necessities
of material existence :

How shall a man earn his living in my poor
native village, with its inclement weather and its
niggardly soil? The owner of a few acres of
grazing-land rears sheep. In the best parts, he
scrapes the soil with the swing-plough ; he flattens
it into terraces banked by walls of broken stones.
Pannierfuls of dung are carried up on donkey-
back from the cowshed. Then, in due season,
comes the excellent potato, which, boiled and
served hot in a basket of plaited straw, is the
chief stand-by in winter.

Should the crop exceed the needs of the house-
hold, the surplus goes to feed a pig, that precious
beast, a treasure of bacon and ham. The ewes
supply butter and curds; the garden boasts cab-
bages, turnips, and even a few hives in a sheltered
42

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

corner. With wealth like that one can look fate
in the face. But we, we have nothing, nothing
but the little house inherited by my mother, and
its adjoining patch of garden. The meagre re-
sources of the family are coming to an end. It is
time to see to it, and that quickly. What is to
be done? That is the stern question which father
and mother sat debating one evening.

Hop-o'-my-Thumb, hiding under the woodcut-
ter's stool, listened to his parents overcome by want.
I also, pretending to sleep, with my elbows on
the table, listen, not to blood-curdling designs, but
to grand plans that set my heart rejoicing. This
is how the matter stands: at the bottom of the
village, near the church, at the spot where the
water of the large roofed spring escapes from its
underground weir and joins the brook in the val-
ley, an enterprising man, back from the war,1 has
set up a small tallow-factory. He sells the scrap-
ings of his pans, the burnt fat, reeking of candle-
grease, at a low price. He proclaims these wares
to be excellent for fattening ducks.

" Suppose we breed some ducks," says mother.
" They sell very well in town. Henri would mind
them and take them down to the brook."

" Very well," says father, " let's breed some ducks.
There may be difficulties in the way; but we'll
have a try."

That night I had dreams of paradise: I was
with my ducklings, clad in their yellow suits; I

iThe war of 1830 with Algiers.— A. T. DE M.

43

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

took them to the pond, I watched them have their
bath, I brought them back again, carrying the more
tired ones in a basket.

A month or two after, the little birds of my
dreams were a reality. There were twenty-four
of them. They had been hatched by two hens, of
whom one, the big black one, was an inmate of
the house, while the other was borrowed from
a neighbour.

To bring them up, the former is sufficient, so
careful is she of her adopted family. At first
everything goes perfectly: a tub with two fingers'
depth of water serves as a pond. On sunny days
the ducklings bathe in it under the anxious eye
of the hen.

A fortnight later, the tub is no longer enough.
It contains neither cresses crammed with tiny Shell-
fish nor Worms and Tadpoles, dainty morsels both.
The time has come for dives and hunts amid the
tangle of the water-weeds; and for us the day
of trouble has also come. True, the miller, down
by the brook, has fine ducks, easy and cheap to
rear ; the tallow-smelter, who has extolled his burnt
fat so loudly, has some as well, for he possesses
the advantage of the waste water from the spring
at the bottom of the village; but how are we,
right up there, at the top, to procure aquatic sports
for our broods? In summer we have hardly water
to drink!

Near the house, in a freestone recess, a scanty
spring trickles into a basin made in the rock. Four
or five families have, like ourselves, to draw their
44

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

water there in copper pails. By the time that the
schoolmaster's donkey has slaked her thirst and the
neighbours have taken their provision for the day,
the basin is dry. We have to wait for four-and-
twenty hours for it to fill. No, this is not the
hole in which the ducks would delight, nor in-
deed in which they would be tolerated.

There remains the brook. To go down to it
with the troop of ducklings is fraught with danger.
On the way through the village we might meet
cats, bold ravishers of small poultry; some surly
mongrel might frighten and scatter the little band;
and it would be a hard puzzle to collect it in its
entirety, We must avoid the traffic and take refuge
in peaceful and sequestered spots.

On the hills, the path that climbs behind the
chateau soon takes a sudden turn and widens into
a small plain beside the meadows. It skirts a
rocky slope whence trickles, level with the ground,
a streamlet, which forms a pond of some size.
Here profound solitude reigns all day long. The
ducklings will be well off; and the journey can
be made in peace by a deserted footpath.

You, little man, shall take them to that delect-
able spot. What a day it was that marked my
first appearance as a herdsman of ducks! Why
must there be a jar to the even tenor of such joys!
The too-frequent encounter of my tender skin with
the hard ground had given me a large and pain-
ful blister on the heel. Had I wanted to put on
the shoes stowed away in the cupboard for Sun-
days and holidays, I could not. There was noth-

45

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

ing for it but to go barefoot over the broken
stones, dragging my leg and carrying high the in-
jured heel.

Let us make a start, hobbling along, switch in
hand, behind the ducks. They, too, poor little
things, have sensitive soles to their feet; they limp,
they quack with fatigue. They would refuse to
go any further if I did not, from time to time,
call a halt under the shelter of an ash.

We are there at last. The place could not be
better for my birdlets: shallow, tepid water, inter-
spersed with muddy knolls and green eyots. The
diversions of the bath begin forthwith. The duck-
lings clap their beaks and rummage here, there,
and everywhere. They are happy; and it is a
blessed thing to see them at work. We will let
them be. It is my turn to enjoy the pond.

What is this? On the mud lie some loose,
knotted, soot-coloured cords. One might take them
for threads of wool like those which you pull out
of an old ravelly stocking. Can some shepherdess,
knitting a black sock and finding her work turn
out badly, have begun all over again and, in her
impatience, have thrown down the wool with all
the dropped stitches? It really looks like it.

I take up one of those cords in my hand. It
is sticky and extremely slack; the thing slips
through the fingers before they can catch hold of
it. A few of the knots burst and shed their con-
tents. What comes out is a black globule, the
size of a pin's head, followed by a flat tail. I
recognise, on a very small scale, a familiar object:
46

The Schoolboy : Saint-Leons

the Tadpole, the Frog's baby. I have seen enough.
Let us leave the knotted cords alone.

The next creatures please me better. They spin
round on the surface of the water and their black
backs gleam in the sun. If I lift a hand to seize
them, that moment they disappear, I know not
where. It's a pity: I should have much liked to
see them closer and to make them wriggle in a
little bowl which I should have put ready for
them.

Let us look at the bottom of the water, pull-
ing aside those bunches of green string whence
beads of air are rising and gathering into foam.
There is something of everything underneath. I
see pretty shells with compact whorls, flat as beans ;
I notice little worms carrying tufts and feathers;
I make out some with flabby fins constantly flap-
ping on their backs. What are they all doing
there? What are their names? I do not know.
And I stare at them for ever so long, held by
the incomprehensible mystery of the waters.

At the place where the pond dribbles into the
adjoining field are some alder-trees; and here I
make a glorious find. It is a Beetle — not a very
large one, oh no! He is smaller than a cherry-
stone, but of an unutterable blue. I put the
glorious one inside an empty snail-shell, which I
plug up with a leaf. I shall admire that living
jewel at my leisure, when I get back. Other dis-
tractions summon me away.

The spring that feeds the pond trickles from
the rock, cold and clear. The water first collects
47

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

into a cup, the size of the hollow of one's two
hands, and then runs over in a stream. These
falls call for a mill: that goes without saying.
Two bits of straw, artistically crossed upon an axis,
provide the machine; some flat stones set on edge
afford supports. It is a great success: the mill
turns admirably. My triumph would be complete,
could I but share it. For want of other play-
mates, I invite the ducks.

Everything palls in this poor world of ours,
even a mill made of two straws. Let us think
of something else; let us contrive a dam to hold
back the waters and form a pool. There is no
lack of stones for the brickwork. I pick the most
suitable; I break the larger ones. And, while col-
lecting these blocks, suddenly I forget all about
the dam which I meant to build.

On one of the broken stones, in a cavity large
enough for me to put my fist in, something gleams
like glass. The hollow is lined with facets gath-
ered in sixes which flash and glitter in the sun.
I have seen something like this in church, on the
great saint's day, when the light of the candles
in the big chandelier kindles the stars in its hang-
ing crystal.

We children, lying, in summer, on the straw
of the threshing-floor, have told one another stories
of the treasures which a dragon guards under-
ground. Those treasures now return to my mind:
the names of precious stones ring out uncertainly
but gloriously in my memory. I think of the king's
crown, of the princesses' necklaces. In breaking
48

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

stones, can I have found, but on a much richer
scale, the thing that shines quite small in my
mother's ring? I want more such.

The dragon of the subterranean treasures treats
me generously. He gives me his diamonds in such
quantities that soon I possess a heap of broken stones
sparkling with magnificent clusters. He does more :
he gives me his gold. The water from the rock
falls on a bed of fine sand which it swirls into
bubbles. If I bend towards the light, I see some-
thing like gold-filings whirl where the fall touches
the bottom. Is it really the famous metal of
which twenty-franc pieces, so rare with us at home,
are made? One would think so, from the glitter.

I take a pinch of sand and place it in my palm.
The brilliant particles are numerous, but so small
that I have to pick them up with a straw moistened
in my mouth. Let us drop this: they are too tiny
and too bothersome to collect. The big, valuable
lumps must be farther on, in the thickness of the
rock. We'll come back later; we'll blast the
mountain.

I break more stones. Oh, what a queer thing
has just come loose, all in one piece! It is turned
spiral-wise, like certain flat Snails that come out
of the cracks of old walls in rainy weather. With
its gnarled sides, it looks like a little ram's-horn.
Shell or horn, it is very curious. How do things
like that find their way into the stone?

Treasures and curiosities make my pockets bulge
with pebbles. It is late, and the little ducklings
have had all they want to eat. Come along, young-

49

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

sters, let's go home. My blistered heel is for-
gotten in my excitement.

The walk back is a delight. A voice sings in
my ear, an untranslatable voice, softer than any
language and bewildering as a dream. It speaks
to me for the first time of the mysteries of the
pond; it glorifies the heavenly insect which I hear
moving in the empty snail-shell, its temporary cage ;
it whispers the secrets of the rock, the gold-filings,
the faceted jewels, the ram's-horn turned to stone.

Poor simpleton, smother your joy! I arrive.
My parents catch sight of my bulging pockets,
with their disgraceful load of stones. The cloth
has given way under the rough and heavy burden.

" You rascal ! " says father, at sight of the dam-
age. " I send you to mind the ducks and you
amuse yourself picking up stones, as though there
weren't enough of them all round the house ! Make
haste and throw them away ! "

Broken-hearted, I obey. Diamonds, gold-dust,
petrified ram's-horn, heavenly Beetle are all flung
on a rubbish-heap outside the door.

Mother bewails her lot:

" A nice thing, bringing up children to see them
turn out so badly! You'll bring me to my grave.
Green stuff I don't mind: it does for the rabbits.
But stones, which ruin your pockets; poisonous
animals, which'll sting your hand : what good are
they to you, silly? There's no doubt about it:
some one has thrown a spell over you ! "

Yes, my poor mother, you were right, in your
simplicity: a spell had been cast upon me; I ad-
50

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

mit it to-day. When it is hard enough to earn
one's bit of bread, does not improving one's mind
but render one more meet for suffering? Of what
avail is the torment of learning to the derelicts
of life?

A deal better off am I, at this late hour, dogged
by poverty and knowing that the diamonds of the
duck-pool were rock-crystal, the gold-dust mica,
the stone horn an Ammonite, and the sky-blue Bee-
tle a Hoplia! We poor men would do better to
mistrust the joys of knowledge : let us dig our fur-
row in the field of the commonplace, flee the
temptations of the pond, mind our ducks and leave
to others, more favoured by fortune, the job of
explaining the world's mechanism, if the spirit
moves them.

And yet no! Alone among living creatures man
has the thirst for knowledge; he alone pries into
the mysteries of things. The least among us will
utter his whys and his wherefores, a fine pain un-
known to the brute beast. If these questionings
come from us with greater persistence, with a more
imperious authority, if they divert us from the
quest of lucre, life's only object in the eyes of
most men, does it behove us to complain ? Let us
be careful not to do so, for that would be deny-
ing the best of all our gifts.

Let us strive, on the contrary, within the meas-
ure of our capacity, to force a gleam of light from
the vast unknown ; let us examine and question
and, here and there, wrest a few shreds of truth.
We shall sink under the task; in the present ill-
51

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

ordered state of society, we shall end, perhaps,
in the workhouse. Let us go ahead for all that:
our consolation shall be that we have increased
by one atom the general mass of knowledge, the
incomparable treasure of mankind.

As this modest lot has fallen to me, I will re-
turn to the pond, notwithstanding the wise admoni-
tions and the bitter tears which I once owed to
it. I will return to the pond, but not to that of
the small ducks, the pond aflower with illusions:
those ponds do not occur twice in a lifetime. For
luck like that, you must be in all the new glory
of your first breeches and your first ideas.

Many another have I come upon since that dis-
tant time, ponds very much richer and, moreover,
explored with the ripened eye of experience. En-
thusiastically I searched them with the net, stirred
up their mud, ransacked their trailing weeds. None
in my memories comes up to the first, magnified in
its delights and mortifications by the marvellous
perspective of the years.1

His excursions to the pond and the garden
were little more to our little Jean-Henri than
the preface to rather more distant excursions
in the neighbourhood of Saint-Leons. The
edge of the brook, the crest of the hill and
the skirts of the beechwood which limit his
horizon are the chosen spots to which his

1 Souvenirs, pp. 260-270. The Life of the Fly, chap.
vii., "The Pond."

52

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

curiosity leads him, and the favourite scene
of his childish rambles. It is really delight-
ful to watch him taking possession of these
unknown territories and making the first in-
ventory of the wealth that he will explore
later on.

On that day, wealthy and leisured, with an ap-
ple for my lunch and all my time to myself, I
decided to visit the brown of the neighbouring hill,
hitherto looked upon as the boundary of the world.
Right at the top is a row of trees which, turning
their backs to the wind, bend and toss about as
though to uproot themselves and take to flight.
How often, from the little window in my home,
have I not seen them bowing their heads in stormy
weather ; how often have I not watched them writh-
ing like madmen amid the snow-dust which the
north-wind's besom raises and smooths along the
hill-side! What are they doing up there, those
desolate trees? I am interested in their supple
backs, to-day still and upright against the blue of
the sky, to-morrow shaken when the clouds pass
overhead. I am gladdened by their calmness; I
am distressed by their terrified gestures. They are
my friends. I have them before my eyes at every
hour of the day. In the morning the sun rises
behind their transparent screen and ascends in its
glory. Where does it come from? I am going
to climb up there; and perhaps I shall find out.

I mount the slope. It is a lean grass-sward

53

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

close-cropped by the sheep. It has no bushes, fer-
tile in rents and tears, for which I should have
to answer on returning home, nor any rocks, the
scaling of which involves like dangers; nothing but
large, flat stones, scattered here and there. I have
only to go straight on, over smooth ground. But
the sward is as steep as a sloping roof. It is long,
ever so long; and my legs are very short. From
time to time I look up. My friends, the trees
on the hill-top, seem to be no nearer. Cheerly,
sonnie! Scramble away!

What is this at my feet? A lovely bird has
flown from its hiding-place under the eaves of a
big stone. Bless us, here's a nest made of hair
and fine straw! It's the first I have ever found,
the first of the joys which the birds are to bring
me. And in this nest are six eggs, laid prettily
side by side; and these eggs are a magnificent blue,
as though steeped in a dye of celestial azure. Over-
powered with happiness, I lie down on the grass
and stare.

Meanwhile the mother, with a little clap of
her gullet — " Tack ! Tack ! " — flies anxiously from
stone to stone, not far from the intruder. My age
knows no pity, is still too barbarous to understand
maternal anguish. A plan is running in my head,
a plan worthy of a little beast of prey. I will
come back in a fortnight and collect the nestlings
before they can fly away. In the meantime, I will
just take one of those pretty blue eggs, only one,
as a trophy. Lest it should be crushed, I place
the fragile thing on a little moss in the scoop of
54

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

my hand. Let him cast a stone at me that has
not, in his childhood, known the rapture of finding
his first nest.

My delicate burden, which would be ruined by
a false step, makes me give up the remainder of
the climb. Some other day I shall see the trees
on the hill-top over which the sun rises. I go
down the slope again. At the bottom I meet the
parish priest's curate reading his breviary as he
takes his walk. He sees me coming solemnly along,
like a relic-bearer; he catches sight of my hand
hiding something behind my back:

" What have you there, my boy ? " he asks.

All abashed, I open my hand and show my blue
egg on its bed of moss.

"Ah!" says his reverence. "A Saxicola's egg!
Where did you get it ? "

" Up there, father, under a stone."

Question follows question; and my peccadillo
stands confessed. " By chance I found a nest
which I was not looking for. There were six
eggs in it. I took one of them — here it is — and
I am waiting for the rest to hatch. I shall go
back for the others when the young birds have
their quill-feathers."

" You mustn't do that, my little friend," replies
the priest. "You mustn't rob the mother of her
brood; you must respect the innocent little ones;
you must let God's birds grow up and fly from
the nest. They are the joy of the fields, and they
clear the earth of its vermin. Be a good boy, now,
and don't touch the nest."

55

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

I promise; and the curate continues his walk.
I come home with two good seeds cast on the fal-
lows of my childish brain. An authoritative word
has taught me that plundering birds' nests is a bad
action. I did not quite understand how the bird
comes to our aid by destroying vermin, the scourge
of the crops; but I felt, at the bottom of my heart,
that it is wrong to afflict the mothers.

" Saxicola," the priest had said, on seeing my
find.

" Hullo ! " said I to myself. " Animals have
names, just like ourselves. Who named them?
What are all my different acquaintances in the
woods and meadows called? What does Saxicola
mean ? "

Years passed; and Latin taught me that Saxi-
cola means an inhabitant of the rocks. My bird,
in fact, was flying from one rocky point to the
other while I lay in ecstasy before its eggs ; its
house, its nest, had the rim of a large stone for a
roof. Further knowledge gleaned from books
taught me that the lover of stony hill-sides is also
called the Motteux, or Clodhopper,1 because, in the
ploughing season, she flies from clod to clod, in-
specting the furrows rich in unearthed grub-
worms. Lastly, I came upon the Provencal expres-

1 The Wheat-ear, one of the Saxicolae, is known also as
the White-Tail, the meaning of both forms being the
same; White-ear being a corruptive of the Anglo-
Saxon name. Both correspond with the Provencal Cul-
blanc. The Stonechat is a member of the same genus.
B. M.

56

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

sion Cul-blanc, which is also a picturesque term,
suggesting the patch on the bird's rump which
spreads out like a white butterfly flitting over the
fields.

Thus did the vocabulary come into being that
would one day allow me to greet by their real
names the thousand actors on the stage of the
fields, the thousand little flowers that smile at us
from the wayside. The word which the curate
had spoken without attaching the least importance
to it revealed a world to me, the world of plants
and animals designated by their real names. To
the future must belong the task of deciphering some
pages of the immense lexicon ; for to-day I will con-
tent myself with remembering the Saxicola, or
Wheat-ear.

On the west, my village crumbles into an ava-
lanche of garden-patches, in which plums and ap-
ples ripen. Low, bulging walls, blackened with
the stains of lichens and mosses, support the ter-
races. The brook runs at the foot of the slope.
It can be cleared almost everywhere at a bound.
In the wider parts, flat stones standing out of the
water serve as a foot-bridge. There is no such
thing as a whirlpool, the terror of mothers when
the children are away; it is nowhere more than
knee-deep. Dear little brook, so tranquil, cool, and
clear, I have seen majestic rivers since, I have seen
the boundless seas; but nothing in my memories
equals your modest falls. About you clings all the
hallowed pleasure of my first impressions.

A miller has bethought him of putting the brook,

57

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

which used to flow so gaily through the fields, to
work. Halfway up the slope, a watercourse, econ-
omising the gradient, diverts part of the water, and
conducts it into a large reservoir, which supplies
the mill-wheels with motor-power. This basin
stands beside a frequented path, and is walled off
at the end.

One day, hoisting myself on a play-fellow's shoul-
ders, I looked over the melancholy wall, all bearded
with ferns. I saw bottomless, stagnant waters cov-
ered with slimy green. In the gaps in the sticky
carpet, a sort of dumpy, black-and-yellow reptile
was lazily swimming. To-day I should call it a
Salamander; at that time, it appeared to me the
offspring of the Serpent and the Dragon, of whom
we were told such blood-curdling tales when we
sat up at night. Hoo! I've seen enough; let's
get down again, quick!

The brook runs below. Alders and ash, bending
forward on either bank, mingle their branches and
form a verdant arch. At their feet, behind a porch
of great twisted roots, are watery caverns pro-
longed by gloomy corridors. On the threshold of
these fastnesses shimmers a glint of sunshine, cut
into ovals by the leafy sieve above.

This is the haunt of the red-necktied Minnows.
Come along very gently, lie flat on the ground and
look. What pretty little fish they are, with their
scarlet throats! Clustering side by side, with their
heads turned against the stream, they puff their
cheeks out and in, rinsing their mouths incessantly.
To keep their stationary position in the running
58

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

water, they need naught but a slight quiver of their
tail and of the fin on their back. A leaf falls from
the tree. Whoosh! The whole troop has disap-
peared.

On the other side of the brook is a spinney of
beeches, with smooth, straight trunks, like pillars.
In their majestic, shady branches sit chattering
Rooks, drawing from their wings old feathers re-
placed by new. The ground is padded with moss.
At one's first step on the downy carpet, the eye is
caught by a mushroom, not yet full-spread and look-
ing like an egg dropped there by some vagrant Hen.
It is the first that I have picked, the first that I
have turned round and round in my fingers, inquir-
ing into its structure with that vague curiosity
which is the first awakening of observation.

Soon I find others, differing in size, shape, and
colour. It is a real treat for my prentice eyes.
Some are fashioned like bells, like extinguishers,
like cups; some are drawn out into spindles, hol-
lowed into funnels, rounded into hemispheres. I
come upon some that are broken and are weeping
milky tears; I step on some that, instantly, be-
come tinged with blue; I see some big ones that
are crumbling into rot and swarming with worms.
Others, shaped like pears, are dry and open at the
top with a round hole, a sort of chimney whence
a whiff of smoke escapes when I prod their under-
side with my finger. These are the most curious.
I fill my pockets with them to make them smoke
at my leisure, until I exhaust the contents, which
are at last reduced to a kind of tinder.
59

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

What fun I had in that delightful spinney! I
returned to it many a time after my first find;
and here, in the company of the Rooks, I received
my first lessons in mushroom lore. My harvests, I
need hardly say, were not admitted to the house.
The mushroom, or the Bouturel, as we call it,
had a bad reputation for poisoning people. That
was enough to make mother banish it from the
family table. I could scarcely understand how the
Bouturel, so attractive in appearance, came to be so
wicked; however, I accepted the experience of my
elders ; and no disaster ever ensued . from my rash
friendship with the poisoner.

As my visits to the beech-clump were repeated,
I managed to divide my finds into three categories.
In the first, which was the most numerous, the
mushroom was furnished underneath with little
radiating flakes. In the second, the lower surface
was lined with a thick pad pricked with hardly
visible holes. In the third, it bristled with tiny
spots similar to the papilla? on a cat's tongue. The
need of some order to assist the memory made me
invent a classification for myself.

Very much later there fell into my hands cer-
tain small books from which I learnt that my three
categories were well known; they even had Latin
names, which fact was far from displeasing to me.
Ennobled by Latin which provided me with my
first exercises and translations, glorified by the an-
cient language which the rector used in saying his
mass, the mushroom rose in my esteem. To de-
60

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

serve so learned an appellation, it must possess a
genuine importance.

The same books told me the name of the one
that had amused me so much with its smoking
chimney. It is called the Puffball in English, but
its French name is the Vesse-de-loup. I disliked
the expression, which to my mind smacked of bad
company. Next to it was a more decent denomi-
nation: Lycoperdon; but this was only so in ap-
pearance, for Greek roots sooner or later taught
me that Lycoperdon means Vesse-de-loupe and noth-
ing else.

How far off are those blessed times when my
childish curiosity sought solitary exercise in making
itself acquainted with the mushroom! " Eheu!
Fugaces labuntur anni! " said Horace. Ah, yes,
the years glide fleeting by, especially when they
are nearing their end! They were once the merry
brook that dallies among the willows on imper-
ceptible slopes ; to-day, they are the torrent swirl-
ing a thousand straws along as it rushes towards
the abyss.1

Can one imagine a more picturesque and
original fashion of sketching the outline of
one's earliest memories? We have collected
these memories, which he has scattered so
profusely over the pages of his books, with
pious care, because they so delightfully re-

1 Souvenirs, pp. 292-300. The Life of the Fly, chap,
xvii., " Recollections of Childhood."

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

veal a soul and a life that are akin to our
own, more especially in their beginnings, and
because they so wonderfully evoke an age
and a country that were once ours and are
still the possession of our grand-nephews.

At the age of ten the time came for the
child to bid a fresh farewell to his native
village. His father was the first of his race
to be tempted by the town, and he removed
his home to Rodez. Jean-Henri was never
again to behold the humble village where he
lived " his best years," but he bore its image
indelibly stamped upon his mind, upon that
part of it in which are formed those pro-
found impressions that grow more vivid with
the years instead of fading. He left it at
first with a light heart, but later on he was
homesick for it; and as the years went by
he felt more than ever its mysterious attrac-
tion, so that one of his last wishes was to
see his grave dug in the shadow of his cradle.
But we will not wrong feelings so delicate
by seeking to interpret them; we will let him
speak for himself.

Leaving our native village is no very serious
matter when we are children. We even look on
it as a sort of holiday. We are going to see some-
thing new, those magic pictures of our dreams.
With age come regrets; and the close of life is
62

The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons

spent in stirring up old memories. Then, in our
dreamy moods, the beloved village reappears, em-
bellished, transfigured by the glow of those first
impressions; and the mental image, superior to the
reality, stands out in amazingly clear relief. The
past, the far-off past, was only yesterday; we see
it, we touch it.

For my part, after three-quarters of a century,
I could walk with my eyes closed straight to the
flat stone where I first heard the soft chiming note
of the Midwife Toad; yes, I should find it to a
certainty, if time, which devastates all things, even
the homes of Toads, has not moved it or perhaps
left it in ruins.

I see, on the margin of the brook, the exact
position of the alder-trees whose tangled roots,
deep under the water, were a refuge for the Cray-
fish. I should say:

" It is just at the foot of this tree that I had the
unutterable bliss of catching a beauty. She had
horns so long . . . and enormous claws, full of
meat, for I got her just at the right time."

I should go without faltering to the ash under
whose shade my heart beat so loudly one sunny
spring morning. I had caught sight of a sort of
white, cottony ball among the branches. Peeping
from the depths of the wadding was an anxious
little head with a red hood to it. Oh, what un-
paralleled luck! It was a Goldfinch, sitting on her
eggs.

I know my village thoroughly, though I quitted
it so long ago; and I know hardly anything of the

63

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

towns to which the vicissitudes of life have brought
me. An exquisitely sweet link binds us to our na-
tive soil; we are like the plant that has to be torn
away from the spot where it put out its first roots.
Poor though it be, I should love to see my own
village again; I should like to leave my bones
there.1

1 Souvenirs, vni., pp. 125-129. Bramble-bees, chap,
xiii., "The Halicti; The Portress."

CHAPTER V

AT THE COLLEGE OF RODEZ

"1T7E have learned what we may of the
* * schoolboy of Saint-Leons. Let us fol-
low him to the Lycee of Rodez, which he
entered as a day-boy at the age of ten:

I come to the time when I was ten years old
and at Rodez College. My functions as a serving-
boy in the chapel entitled me to free instruction
as a day-boarder. There were four of us in white
surplices and red skull-caps and cassocks. I was
the youngest of the party, and did little more than
walk on. I counted as a unit; and that was about
all, for I was never certain when to ring the bell
or when to move the missal from one side of the
altar to the other. I was all of a tremble when
we gathered, two on this side, two on that, with
genuflexions, in the middle of the sanctuary, to in-
tone the Domine, salvum fac regem at the end
of mass. Let me make a confession: tongue-tied
with shyness, I used to leave it to the others.

Nevertheless, I was well thought of, for, in the
school, I cut a good figure in composition and trans-
lation. In that classical atmosphere there was talk
65

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

of Procas, King of Alba, and of his two sons,
Numitor and Amulius. We heard of Cynaegirus,
the strong-jawed man, who, having lost his two
hands in battle, seized and held a Persian galley
with his teeth, and of Cadmus the Phoenician, who
sowed a dragon's teeth as though they were beans,
and gathered his harvest in the shape of a host of
armed men, who killed one another as they rose
up from the ground. The only one who survived
the slaughter was one as tough as leather, presum-
ably the son of the big back grinder.

Had they talked to me about the man in the
moon, I could not have been more startled. I made
up for it with my animals, which I was far from
forgetting amid this phantasmagoria of heroes and
demigods. While honouring the exploits of Cadmus
and Cynaegirus, I hardly ever failed, on Sundays
and Thursdays, to go and see if the cowslip or the
yellow daffodil was making its appearance in the
meadows, if the Linnet was hatching on the juni-
per-bushes, if the Cockchafers were plopping down
from the wind-shaken poplars. Thus was the sa-
cred spark kept aglow, ever brighter than before.1

At Rodez, as at Saint-Leons, natural ob-
jects provided him with the chief material of
his recreations:

The thrice-blessed Thursday had come; our bit
of translation was done, our dozen Greek roots had

1 Souvenirs, vi., p. 60. The Life of the Fly, chap, vi.,
" My Schooling."

66

At the College of Rodez

been learnt by heart; and we trooped down to the
far end of the valley, so many bands of madcaps.
With our trousers turned up to our knees, we ex-
ploited, artless fishermen that we were, the peace-
ful waters of the river, the Aveyron. What we
hoped to catch was the Loach, no bigger than our
little finger, but tempting, thanks to his immobility
on the sand amid the water-weeds. We fully ex-
pected to transfix him with our trident, a fork.

This miraculous catch, the object of such shouts
of triumph when it succeeded, was very rarely
vouchsafed to us; the Loach, the rascal, saw the
fork coming and with three strokes of his tail dis-
appeared !

We found compensation in the apple-trees in the
neighbouring pastures. The apple has from all
time been the urchin's delight, above all when
plucked from a tree which does not belong to him.
Our pockets were soon crammed with the forbid-
den fruit.

Another distraction awaited us. Flocks of Tur-
keys were not rare, roaming at their own sweet
will and gobbling up the Locusts around the farms.
If no watcher hove in sight, we had great sport.
Each of us would seize a Turkey, tuck her head
under her wing, rock it in this attitude for a mo-
ment and then place her on the ground, lying on
her side. The bird no longer budged. The whole
flock of Turkeys was subjected to our hypnotic
handling; and the meadow assumed the aspect of
a battle-field strewn with the dead and dying.

And now 'look out for the farmer's wife! The
67

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

loud gobbling of the harassed birds had told her
of our wicked pranks. She would run up armed
with a whip. But we had good legs in those days!
And we had a good laugh too, behind the hedges,
which favoured our retreat!

How did we, the little Rodez schoolboys, learn
the secret of the Turkey's slumber? It was cer-
tainly not in our books. Coming from no one
knows where, indestructible as everything that en-
ters into children's games, it was handed down,
from time immemorial, from one initiate to an-
other.

Things are just the same to-day in my village
of Serignan, where there are numbers of youthful
adepts in the art of putting poultry to sleep.
Science often has very humble beginnings. There
is nothing to tell us that the mischief of a pack of
idle urchins is not the starting-point of our knowl-
edge of hypnosis.1

The incident of which we have just read
was the starting-point of the investigations
which Fabre was to undertake fifty years
later concerning the artificial sleep of birds
and insects.

If he had hearkened only to his passion
for Nature, the schoolboy of Rodez would
soon have become one of the most ardent
disciples of the school of the woods; that is,

1 Souvenirs, VII., pp. 29, 33. The Glow-Worm and
Other Beetles, chap, xv., "Suicide or Hypnosis?"

68

At the College of Rodez

he would have played truant. But he was,
happily, from an early age, a worker; be-
cause industry was for him both a family in-
heritance and an imperious necessity. Had
he not been sent to college on condition of
winning prizes? Could he show himself an
idle scholar when he saw his parents wear-
ing themselves out in order to supply the
needs of their family? Moreover, as he
rose from class to class, the love of learn-
ing increased within him. Latin ceased to
be repulsive, and became even wholly sym-
pathetic, when he found, in the fifth class,
thanks to the genius of Virgil, that it dig-
nified the humble joys of rural life by the
emphasis of skilfully chosen words and bril-
liant colours of the poet:

By easy stages I came to Virgil, and was much
smitten with Meliboeus, Corydon, Menalcas,
Damoetas, and the rest of them. The scandals
of the ancient shepherds fortunately passed unno-
ticed ; and within the frame in which the charac-
ters moved were exquisite details concerning the
Bee, the Cicada, the Turtle-dove, the Crow, the
Nanny-goat, and the golden broom. A veritable
delight were these stones of the fields, sung in
sonorous verse; and the Latin poet left a lasting
impression on my classical recollections.1

1 Souvenirs, VI., p. 61. The Life of the Fly, chap, vi.,
"My Schooling."

69

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

Traces of Virgil are often visible — more
often than those of the other classical writers
— in the work of Fabre. He loves to em-
bellish his narratives with quotations bor-
rowed from the writer of the Bucolics and
the Georgics, and he loves also to evoke the
happy days of his boyhood at Rodez behind
the lineaments of the Virgilian idylls, which
were far more akin to the taste of his age
and the instinct of his genius than the
Metamorphoses of Ovid or Religion of Louis
Racine, who shared, with the Mantuan, the
privilege of providing the young humanist
of 1835 at the Rodez lycee with literary ex-
ercises.

All roads lead to Rome. It is enough that
they do so. Without sacrificing any of the
demands of the classics, by way of analogy
or by way of antithesis, the child's mind
was constantly escaping from his books to-
ward the things of Nature and Life.

In its free, palpitating flight his thought
kindled his imagination, and with indescrib-
able emotion he began to touch upon more
serious questions:

The problem of life and that other one, with
its dark terrors, the problem of death, at times
passed through my mind. It was a fleeting obses-
sion, soon forgotten by the mercurial spirits of
70

At the College of Rodez

youth. Nevertheless, the tremendous question
would recur, brought to mind by this incident or
that.

Passing one day by a slaughter-house, I saw an
Ox driven in by the butcher. I have always had
an insurmountable horror of blood ; when I was
a boy, the sight of an open wound affected me so
much that I would fall into a swoon, which on
more than one occasion nearly cost me my life.
How did I screw up courage to set foot in those
shambles? No doubt, the dread problem of death
urged me on. At any rate, I entered, close on the
heels of the Ox.

With a stout rope round its horns, wet-muzzled,
meek-eyed, the animal moves along as though mak-
ing for the crib in its stable. The man walks
ahead, holding the rope. We enter the hall of
death, amid the sickening stench thrown up by the
entrails scattered over the ground and the pools
of blood. The Ox becomes aware that this is not
his stable; his eyes turn red with terror; he strug-
gles; he tries to escape. But an iron ring is there,
in the floor, firmly fixed to a stone flag. The man
passes the rope through it and hauls. The Ox
lowers his head; his muzzle touches the ground.
While an assistant keeps him in this position with
the rope, the butcher takes a knife with a pointed
blade; not at all a formidable knife, hardly larger
than the one which I myself carry in my breeches-
pocket. For a moment he feels with his fingers
at the back of the animal's neck and then drives
in the blade at the chosen spot. The great beact
71

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

gives a shiver and drops, as though struck by light-
ning: procumbit humi bos, as we used to say in
those days.

I fled from the place like one possessed. After-
wards I wondered how it was possible, with a knife
almost identical with that which I used for priz-
ing open my walnuts and taking the skin off my
chestnuts, with that insignificant blade, to kill an
Ox and kill him so suddenly. No gaping wound,
no blood spilt, not a bellow from the animal. The
man feels with his ringer, gives a jab, and the
thing is done: the Bullock's legs double up under
him.

This instantaneous death, this lightning-stroke,
remained an awesome mystery to me. It was only
later, very much later, that I learnt the secret of
the slaughter-house, at a time when, in the course
of my promiscuous reading, I was picking up a
smattering of anatomy. The man had cut through
the spinal marrow where it leaves the skull; he
had severed what our physiologists have called the
vital cord. To-day I might say that he had oper-
ated in the manner of the Wasps, whose lancet
plunges into the nerve-centres.1

This gloomy picture of a sudden, terrify-
ing, violent death may be compared with an-
other which, in some respects, is even more
tragic : that of the ruined home and the shat-

1 Souvenirs, II., pp. 41-44, 46. Hunting Wasps, chap.
xx., " A Modern Theory of Instinct."
72

At the College of Rodez

tered life of the little Rodez schoolboy, who
was to leave the town somewhat as he left
the slaughter-house, bewildered by the catas-
trophe of which he had just been the witness
and was soon to be the victim. At this point
of his narrative his eyes are dim with tears
and his voice is choked by a half-suppressed
sob.

Then, suddenly, good-bye to my studies, good-
bye to Tityrus and Menalcas ! Ill-luck is swooping
down on us, relentlessly. Hunger threatens us at
home. And now, boy, put your trust in God;
run about and earn your penn'orth of potatoes as
best you can. Life is about to become a hideous
inferno. Let us pass quickly over this phase.

Amid that lamentable chaos my love for the in-
sect ought to have gone under. Not at all. It
would have survived the raft of the Medusa. I
still remember a certain Pine Cockchafer met for
the first time. The plumes on her antennae, her
pretty pattern of white spots on a dark-brown
ground were as a ray of sunshine in the gloomy
wretchedness of the day.1

1 Souvenirs, vi., p. 61. The Life of the Fly, chap, vi.,
"My Schooling."

73

CHAPTER VI

THE PUPIL TEACHER: AVIGNON (1841-43)

' I VHE stroke of misfortune which sud-
••• denly interrupted Jean-Henri's studies
at the Rodez lycee made him an exile from
his father's house and banished him from his
native countryside.

For the second time he was, as it were,
dropped upon the road like Perrault's Tom
Thumb. And the fairy-tale comes to life
again in the Odyssey of the poor boy who
wandered at random, picking up his food at
hazard, facing misfortune with a stout heart,
and smiling whenever he could at the poem
of Nature, who always had some fresh sur-
prise in store for him.

Who can fail to be moved by pity and ad-
miration, beholding him set forth upon the
broad, white highroads, a wandering child,
all but lost, seeking his way, seeking his live-
lihood even, without other relief, in his ex-
tremity of distress, and almost without other
food than his love of Nature and his pas-
74

The Pupil Teacher: Avignon

sion for learning? See him, for example,
on the day when, between Beaucaire and
Nfmes, he contrived to make his dinner off
a few bunches of grapes " plucked furtively
at the edge of a field, after exchanging the
poor remnant of his last halfpence for a little
volume of Reboul's poems; soothing his
hunger by intoxicating himself with the
verses of the workman poet," x whose in-
spiration was of so noble and Christian a
character.

The whole Fabre is in this trait of the
needy, enraptured youth, who thinks nothing
of hardships or of money provided he can
find the wherewithal to assuage his thirst for
knowledge and the ideal.

Nevertheless, it is true that he passed
through many dark and painful hours at that
period. But in the end " the good fortune
that never deserts the valiant " opened the
doors of the Normal College of Avignon for
him. Having ventured to face the examina-
tion for a bursary, he won the latter with
the greatest ease. There he found a first
refuge from the uncertainties of the morrow,
although he had not yet achieved his ideal,
nor even that place in the sun which he was

1 Fabre, Poet of Science, by G. V. Legros, translated by
Bernard Miall (T. Fisher Unwin), p. 24.

75

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

striving to prepare for himself. Imagine
" between four high walls a courtyard, a sort
of bear-pit in which the scholars contend for
room beneath the boughs of a plane-tree; and
opening on to it, on every side, the class-
rooms, like so many cages for wild beasts,
devoid of daylight or air." This was the
Normal College of Vaucluse.

The description recalls, in some respects,
that which was given by a sometime pupil of
the Normal College of Paris, M. Rene
Doumic, on taking his seat in the Academy,
in the place of Gaston Boissier: " I loved the
Normal College, and I am still faithful in
my attachment to it. I hope my recollec-.
tions of it will not be thought lacking in piety
if I state that the building in which they
penned us up, young fellows of twenty, was
the most dismal place that I have ever seen
anywhere. This extraordinary building, by
an architectural prodigy which I will not at-
tempt to explain, turned all four sides to
the north. In three years I do not think I
ever saw a single ray of sunlight enter our
lecture-rooms or the cloisters in which we
used to wander like so many shades. A
mournful daylight expired upon the grey,
grimy walls. In short, it was not a cheerful
place. But at Boissier's lectures all became
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The Pupil Teacher: Avignon

bright, full of animation and renewed life.
It was a sudden metamorphoses."

At the Normal College of Vaucluse it was
not the lectures given by the masters that
transformed the abode of shades or the
bears' cage into a centre of light and life for
the budding biologist. It was something bet-
ter than that. By good fortune the director
of the College was broad-minded enough to
allow him to employ in his own fashion all
the time that was left to him after he had
prepared his lessons and his exercises. We
may imagine that he did not loiter over his
classics. The school programme, for that
matter, was not very heavy; the orthographic
difficulties which complicated most of the ex-
ercises of the future schoolmasters were mere
play to the ex-Latinist of the Rodez lycee.
And u while all around him dictated pas-
sages were being minutely scanned with much
searching of the dictionary, he examined, in
the secrecy of his desk, the fruit of the ole-
ander, the flower of the snapdragon, the sting
of a Wasp, the wing-cover of a gardener-
beetle." Thus he treated himself to a lec-
ture of his own fashion whose charm and
fascination greatly exceeded that of anything
that the college could teach him.

So much so that he left the College more
77

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

in love than ever with insects and flowers,
and thoroughly determined to fill what he
considered to be one of the most serious de-
ficiencies of official instruction.

Alas! there were many deficiencies in the
education received by his masters which would
have to be made good in order to complete
the literary education which the professors of
the Rodez lycee had begun to give him, and
the scientific training which he had hardly
commenced at the Normal College.

We must listen to his reminiscences of his
career as pupil teacher, to the inventory of
the scientific equipment of a schoolboy of
1840, to the story of his first and last les-
son in chemistry, to see how poor he was in
acquired knowledge and how rich in the de-
sire for knowledge, before we can estimate
the length of the road which he had to travel
when he had passed through the classes of
the College.

In my normal school, the scientific teaching was
on an exceedingly modest scale, consisting mainly
of arithmetic and odds and ends of geometry.
Physics was hardly touched. We were taught a
little meteorology, in a summary fashion: a word
or two about a red moon, a white frost, dew, snow
and wind ; and, with this smattering of rustic
physics, we were considered to know enough of the
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The Pupil Teacher: Avignon

subject to discuss the weather with the farmer and
the ploughman.

Of natural history, absolutely nothing. No one
thought of telling us anything about flowers and
trees, which give such zest to one's aimless ram-
bles, nor about insects, with their curious habits,
nor about stones, so instructive with their fossil
records. That entrancing glance through the win-
dows of the world was refused us. Grammar was
allowed to strangle life.

Chemistry was never mentioned either: that goes
without saying. I knew the word, however. My
casual reading, only half-understood for want of
practical demonstration, had taught me that chem-
istry is concerned with the shuffle of matter, unit-
ing or separating the various elements. But what
a strange idea I formed of this branch of study!
To me it smacked of sorcery, of alchemy and its
search for the philosopher's stone. To my mind,
every chemist, when at work, should have had a
magic wand in his hand and the wizard's pointed,
star-spangled cap on his head.

An important personage who sometimes visited
the school, in his capacity as an honorary lecturer,
was not the man to rid me of those foolish notions.
He taught physics and chemistry at the grammar-
school. Twice a week, from eight to nine o'clock
in the evening, he held a free public class in an
enormous building adjacent to our schoolhouse.
This was the former Church of Saint-Martial,
which has to-day become a Protestant meeting-
house.

79

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

It was a wizard's cave certainly, just as I had
pictured it. At the top of the steeple, a rusty
weathercock creaked mournfully; in the dusk great
Bats flew all around the edifice or dived down the
throats of the gargoyles ; at night Owls hooted upon
the copings of the leads. It was inside, under the
immensities of the vault, that my chemist used to
perform. What infernal mixtures did he com-
pound? Should I ever know?

It is the day for his visit. He comes to see us
with no pointed cap: in ordinary garb, in fact,
with nothing very queer about him. He bursts
into our schoolroom like a hurricane. His red
face is half-buried in the enormous stiff collar that
digs into his ears. A few wisps of red hair adorn
his temples; the top of his head shines like an old
ivory ball. In a dictatorial voice and with wooden
gestures, he questions two or three of the boys;
after a moment's bullying, he turns on his heel
and goes off in a whirlwind as he came. No, this
is not the man, a capital fellow at heart, to inspire
me with a pleasant idea of the things which -he
teaches.

Two windows of his laboratory look out upon
the garden of the school. One can just lean on
them; and I often go and peep in, trying to make
out, in my poor brain, what chemistry can really
be. Unfortunately, the room into which my eyes
penetrate is not the sanctuary, but a mere out-
house where the learned implements and crockery
are washed. Leaden pipes with taps run down
the walls; wooden vats occupy the corners. Some-
80

The Pupil Teacher: Avignon

times those vats bubble, heated by a spray of
steam. A reddish powder, which looks like brick-
dust, is boiling in them. I learn that the sim-
mering stuff is a dyer's root, known as madder,
which will be converted into a purer and more
concentrated product. This is the master's pet
study.

What I saw from the two windows was not
enough for me. I wanted to see farther, into the
very class-room. My wish was satisfied. It was
the end of the scholastic year. A stage ahead of
the others in the regular work, I had just obtained
my certificate. I was free. A few weeks remain
before the holidays. Shall I go and pass them
out of doors, in all the gaiety of my eighteen sum-
mers? No, I will spend them at the school which,
for two years past, has provided me with an un-
troubled roof and my daily crust. I will wait
until a post is found for me. Employ my willing
service as you think fit, do with me what you
will; as long as I can study, I am indifferent to
the rest.

The principal of the school, the soul of kind-
ness, has grasped my passion for knowledge. He
encourages me in my determination; he proposes to
make me renew my acquaintance with Horace and
Virgil, so long since forgotten. He knows Latin,
he does; he will rekindle the dead spark by mak-
ing me translate a few passages. He does more:
he lends me an Imitation, with parallel texts in
Latin and Greek. With the first text, which I
am almost able to read, I will puzzle out the sec-
8l

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

ond and thus increase the small vocabulary which
I acquired in the days when I was translating
JEsop's Fables. It will be all the better for my
future studies. What luck! Board and lodging,
ancient poetry, the classical languages, all the good
things at once !

I did better still. Our science-master — the real,
not the honorary one — who came twice a week to
discourse of the rule of three and the properties
of the triangle, had the brilliant idea of letting
us celebrate the end of the school year with a feast
of learning. He promised to show us oxygen. As
a colleague of the chemist in the grammar-school,
he obtained leave to take us to the famous labora-
tory and there to handle the object of his lesson
under our very eyes. Oxygen, yes, oxygen, the
all-consuming gas; that was what we were to see
on the morrow. I could not sleep all night for
thinking of it.

Thursday afternoon came at last. As soon as
the chemistry lesson was over, we were to go for
a walk to Les Angles, the pretty village over yon-
der, perched on a steep rock. We were therefore
in our Sunday best, our out-of-door clothes: black
frock-coats and tall hats. The whole school was
there, some thirty of us, in the charge of an usher,
who knew as little as we did of the things which
we were about to see. We crossed the threshold
of the laboratory, not without excitement. I en-
tered a great nave with a Gothic roof, an old, bare
church through which one's voice echoed, while the
light penetrated discreetly through stained-glass
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The Pupil Teacher: Avignon

windows set in ribs and rosettes of stone. At the
back were huge raised benches, with room for an
audience of many hundreds; at the other end, where
the choir once was, stood an enormous chimney-
mantel; in the middle was a large massive table,
corroded by the chemicals. At one end of this table
was a tarred tub, lined inside with lead and filled
with water. This, I at once learnt, was the pneu-
matic trough, the vessel in which the gases were
collected.

The professor begins the experiment. He takes
a sort of large, long glass bulb, bent abruptly in
the region of the neck. This, he informs us, is a
retort. He pours into it, from a screw of paper,
some black stuff that looks like powdered charcoal.
This is manganese dioxide, the master tells us. It
contains in abundance, in a condensed state and
retained by combination with the metal, the gas
which we propose to obtain. An oily-looking liquid,
sulphuric acid, an excessively powerful agent, will
set it at liberty. Thus rilled, the retort is placed
on a lighted stove. A glass tube brings it into
communication with a bell-jar full of water on the
shelf of the pneumatic trough. Those are all the
preparations. What will be the result? We must
wait for the action of heat.

My fellow-pupils gather eagerly round the ap-
paratus, cannot come close enough to it. Some of
them play the part of the fly on the wheel and
glory in contributing to the success of the experi-
ment. They straighten the retort, which is leaning
to one side; the blow with their mouths on the
83

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

coals in the stove. I do not care for these famil-
iarities with the unknown.

Suddenly, bang! And there is running and
stamping and shouting and cries of pain! What
has happened? I rush up from the back of the
room. The retort has burst, squirting its boiling
vitriol in every direction. The wall opposite is all
stained with it. Most of my fellow-pupils have
been more or less struck. One poor youth has
had the splashes full in his face, right into his
eyes. He is yelling like a madman. With the
help of a friend who has come off better than the
others, I drag him outside by main force, take him
to the sink, which fortunately is close at hand,
and hold his face under the tap. This swift ablu-
tion serves its purpose. The horrible pain begins
to be allayed, so much so that the sufferer recovers
his senses and is able to continue the washing
process for himself.

My prompt aid certainly saved his sight. A
week later, with the help of the doctor's lotions,
all danger was over. How lucky it was that I
took it into my head to keep some way off! My
isolation, as I stood looking into the glass case of
chemicals, left me all my presence of mind, my
readiness of resource. What are the others doing,
those who got splashed through standing too near
the chemical bomb? I return to the lecture-hall.
It is not a cheerful spectacle. The master has
come off badly: his shirt-front, his waistcoat and
trousers are covered with smears, which are all
smouldering and burning into holes. He hurriedly
84

The Pupil Teacher: Avignon

divests himself of a portion of his dangerous rai-
ment. Those of us who possess the smartest clothes
lend him something to put on so that he can go
home decently.

One of the tall, funnel-shaped glasses which I
was admiring just now is standing, full of am-
monia, on the table. All, coughing and snivelling,
dip their handkerchiefs into it and rub the moist
rag over their hats and coats. In this way the
red stains left by the horrible compound are made
to disappear. A drop of ink will presently restore
the colour completely.

And the oxygen ? There was no more question,
I need hardly say, of that. The feast of learning
was over. Never mind : the disastrous lesson was
a mighty event for me. I had been inside the
chemist's laboratory; I had had a glimpse of those
wonderful jars and tubes. In teaching what mat-
ters most is not the thing taught, whether well
or badly grasped: it is the stimulus given to the
pupil's latent aptitudes; it is the fulminate awak-
ing the slumbering explosives. One day, I shall
obtain on my own account that oxygen which ill-
luck has denied me; one day, without a master,
I shall yet learn chemistry. I do not recommend
that method to anybody. Happy the man who is
guided by a master's word and example! He has
a smooth and easy road before him, lying straight
ahead. The other follows a rugged path, in which
his feet often stumble; he goes groping into the
unknown and loses his way. To recover the right
road, if want of success have not discouraged him,
85

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

he can rely only on perseverance, the sole com-
pass of the poor.1

We shall show what the perseverance of
this son of Aveyron peasants was capable of
achieving, and after realising how little he
got from his masters we shall marvel to see
what he acquired by dint of personal indus-
try and application.

1 Souvenirs, x., pp. 323-331. The Life of the Fly, chap,
xix., " A Memorable Lesson."

86

CHAPTER VII

THE SCHOOLMASTER: CARPENTRAS

/~\NLY eighteen years old, he left the Nor-
^^ mal College with hijs diploma, his brevet
superieur, and began his career as primary
schoolmaster in the College of Carpentras.
Merit, it seems, was recognised, and at the
outset fortune did not treat him so badly.
We may judge of this the better from the pic-
ture which the ex-schoolmaster has given us
of nis first beginnings at the College :

It was when I first began to teach, about 1843.
I had left the Normal School at Vaucluse some
months before, with my diploma and all the sim-
pie enthusiasm of my eighteen years, and had been
sent to Carpentras, there to manage the primary
school attached to the College. It was a strange
school, upon my word, notwithstanding its pompous
title of " upper " ; a sort of huge cellar oozing
with the perpetual damp engendered by a well
backing on it in the street outside. For light there
was the open door, when the weather permittted,
and a narrow prison-window, with iron bars and
lozenge panes set in lead. By way of benches there

8?

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

was a plank fastened to the wall all round the
room, while in the middle was a chair bereft of
its straw, a blackboard and a stick of chalk.

Morning and evening, at the sound of the bell,
there came rushing in some fifty young imps who,
having shown themselves hopeless dunces with their
Cornelius Nepos, had been relegated, in the phrase
of the day, to " a few good years of French."
Those who had found mensa too much for them
came to me to get a smattering of grammar. Chil-
dren and strapping lads were there, mixed up to-
gether, at very different educational stages, but all
incorrigibly agreed to play tricks upon the master,
the boy-master, who was no older than some of
them, or even younger.

To the little ones I gave their first lessons in
reading ; the intermediate ones I showed how they
should hold their pen to write a few lines of dicta-
tion on their knees; to the big ones I revealed the
secrets of fractions and even the mysteries of Euclid.
And to keep this restless crowd in order, to give
each mind work in accordance with its strength,
to keep attention aroused, and lastly to expel dulness
from the gloomy room, whose walls dripped melan-
choly even more than dampness, my one resource
was my tongue, my one weapon my stick of chalk.

Things improved, however: a master came, and
came to stay. I myself secured tables on which
my pupils were able to write instead of scribbling
on their knees; and, as my class was daily increas-
ing in numbers, it ended by being divided into two.
As soon 'as I had an assistant to look after the
88

The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

younger boys, things assumed a different aspect.

A weeding-out takes place in my crowd of scat-
terbrains. I keep the older, the more intelligent
ones; the others are to have a term in the prepara-
tory division. From that day forward things are
different. Curriculum there is none. In those
happy times the master's personality counted for
something; there was no such thing as the scholas-
tic piston working with the regularity of a machine.
It was left for me to act as I thought fit. Well,
what should I do to make the school earn its title
of " upper primary " ?

Why, of course ! Among other things, I shall do
some chemistry ! My reading has taught me that
it does no harm to know a little chemistry, if you
would make your furrows yield a good return.
Many of my pupils come from the country; they
will go back to it to improve their land. Let us
show them what the soil is made of and what
the plant feeds on. Others will follow industrial
careers; they will become tanners, metal-founders,
distillers; they will sell cakes of soap and kegs
of anchovies. Let us show them pickling, soap-
making, stills, tannin, and metals. Of course I
know nothing about these things, but I shall learn,
all the more so as I shall have to teach them to
the boys; and your schoolboy is a little demon for
jeering at the master's hesitation.

As it happens, the College boasts a small labora-
tory, containing just what is strictly indispensable:
a receiver, a dozen glass balloons, a few tubes and
a niggardly assortment of chemicals. That will
89

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

do, if I can have the run of it. But the laboratory
is a sanctum reserved for the use of the sixth
form. No one sets foot in it except the professor
and his pupils preparing for their degree. For me,
the outsider, to enter that tabernacle with my band
of young imps would be most unseemly; the right-
ful occupant would never think of allowing it.
I feel it myself : elementary teaching dare not aspire
to such familiarity with the higher culture. Very
well, we will not go there, so long as they will
lend me the things.

I confide my plan to the principal, the supreme
dispenser of those riches. He is a classics man,
knows hardly anything of science — at that time held
in no great esteem — and does not quite understand
the object of my request. I humbly insist and exert
my powers of persuasion. I discreetly emphasise
the real point of the matter. My group of pupils
is a numerous one. It takes more meals at the
schoolhouse — the real concern of a principal — than
any other section of the College. This group must
be encouraged, lured on, increased if possible. The
prospect of disposing of a few more platefuls of
soup wins the battle for me ; my request is granted.
Poor Science! All that diplomacy to gain your
entrance among the despised ones, who have not
been nourished on Cicero and Demosthenes!

I am authorised to move, once a week, the ma-
terial required for my ambitious plans. From the
first floor, the sacred dwelling of the scientific
things, I shall take them down to a sort of cellar
where I give my lessons. The troublesome part
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The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

is the pneumatic trough. It has to be emptied
before it is carried downstairs and to be filled again
afterwards. A day-scholar, a zealous acolyte, hur-
ries over his dinner and comes to lend me a hand
an hour or two before the class begins. We ef-
fect the move between us.

What I am after is oxygen, the gas which I
once saw fail so lamentably. I thought it all out
at my leisure, with the help of a book. I will do
this, I will do that, I will go to work in this or
the other fashion. Above all, we will run no risks,
perhaps of blinding ourselves; for it is once more
a question of heating manganese dioxide with sul-
phuric acid. I am filled with misgivings at the
recollection of my old school-fellow yelling like
mad. Who cares? Let us try for all that: for-
tune favours the brave! Besides, we will make
one prudent condition from which I shall never
depart : no one but myself shall come near the table.
If an accident happen, I shall be the only one to
suffer; and, in my opinion, it is worth a burn or
two to make acquaintance with oxygen.

Two o'clock strikes, and my pupils enter the
class-room. I purposely exaggerate the likelihood
of danger. They are all to stay on their benches
and not stir. This is agreed. I have plenty of
elbow-room. There is no one by me, except my
acolyte, standing by my side, ready to help me
when the time comes. The others look on in pro-
found silence, reverent towards the unknown.

Soon the bubbles come " gloo-glooing " through
the water in the bell-jar. Can it be my gas? My
91

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

heart beats with excitement. Can I have succeeded
without any trouble at the first attempt? We will
see. A candle blown out that moment and still
retaining a red tip to its wick is lowered by a wire
into a small test-jar filled with my product. Capi-
tal! The candle lights with a little explosion and
burns with extraordinary brilliancy. It is. oxygen
right enough.

The moment is a solemn one. My audience is
astounded and so am I, but more at my own suc-
cess than at the relighted candle. A puff of vain-
glory rises to my brow ; I feel the fire of enthusiasm
run through my veins. But I say nothing of these
inner sensations. Before the boys' eyes, the master
must appear an old hand at the things he teaches.
What would the young rascals think of me if
I allowed them to suspect my surprise, if they
knew that I myself am beholding the marvellous
subject of my demonstration for the first time in
my life? I should lose their confidence, I should
sink to the level of a mere pupil.

Sursum cor da! Let us go on as if chemistry
were a familiar thing to me. It is the turn of
the steel ribbon, an old watch-spring rolled cork-
screw-fashion and furnished with a bit of tinder.
With this simple lighted bait, the steel should take
fire in a jar filled with my gas. And it does burn;
it becomes a splendid firework, with cracklings and
a blaze of sparks and a cloud of rust that tarnishes
the jar. From the end of the fiery coil a red drop
breaks off at intervals, shoots quivering through the
layer of water left at the bottom of the vessel
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The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

and embeds itself in the glass which has suddenly
grown soft. This metallic tear, with its indomit-
able heat, makes every one of us shudder. They
stamp and cheer and applaud. The timid ones
place their hands before their faces and dare not
look except through their ringers. My audience
exults; and I myself triumph. Ha, my friend, isn't
it grand, this chemistry!

All of us have red-letter days in our lives. Some,
the practical men, have been successful in business;
they have made money and hold their heads high
in consequence. Others, the thinkers, have gained
ideas; they have opened a new account in the ledger
of nature and silently taste the hallowed joys of
truth. One of my great days was that of my first
acquaintance with oxygen. On that day, when my
class was over and all the materials put back in
their place, I felt myself grow several inches taller.
An untrained workman, I had shown, with com-
plete success, that which was unknown to me a
couple of hours before. No accident whatever, not
even the least stain of acid.

It is, therefore, not so difficult nor so dangerous
as the pitiful finish of the Saint-Martial lesson
might have led me to believe. With a vigilant
eye and a little prudence, I shall be able to con-
tinue. The prospect is enchanting.

And so, in due season, comes hydrogen, carefully
contemplated in my reading, seen and reseen with
the eye of the mind before being seen with the
eyes of the body. I delight my little rascals by
making the hydrogen-flame sing in a glass tube,
93

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

which trickles with the drops of water resulting
from the combustion; I make them jump with the
explosions of the thunderous mixture. Later, I
show them, with the same invariable success, the
splendours of phosphorus, the violent powers of
chlorine, the loathsome smells of sulphur, the met-
amorphoses of carbon, and so on. In short, in a
series of lessons, the principal non-metallic elements
and their compounds are passed in review during
the course of the year.

The thing was bruited abroad. Fresh pupils
came to me, attracted by the marvels of the school.
Some more places were laid in the dining-hall;
and the principal, who was more interested in the
profits on his beans and bacon than in chemistry,
congratulated me on this accession of boarders.1

However, we must make it clear, without
wishing in any way to belittle the importance
or the magical results of chemistry, that the
latter was not the only attraction of the
young schoolmaster's teaching, any more than
it was the sole subject on his programme.

Among the other subjects taught, one in
especial had the power of interesting master
and pupil alike:

This was open-air geometry, practical surveying.
The College had none of the necessary outfit; but,
with my fat pay — seven hundred francs a year, if

1 Souvenirs, x., 332-336. The Life of the Fly, chap,
xix., " A Memorable Lesson."

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The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

you please! — I could not hesitate over the expense.
A surveyor's chain and stakes, arrows, level, square,
and compass were bought with my money. A
microscopic graphometer, not much larger than the
palm of one's hand and costing perhaps five francs,
was provided by the establishment. There was no
tripod to it; and I had one made. In short, my
equipment was complete.

And so, when May came, once every week we
left the gloomy schoolroom for the fields. It was
a regular holiday. The boys disputed for the hon-
our of carrying the stakes, divided into bundles of
three; and more than one shoulder, as we walked
through the town, felt the reflected glory of those
erudite rods. I myself — why conceal the fact? —
was not without a certain satisfaction as I piously
carried that most delicate and precious apparatus,
the historic five-franc graphometer. The scene of
operations was an unfilled, flinty plain, a harmas,
as we call it in the district. Here, no curtain
of green hedges or shrubs prevented me from keep-
ing an eye upon my staff; here — an indispensable
condition — I had not the irresistible temptation of
the unripe apricots to fear for my scholars. The
plain stretched far and wide, covered with nothing
but flowering thyme and rounded pebbles. There
was ample scope for every imaginable polygon;
trapezes and triangles could be combined in all
sorts of ways. The inaccessible distances had am-
ple elbow-room; and there was even an old ruin,
once a pigeon-house, that lent its perpendicular to
the graphometer's performances.
95

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

These exercises in open-air geometry,
which had their charm, discounted before-
hand, had also their delightful surprises and
unexpected consequences which place them
among the happiest experiences of the life
which we are describing:

Well, from the very first day, my attention was
attracted by something suspicious. If I sent one
of the boys to plant a stake, I would see him stop
frequently on his way, bend down, stand up again,
look about and stoop once more, neglecting his
straight line and his signals. Another, who was
told to pick up the arrows, would forget the iron
pin and take up a pebble instead ; and a third,
deaf to the measurements of angles, would crumble
a clod of earth between his fingers. Most of them
were caught licking a bit of straw. The polygon
came to a full stop, the diagonals suffered. What
could the mystery be?

I inquired; and everything was explained. A
born searcher and observer, the scholar had long
known what the master had not yet heard of,
namely, that there was a big black Bee who made
clay nests on the pebbles of the harmas. These
nests contained honey ; and my surveyors used to
open them and empty the cells with a straw. The
honey, although rather strong-flavoured, was most
acceptable. I acquired a taste for it myself and
joined the nest-hunters, putting off the polygon till
later. It was thus that I first saw Reaumur's
96

The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

Mason Bee,1 knowing nothing of her history and
nothing of her historian.

The magnificent Bee herself, with her dark-violet
wings and black-velvet raiment, her rustic edifices
on the sun-blistered pebbles amid the thyme, her
honey, providing a diversion from the severities of
the compass and the square, all made a great im-
pression on my mind; and I wanted to know more
than I had learnt from the schoolboys, which was
just how to rob the cells of their honey with a
straw. As it happened, my bookseller had a gor-
geous work on insects for sale. It was called His-
toire naturelle des animaux articules, by de Castel-
nau, E. Blanchard, and Lucas, and boasted a multi-
tude of most attractive illustrations ; but the price
of it, the price of it! No matter: was not my
splendid income supposed to cover everything, food
for the mind as well as food for the body? Any-
thing extra that I gave to the one I could save
upon the other; a method of balancing painfully
familiar to those who look to science for their live-
lihood. The purchase was effected. That day my

1 Chalicodoma, meaning a house of pebbles, concrete
or mortar, would be a most satisfactory title, were it not
that it has an odd sound to any one unfamiliar with
Greek. The name is given to bees who build their cells
with materials similar to those which we employ for our
own dwellings. The work of these insects is masonry;
only it is turned out by a rustic mason more used to
hard clay than to hewn stone. Reaumur, who knew noth-
ing of scientific classification — a fact which makes many
of his papers very difficult to understand — named the
worker after her work and called our builders in dried
clay Mason Bees, which describes them exactly.

97

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

professional emoluments were severely strained : I
devoted a month's salary to the acquisition of the
book. I had to resort to miracles of economy for
some time to come before making up the enormous
deficit.

The book was devoured ; there is no other word
for it. In it I learnt the name of my black Bee;
I read for the first time various details of the habits
of insects; I found, surrounded in my eyes with
a sort of halo, the revered names of Reaumur, Hu-
ber, and Leon Dufour; and, while I turned over
the pages for the hundredth time, a voice within me
seemed to whisper:

" You also shall be of their company ! " *

1 Souvenirs, l., pp. 278-280. The Mason Bees, chap, i.,
"The Mason Bee."

98

CHAPTER VIII

THE SCHOOLMASTER: CARPENTRAS
(CONTINUED)

TF he had hearkened only to his tastes, the
-*• young schoolmaster of Carpentras would
have devoted to the world of animals all the
time that was not taken up by his pupils. But
his profession itself and the requirements of
his future prevented him from following the
dominant attraction unchecked. He had
formed a resolve " to raise himself above
the level of the primary school, which at that
time barely fed its teachers," and to make a
place for himself in the ranks of secondary
instruction. He had, therefore, to renounce
his natural history, since that as yet had no
place in the curriculum, and he had to take
up mathematics.

So we see him submerged in conic sections
and the differential and integral calculus,
without a guide, without advice, confronted
for days on end by some obscure difficulty
which tenacious meditation eventually robbed
of its mystery. Mathematics, however,
99

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

formed only the first part of his programme,
which comprised also physics and chemistry.
These, no doubt, were less abstruse sciences,
but the necessary equipment was also less
simple. He needed a laboratory; he could
not run to the expense of one; so he made
one, an " impossible " one, by force of in-
dustry.

In this desperate struggle what became of
the favourite branch of science of this great
nature-lover? It was necessarily sacrificed.

" I reprimanded myself," he says, " at the
slightest longing for emancipation, fearing to
let myself be seduced by some new grass,
some unknown beetle. 1 did violence to my-
self. My books on natural history were con-
demned to oblivion, relegated to the bottom
of a trunk."

A fine lesson in perseverance in work and
sacrifice, which all those who are inspired by
some noble desire or merely by some legiti-
mate ambition will find useful and comfort-
ing to contemplate :

" Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam
Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit ;
Abstinuit venere et vino." *

But this matter must be expounded in
greater detail, were it only to confirm the

1 HORACE, Ars Poetica, 412.
100

The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

courage of other students disinherited by for-
tune, reduced as was Fabre to shaping them-
selves in the " harsh school of isolation."
They will witness miracles of perseverance;
and they will realise that opportunities of ex-
ercising the mind and strengthening the will
are seldom lacking to those who understand
how to seize them.

When I left the Normal School, my stock of
mathematics was of the scantiest (writes Fabre).
How to extract a square root, how to calculate and
prove the surface of a sphere: these represented to
me the culminating points of the subject. Those
terrible logarithms, when I happened to open a
table of them, made my head swim, with their
columns of figures; actual fright, not unmixed with
respect, overwhelmed me on the very threshold of
that arithmetical cave. Of algebra I had no knowl-
edge whatever. I had heard the name; and the
syllables represented to my poor brain the whole
whirling legion of the abstruse.

Besides, I felt no inclination to decipher the
alarming hieroglyphics. They made one of those
indigestible dishes which we confidently extol with-
out touching them. I greatly prefer a fine line of
Virgil, whom I was now beginning to understand ;
and I should have been surprised indeed had any
one told me that, for long years to come, I should
be an enthusiastic student of the formidable
science. Good fortune procured me my first lesson
IOI

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

in algebra, a lesson given and not received, of
course.

A young man of about my own age came to me
and asked me to teach him algebra. He was pre-
paring for his examination as a civil engineer; and
he came to me because, ingenuous youth that he was,
he took me for a well of learning. The guileless
applicant was very far out in his reckoning.

His request gave me a shock of surprise, which
was forthwith repressed on reflection :

" I give algebra lessons? " said I to myself. " It
would be madness: I don't know anything about
it!"

And I left it at that for a moment or two, think-
ing hard, drawn now this way, now that by my
indecision :

" Shall I accept? Shall I refuse? " continued the
inner voice.

Pooh, let's accept! An heroic method of learning
to swim is to leap boldly into the sea. Let us hurl
ourselves head first into the algebraical gulf; and
perhaps the imminent danger of drowning will call
forth efforts capable of bringing me to land. I
know nothing of what he wants. It makes no dif-
ference: let's go ahead and plunge into the mystery.
I shall learn by teaching.

It was a fine courage that drove me full tilt into
a province which I had not yet thought of entering.
My twenty-year-old confidence was an incomparable
lever.

" Very well," I replied. " Come the day after
to-morrow at five, and we'll begin."
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The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

This twenty-four hours' delay concealed a plan.
It secured me the respite of a day, the blessed Thurs-
day, which would give me time to collect my forces.

Thursday comes. The sky is grey and cold. In
this horrid weather a grate well-filled with coke
has its charms. Let's warm ourselves and think.

Well, my boy, you've landed yourself in a nice
predicament! How will you manage to-morrow?
With a book, plodding all through the night, if nec-
essary, you might scrape up something resembling a
lesson, just enough to fill the dread hour more or
less. Then you could see about the next: suffi-
cient for the day is the evil thereof. But you
haven't the book. And it's no use running out to
the bookshop. Algebraical treatises are not current
wares. You'll have to send for one, which will take
a fortnight at least. And I've promised for to-
morrow, for to-morrow certain! Another argu-
ment and one that admits of no reply: funds are
low; my last pecuniary resources lie in the corner
of a drawer. I count the money: it amounts to
twelve sous, which is not enough.

Must I cry off? Rather not! One resource
suggests itself: a highly improper one, I admit, not
far removed, indeed, from larceny. ' O quiet paths
of algebra, you are my excuse for this venial sin!
Let me confess the temporary embezzlement.

Life at my College is more or less cloistered. In
return for a modest payment, most of us masters
are lodged in the building; and we take our meals
at the principal's table. The science-master, who
is the big gun of the staff and lives in the town,
103

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

has nevertheless, like ourselves, his own two cells,
in addition to a balcony, or leads, where the chemi-
cal preparations give forth their suffocating gases
in the open air. For this reason, he finds it more
convenient to hold his class here during the greater
part of the year. The boys come to these rooms in
winter, in front of a grate stuffed full of coke, like
mine, and there find a blackboard, a pneumatic
trough, a mantelpiece covered with glass receivers,
panoplies of bent tubes on the walls and, lastly, a
certain cupboard in which I remember seeing a row
of books, the oracles consulted by the master in the
course of his lessons.

" Among those books," said I to myself, " there
is sure to be one on algebra. To ask the owner
for the loan of it does not appeal to me. My
amiable colleague would receive me superciliously
and laugh at my ambitious aims. I am sure he
would refuse my request."

I decide to help myself to the book which I
should never get by asking. This is the half-holi-
day. The science-master will not put in an appear-
ance to-day; and the key of my room is practically
the same as his. I go, with eyes and ears on the
alert. My key does not quite fit; it sticks a little,
then goes in; and an extra effort makes it turn in
the lock. The door opens. I inspect the cupboard
and find that it does contain an algebra book, one
of the big, fat books which men used to write in
those days, a book nearly half a foot thick. My
legs give way beneath me. You poor specimen of
a housebreaker, suppose you were caught at it!
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The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

However, all goes well. Quick, let's lock the door
again, and hurry back to our own quarters with the
pilfered volume.

A chapter catches my attention in the middle
of the volume; it is headed, Newton's Binomial
Theorem. The title allures me. What can a
binomial theorem be, especially one whose author
is Newton, the great English mathematician who
weighed the worlds? What has the mechanism of
the sky to do with this? Let us read and seek for
enlightenment. With my elbows on the table and
my thumbs behind my ears, I concentrate all my
attention.

I am seized with astonishment, for I understand!
There are a certain number of letters, general sym-
bols which are grouped in all manner of ways,
taking their places here, there, and elsewhere by
turns; there are, as the text tells me, arrangements,
permutations, and combinations. Pen in hand, I
arrange, permute, and combine. It is a very divert-
ing exercise, upon my word, a game in which the
test of the written result confirms the anticipations
of logic and supplements the shortcomings of one's
thinking-apparatus.

" It will be plain sailing," said I to myself, " if
algebra is no more difficult than this."

I was to recover from the illusion later, when
the binomial theorem, that light, crisp biscuit, was
followed by heavier and less digestible fare. But,
for the moment, I had no foretaste of the future
difficulties, of the pitfalls in which one becomes
more and more entangled the longer one persists
105

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

in struggling. What a delightful afternoon that
was, before my fire, amid my permutations and com-
binations! By the evening, I had nearly mastered
my subject. When the bell rang, at seven, to sum-
mon us to the common meal at the principal's table,
I went downstairs puffed up with the joys of the
newly-initiated neophyte. I was escorted on my
way by a, b, and c, intertwined in cunning gar-
lands.

Next day, my pupil is there. Blackboard and
chalk, everything is ready. Not quite so ready
is the master. I bravely broach my binomial the-
orem. My hearer becomes interested in the com-
binations of letters. Not for a moment does he
suspect that I am putting the cart before the horse
and beginning where we ought to have finished.
I relieve the dryness of my explanations with a
few little problems, so many halts at which the
mind takes breath awhile and gathers strength for
fresh flights.

We try together. Discreetly, so as to leave him
the merit of the discovery, I shed a little light upon
the path. The solution is found. My pupil tri-
umphs; so do I, but silently, in my inner con-
sciousness, which says:

" You understand, because you succeed in mak-
ing another understand."

The hour passed quickly and very pleasantly for
both of us. My young man was contented when
he left me; and I no less so, for I perceived a new
and original way of learning things.

The ingenious and easy arrangement of the bi-

106

The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

nomial gave me time to tackle my algebra book
from the proper commencement. In three or four
days I had rubbed up my weapons. There was
nothing to be said about addition and subtraction :
they were so simple as to force themselves upon one
at first sight. Multiplication spoilt things. There
was a certain rule of signs which declared that
minus multiplied by minus made plus. How I
toiled over that wretched paradox! It would seem
that the book did not explain this subject clearly,
or rather employed too abstract a method. I read,
reread, and meditated in vain : the obscure text re-
tained all its obscurity. That is the drawback of
books in general : they tell you what is printed in
them and nothing more. If you fail to under-
stand, they never advise you, never suggest an at-
tempt along another road which might lead you
to the light. The merest word would sometimes
be enough to put you on the right track; and that
word the books, hide-bound in a regulation phrase-
ology, never give you.

My pupil was bound to suffer the effects. After
an attempt at an explanation in which I made the
most of the few gleams that reached me, I asked
him:

" Do you understand ? "

It was a futile question, but useful for gaining
time. Myself not understanding, I was convinced
beforehand that he did not understand either.

" No," he replied, accusing himself, perhaps, in
his simple mind, of possessing a brain incapable of
taking in those transcendental verities.
107

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

" Let us try another method."

And I start again this way and that way and
yet another way. My pupil's eyes serve as my
thermometer and tell me of the progress of my
efforts. A blink of satisfaction announces my suc-
cess. I have struck home, I have found the joint
in the armour. The product of minus multiplied
by minus surrenders its mysteries to us.1

The study of algebra was pursued in this
fashion without any undue impediments as
far as the pupil was concerned, but at the
cost of a prodigious exertion of patience and
penetration on the part of the primary school-
master who was so venturesome as to act as
a professor of the higher mathematics. Au-
daces fortuna juvat. The young schoolmas-
ter had not too greatly presumed on his
powers. His pupil was accepted upon exami-
nation, and he himself was able to return the
book to its place, having completely assimi-
lated its contents.

But he had made too good a start to stop
midway. He was burning with eagerness to
attack geometry, which was not so unfamiliar
to him, but of which he had yet a great deal
to learn: "At my normal school," writes

1 Souvenirs, IX, pp. 164-170. The Life of the Fly, chap,
xii., "Mathematical Memories: The Binomial Theo-
rem."

108

The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

Fabre, " I had learnt a little elementary
geometry under a master. From the first
few lessons onwards, I rather enjoyed the
subject. I divined in it a guide for one's
reasoning faculties through the thickets of
the imagination; I caught a glimpse of a
search after truth that did not involve too
much stumbling on the way, because each
step forward is well braced by the step al-
ready taken. We start from a brilliantly-
lighted spot and gradually travel farther and
farther into the darkness, which kindles into
radiance as it sheds fresh beams of light for
a higher ascent.

It is an excellent thing to regard geometry
as what it really is, before all things: a su-
perb intellectual gymnastic. By forcing the
mind to proceed from the known to the un-
known, always explaining what follows in
the light of what has gone before, it exer-
cises it and familiarises it with the logical
laws of thought. To be sure, " it does not
give us ideas, those delicate flowers which
unfold one knows not how, and are not able
to flourish in every soil," but it teaches us
to present them in a lucid and orderly man-
ner. Fabre tells us:

At that time, the College in which, two years
before, I had made my first appearance as a teacher
109

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

had just halved the size of its classes and largely
increased its staff. The newcomers all lived in the
building, like myself, and we had our meals in com-
mon at the principal's table. I had as a neigh-
bour, in the next cell to mine, a retired quarter-
master who, weary of barrack-life, had taken refuge
in education. When in charge of the books of
his company, he had become more or less familiar
with figures; and it was now his ambition to take
a mathematical degree. His cerebrum appears to
have hardened while he was with his regiment.
According to my dear colleagues, those amiable re-
tailers of the misfortunes of others, he had already
twice been plucked. Stubbornly, he returned to his
books and exercises, refusing to be daunted by two
reverses.

It was not that he was allured by the beauties
of mathematics: far from it; but the step to which
he aspired favoured his plans. He hoped to have
his own boarders and dispense butter and vege-
tables to lucrative purpose.

I had often surprised our friend sitting, in the
evening, by the light of a candle, with his elbows
on the table and his head between his hands, medi-
tating at great length in front of a big exercise-
book crammed with cabalistic signs. From time
to time, when an idea came to him, he would take
his pen and hastily put down a line of writing
wherein letters, large and small, were grouped with-
out any grammatical sense. The letters x and y
often recurred, intermingled with figures. Every
row ended with the sign of equality and a naught.
110

The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

Next came more reflection, with closed eyes, and
a fresh row of letters arranged in a different order
and likewise followed by a naught. Page after
page was filled in this queer fashion, each line wind-
ing up with o.

" What are you doing with all those rows of
figures amounting to zero?" I asked him one day.

The mathematician gave me a leery look, picked
up in barracks. A sarcastic droop in the corner
of his eye showed how he pitied my ignorance.
My colleague of the many naughts did not, how-
ever, take an unfair advantage of his superiority.
He told me that he was working at analytical
geometry.

The phrase had a strange effect upon me. I
ruminated silently to this purpose: there was a
higher geometry, which you learnt more partic-
ularly with combinations of letters in which x and
y played a prominent part. How would the alpha-
betical signs, arranged first in one and then in
another manner, give an image of actual things,
an image visible to the eyes of the mind alone?
It beat me.

" I shall have to learn analytical geometry some
day," I said. " Will you help me ?"

" I'm quite willing," he replied, with a smile
in which I read his lack of 'confidence in my deter-
mination.

No matter: we struck a bargain that same eve-
ning. We would together break up the stubble
of algebra and analytical geometry, the foundation
of the mathematical degree; we would make corn-
Ill

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

mon stock: he would bring long hours of calcula-
tion, I my youthful ardour. We would begin as
soon as I had finished with my arts degree, which
was my main preoccupation for the moment.

We begin in my room, in front of a blackboard.
After a few evenings, prolonged into the peaceful
watches of the night, I become aware, to my great
surprise, that my teacher, the past master in these
hieroglyphics, is really, more often than not, my
pupil. He does not see the combinations of the
abscissae and ordinates very clearly. I make bold
to take the chalk in hand myself, to seize the rud-
der of our algebraical boat. I comment on the
book, interpret it in my own fashion, expound the
text, sound the reefs, until daylight comes and
leads us to the haven of the solution. Besides,
the logic is so irresistible, it is all such easy going
and so lucid that often one seems to be remem-
bering rather than learning.

And so we proceed, with our positions reversed.
My comrade — I can now allow myself to speak
of him on equal terms — my comrade listens, sug-
gests objections, raises difficulties which we try to
solve in unison.

After fifteen months of this exercise, we went
up together for our examination at Montpellier ;
and both of us received our degrees as bachelors
of mathematical science. My companion was a
wreck; I, on the other hand, had refreshed my
mind with analytical geometry.1

''•Souvenirs, ix, pp. 172-183 passim. The Life of the
112

The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

The quartermaster declared himself satis-
fied with this achievement. Analytic geome-
try did not precisely strike him as a recrea-
tion. He knew enough of it for what he had
to do ; he did not want to know any more.

In vain I hold out the glittering prospect of
a new degree, that of licentiate of mathematical
science, which would lead us to the splendours of
the higher mathematics and initiate us into the
mechanics of the heavens: I cannot prevail upon
him, cannot make him share my audacity. He
calls it a mad scheme, which will exhaust us and
come to nothing. I am free to go and break my
neck in distant countries; he is more prudent and
will not follow me.

My partner, therefore, leaves me. Henceforth,
I am alone, alone and wretched. There is no one
left with whom I can sit up and thresh out the
subject in exhilarating discussion.1

And now let us note the words and the
emotions with which he approaches for the
last time, in his declining years, this town
of Carpentras, where, from his earliest

Fly, chap, xii., "Mathematical Memories: The Binomial
Theorem."

1 Souvenirs, IX., p. 184 passim. The Life of the Fly,
chap, xii., "Mathematical Memories: The Binomial Theo-
rem."

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

youth, he suffered so greatly and laboured so
valiantly:

Once more, here am I, somewhat late in life,
at Carpentras, whose rude Gallic name sets the
fool smiling and the scholar thinking. Dear lit-
tle town where I spent my twentieth year and left
the first bits of my fleece upon life's bushes, my visit
of to-day is a pilgrimage; I have come to lay my
eyes once more upon the place which saw the birth
of the liveliest impressions of my early days. I
bow, in passing, to the old College where I tried
my prentice hand as a teacher. Its appearance is
unchanged ; it still looks like a penitentiary. Those
were the views of our mediaeval educational sys-
tem. To the gaiety and activity of boyhood, which
were considered unwholesome, it applied the rem-
edy of narrowness, melancholy, and gloom. Its
houses of instruction were, above all, houses of
correction. The freshness of Virgil was interpreted
in the stifling atmosphere of a prison. I catch a
glimpse of a yard between four high walls, a sort
of bear-pit, where the scholars fought for room
for their games under the spreading branches of
a plane-tree. All around were cells that looked
like horse-boxes, without light or air; those were
the class-rooms. I speak in the past tense, for
doubtless the present day has seen the last of this
academic destitution.

Here is the tobacco-shop where, on Wednesday
evening, coming out of the college, I would buy on
credit the wherewithal to fill my pipe and thus

The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

to celebrate on the eve the joys of the morrow,
that blessed Thursday 1 which I considered so well
employed in solving difficult equations, experiment-
ing with new chemical reagents, collecting and
identifying my plants. I made my timid request,
pretending to have come out without my money,
for it is hard for a self-respecting man to admit
that he is penniless. My candour appears to have
inspired some little confidence ; and I obtained credit,
an unprecedented thing, with the representative of
the revenue.

How I should love to see that room again where
I pored over differentials and integrals, where I
calmed my poor burning head by gazing at Mont
Ventoux, whose summit held in store for my com-
ing expedition 2 those denizens of Arctic climes, the
saxifrage and the poppy! And to see my familiar
friend, the blackboard, which I hired at five francs
a year from a crusty joiner, that board whose value
I paid many times over, though I could never buy
it outright, for want of the necessary cash! The
conic sections which I described on that black-
board, the learned hieroglyphics ! 3

Fabre has somewhere written, lamenting
the dearth of family reminiscences which

1 The weekly half-holiday in the French schools. — A. T.
DE M.

2 The Hunting Wasps, chap, xi., M An Ascent of Mont
Ventoux."

3 Souvenirs, in., pp. 191-193. The Life of the Fly,
chap, iv., ".Larval Dimorphism."

"5

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

does not enable him to go back beyond the
second generation of his ancestry, this touch-
ing passage, full of modesty and filial feel-
ing: "The populace has no history. Stran-
gled by the present, it cannot give its mind
to cherishing the memories of the past." Yet
how instructive would those records be.

Let us bow our heads before this child of
the peasantry who labours so unremittingly
and drives so deep a furrow; let us bow our
heads before this humble primary school-
master who seeks to uplift himself, not as
so many have done, by futile political agi-
tation or the criminal fatuities of irreligion,
but solely by virtue of knowledge and per-
sonal worth.

We shall see later on with what vindictive
energy Fabre scourges the pseudo-scientists,
" hateful malefactors," maufatan de malur,
who, in the name of a false science, rob
men's souls of the true and ancient Chris-
tian faith, thereby leading society toward
the most terrible catastrophes. For the mo-
ment our only desire is to do homage to our
worthy schoolmasters in the person of one
of their old comrades who has become one of
our greatest national glories. There are
others, too, among us who have exalted by
their virtues or their talents the humble na-
116

The Schoolmaster: Carpentras

ture of their origin or their calling. Of such,
as every Frenchman knows, to mention only
one of the best known and best beloved, is
the author of the Poesie des Betes, of V oix
rustiques, of La Bonne Terre, of Le Clocher,
etc. — Frangois Fabie, that poet who, by his
original style, his career, and his genius,
which has been too much obscured by his
modesty, may in so many respects be com-
pared with Jean-Henri Fabre.1 Of such, too,
and among the most eminent writers of the
language d'oc, is Antonin Perbosc,2 who does
honour to our primary schools, in one of
which he is still teaching, by the remarkable
works of literature which place him beside his
friend, the Abbe Besson,3 in the first rank of
the Occitanian Felibrige.

1 M. Fabie was never officially a schoolmaster, but he
was trained as one, and was a pupil at the Normal Col-
lege at Rodez.

2 M. Perbosc is a schoolmaster at Lavilledien (Tarnet-
Garonne). He has published through Privat of Tou-
louse: Lo Got occitan, Cansous del Got occitan, Contes
populars Gascons, Guilhem de Tolosa, Remembransa,
I'Arada, etc., and has repeatedly been crowned by the
Academie des Jeux Floraux of Toulouse.

3 M. Besson is also a laureate of the Academie des
Jeux Floraux, and is at present Canon of Rodez. He
has published through Carrere of Rodez: Dal Bres a la
Tounbo, Bagateletos, Besucarietos, Countes de la Tata
Mannou, Countes de I'Ouncle Janet, etc. This last vol-
ume is dedicated: A mon Amic Antouni Perbosc.

CHAPTER IX

THE PROFESSOR: AJACCIO

T7IRGIL has truly said:

. . . labor omnia vincit
Improbus.

Persistent labour, in the service of a keen
intelligence, knows no insuperable obstacles :
it always achieves its ends. Success, accord-
ingly, could not fail to befall the intrepid vir-
tuosity of the youthful Carpentras school-
master. The degree of licentiate in the math-
ematical sciences was won, like the rest, at
the point of the sword, and the valiant cham-
pion of the cosine and the laboratory was
appointed Professor of Physics and Chemis-
try in the lycee of Ajaccio.

Here, by a happy concatenation of circum-
stances, and under the inward impulsion of
the providential vocation, the destiny of the
famous entomologist was to be finally deter-
mined.

In this novel environment, in " this para-
118

The Professor: Ajaccio

disc of glorious Nature," everything stimu-
lated the alert curiosity of the predestined
biologist; the sea, full of marvels, the beach,
where the waves threw up such beautiful
shells, the maquis of myrtle, arbutus, and len-
tisk! . . . This time the temptation was too
great! He surrendered. His leisure was di-
vided into two parts. One was still devoted
to mathematics, the basis of his future in the
university. The other was already spent in
botanising and in investigating the wonders
of the sea.

What a country! What magnificent investiga-
tions to be made! If I had not been obsessed by
x and y I should have surrendered wholly to my
inclinations!

Meanwhile Ajaccio received the visit of a fa-
mous Avignon botanist, Requien * by name, who,
with a box crammed with paper under his arm,
had long been botanising all over Corsica, press-
ing and drying specimens and distributing them
to his friends. We soon became acquainted. I
accompanied him in my free time on his explora-
tions, and never did the master have a more atten-
tive disciple. To tell the truth, Requien was not
a man of learning so much as an enthusiastic col-

1 Esprit Requien (1788-1851), a French naturalist and
collector, director of the museum and botanical gardens
at Avignon and author of several works on botany and
conchology. — A. T. DE M.

119

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

lector. Very few would have felt capable of com-
peting with him when it came to giving the name
or the geographical distribution of a plant. A
blade of grass, a pad of moss, a scab of lichen,
a thread of seaweed: he knew them all. The
scientific name flashed across his mind at once.
What an unerring memory, what a genius for clas-
sification amid the enormous mass of things ob-
served! I stood aghast at it. I owe much to
Requien in the domain of botany. Had death
spared him longer, I should doubtless have owed
more to him, for his was a generous heart, ever
open to the woes of novices.

In the following year I met Moquin-Tandon,1
with whom, thanks to Requien, I had already ex-
changed a few letters on botany. The illustrious
Toulouse professor came to study on the spot the
flora which he proposed to describe systematically.
When he arrived, all the hotel bedrooms were re-
served for the members of the General Council
which had been summoned ; and I offered him board
and lodging: a shake-down in a room overlooking
the sea; fare consisting of lampreys, turbot, and
sea-urchins; common enough dishes in that land of
Cockayne, but possessing no small attraction for
the naturalist, because of their novelty. My cor-
dial proposal tempted him; he yielded to my bland-

1 Horace Benedict Alfred Moquin-Tandon (1804-63), a
distinguished naturalist, for twenty years director of the
botanical gardens at Toulouse. He was commissioned
by the French Government in 1850 to compile a flora
of Corsica, and is the author of several important works
on botany and zoology. — A. T. DE M.
I2O

The Professor: Ajaccio

ishments; and there we were for a fortnight, chat-
ting at table de omni re scibili, after the botanical
excursion was over.

With Moquin-Tandon new vistas opened before
me. Here it was no longer the case of a nomen-
clator with an infallible memory; he was a natu-
ralist with far-reaching ideas, a philosopher who
soared above petty details to comprehensive views
of life, a writer, a poet who knew how to clothe
the naked truth in the magic mantle of the glow-
ing word. Never again shall I sit at an intellectual
feast like that:

" Leave your mathematics," he said. " No one
will take the least interest in your formulae. Get
to the beast, the plant; and, if, as I believe, the
fever burns in your veins, you will find men to
listen to you."

We made an expedition to the centre of the
island, to Monte Renoso,1 with which I was ex-
tremely familiar. I made the scientist pick the
hoary everlasting (Helichrysum frigidum), which
makes a wonderful patch of silver; the many-
headed thrift, or mouflon-grass (Armerla multiceps),
which the Corsicans call erba muorone; the downy
marguerite (Leucanthemum tomosum), which, clad
in wadding, shivers amid the snows; and many
other rarities dear to the botanist. Moquin-Tan-
don was jubilant. I, on my side, was much more
attracted and overcome by his words and his enthu-

XA mountain 7730 feet high, about twenty-five miles
from Ajaccio. — A. T. DE M.

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

siasm than by the hoary everlasting. When we
came down from the cold mountain-top, my mind
was made up: mathematics would be abandoned.
On the day before his departure, he said to me:
' You interest yourself in shells. That is some-
thing, but it is not enough. You must look into
the animal itself. I will show you how it's
done."

And, taking a sharp pair of scissors from the
family workbasket, and a couple of needles stuck
into a bit of vine-shoot, which served as a make-
shift handle, he showed me the anatomy of a Snail
in a soup-plate filled with water. Gradually he
explained and sketched the organs which he spread
before my eyes. This was the only, never-to-be-
forgotten lesson in natural history that I ever re-
ceived in my life.1

Fabre was a wonderful and indefatigable
self-teacher; a truly self-made man. The im-
pulse had been given, but he had everything,
or almost everything, to learn of the living
world of Nature. The way was open, but
the whole length of it had to be travelled.
He trod it henceforth with a high courage,
for he was marching beneath the star that
the Master of minds had hung in the dawn
of his days above the hills of Lavaysse; the

1 Souvenirs, VI., pp. 63-66.
vi., "My Schooling."

The Life of the Fly, chap.
122

The Professor: Ajaccio

star that now, in the noon-day of life, shone
through the passing mists of morning in the
flawless Corsican sky, to guide his steps along
the humblest tracks of the world of animals
to the highest summits of human knowledge ;
ay, more, to those calm regions which are
the dwelling of that uncreated Light and
Life of which all the lights and all the lives
of earth are but the pale reflections and fee-
ble vestiges.

Not only do these reflections, which spon-
taneously pass through our mind, appear to
us in harmony with the natural signification
of the facts and the circumstances; we have
the pleasant assurance that they are an epit-
ome of the intimate feelings of our famous
compatriot, as they are expressed in plain
words in a thousand passages of his writing
and as they were openly revealed in his con-
versation. We know, in short, that God and
the activities of God in the world were ques-
tions which he was fond of considering, with-
out regarding the world's opinion. His es-
says are full of the subject. But we will
quote only one passage, which has the ad-
vantage of bringing us an echo of the jubi-
lee celebrations which were celebrated at
Serignan while this volume was being writ-
ten: When the venerable nonogenarian was
123

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

being feted, one of his visitors asked him the
question :

" Do you believe in God? "
To which he replied emphatically:
" I can't say I believe in God; I see Him.
Without Him I understand nothing; without
Him all is darkness. Not only have I re-
tained this conviction; I have . . . aggra-
vated or ameliorated it, whichever you
please. Every period has its manias. / re-
gard Atheism as a mania. It is the malady
of the age. You could take my skin from me
more easily than my faith in God."

We may add, in order to throw some light
upon the religion of the Aliborons of our
villages, that the eminent biologist shares this
belief with almost all our great scientists.

Corsica, which vouchsafed Fabre the rev-
elation of his vocation as naturalist, inspired
him also with such love and enthusiasm as
he had never hitherto known.

There the intense impressionability which
the little peasant of Aveyron received at birth
could only be confirmed and increased. He
felt that this superb and luxuriant nature was
made for him, and that he was born for it;
to understand and interpret it. He would
lose himself in a delicious intoxication, amid
the deep woodlands, the mountains rich with
124

The Professor: Ajaccio

scented flowers, wandering through the
maquis, the myrtle scrub, through jungles of
lentisk and arbutus; barely containing his
emotion when he passed beneath the great
secular chestnut-trees of Bastelica, with their
enormous trunks and leafy boughs, whose
sombre majesty inspired in him a sort of
melancholy at once poetic and religious. Be-
fore the sea, with its infinite distances, he
lingered in ecstasy, listening to the song of
the waves, and gathering the marvellous
shells which the snow-white breakers left
upon the beach, and whose unfamiliar forms
filled him with delight.

Not that he had time to make a very rich
harvest of facts and observations in this won-
derful country. The most visible result of
his sojourn in the " isle of beauty," and the
greatest benefit which he derived from it,
seems to have been the fact that it brought
his heart and mind — if I may be permitted
the expression — into a state of entomological
grace; I mean into a state of living and act-
ing truly and beautifully in accordance with
his vocation as a naturalist.

So it is that the name of this radiant
daughter of the Mediterranean, which is so
often written by his pen, seems to find its way
thither in order to evoke one of the bright-

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

est and most joyful periods of his life, rather
than to localise observations or circumstantial
experiences.

There is, however, one of these reminis-
cences which, despite the extreme sobriety of
the characteristics recorded, denotes, in the
youthful entomologist, a mind peculiarly at-
tentive to the slightest indications and the
least movements of his future clients of the
animal world. It deals with the Spider,1
that ill-famed creature whom all hasten to
crush underfoot as an odious and maleficent
insect, but which the entomologist holds in
high esteem for its talents as a spinner, its
hunting expedients, and other highly interest-
ing characteristics. The author has just ex-
plained, on behalf of the poor, supposedly
poisonous insect, that for us its bite has no
serious results, producing less effect than the
bite of a gnat: " Nevertheless, a few are to
be feared; and foremost among these is the
Malmignatte, the terror of the Corsican
peasantry."

By good fortune the only Tarantula that
bit him in Corsica was the Tarantula of nat-
ural history.

But while he was not injured by the spiders,

1 Souvenirs, I., pp. 178-180. The Life of the Spider,
chap, ii., "The Black-bellied Tarantula."
126

The Professor: Ajaccio

he was less fortunate in defending himself
against the mosquitoes, from whose bites he
contracted an attack of malaria, in the myrtle
maquis which he doubtless haunted more per-
sistently than was wise.

This unfortunate incident persuaded him
to apply for an appointment in France.

127

CHAPTER X

THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON (1852-1870)

TN 1852 the Professor of Physics and
•*- Chemistry in the lycee of Ajaccio was
transferred to the lycee of Avignon.

Fabre was not yet twenty-seven. His
youth, his enthusiasm, his good humour, the
simplicity of his manners, and the vivacity of
his mind naturally endeared him to young
people eager for knowledge and the ideal.
A few lines from the Souvenirs give us some
idea of the relations between master and pu-
pils: "There were five or six of us: I was
the oldest, their master, but still more their
companion and their friend; they were young
fellows with warm hearts and cheerful imagi-
nations, overflowing with that springtide sap
of life which makes us so expansive, so de-
sirous of knowledge."

One guesses that he is speaking of one of
those country walks on which, with a guide
such as Fabre, everything became a source
of instruction and an object of wonder and
admiration.

128

The Professor: Avignon

These excursions into the world of the
fields, the delight of his youth and his earliest
childhood, were henceforth to form the first
item on his programme of studies. Mathe-
matics were dropped, as Moquin-Tandon had
advised. Physics and chemistry were put in
their proper place, in the teaching of the
lycee, and the whole of the young professor's
free energies were expended upon the re-
search work of the naturalist.

Necessarily limited by his occupation as a
teacher, his investigations could not at ordi-
nary times extend beyond the neighbourhood
of Avignon. One of his favourite localities
for observation, by reason of its nearness and
its entomological wealth, was the table-land
of Les Angles, opposite the town on the right
bank of the Rhone. Morning or evening, he
made quick work of crossing the river and
climbing the cliff which divides it from the
barren table-land which he calls his " little
Arabia Petrasa."

Presently his Thursdays and holidays were
devoted to more distant and more prolonged
observations. His steps took him, by pref-
erence, down-stream from Avignon, along the
right bank of the Rhone, opposite the em-
bouchure of the Durance, to a spot known
as the Bois des Issarts. Not that he was
129

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

drawn thither by the mossy carpets or the
twilight of lofty forest trees which form the
charm of our woodlands. The burning plains
where the Cicada shrilled and the olive flour-
ished know nothing of these delightful re-
treats, so full of shadow and coolness. Here
is Fabre's own description:

The Bois des Issarts is a coppice of holm-oaks no
higher than one's head and sparingly distributed in
scanty clumps which, even at their feet, hardly
temper the force of the sun's rays. When I used
to settle myself in some part of the coppice suit-
able for my observations, on certain afternoons in
the dog-days of July and August, I had the shelter
of a large umbrella. If I neglected to furnish
myself with this embarrassing adjunct to a long
walk, my only resource against sunstroke was to
lie down at full length behind some sandy knoll ;
and, when the veins in my temples were throbbing
to bursting point, my last hope lay in putting my
head down a rabbit-burrow. Such are one's means
of keeping cool in the Bois des Issarts.

What was there to draw him and retain
him in such places, so unpropitious for the
holiday of a professor on vacation? Ah!
they are the favourite resort of the Bem-
bex, one of his favourite insects. " A blaz-
ing sun, a sky magnificently blue, sandy slopes
130

The Professor: Avignon

to dig in, game in abundance to feed the
larvae, a peaceful spot hardly ever disturbed
by a passing step " : all things combined to
attract the digger-wasp to such localities.

I was, however, not the only one to profit by
the shade of my umbrella; I was generally sur-
rounded by numerous companions. Gad-flies of
various species would take refuge under the silken
dome, and sit peacefully on every part of the tightly-
stretched cover. I was rarely without their society
when the heat became overpowering. To while
away the hours when I had nothing to do, it
amused me to watch their great gold eyes, which
shone like carbuncles under my canopy; I loved
to follow their solemn progress when some part
of the ceiling became too hot and obliged them to
move a little way on.

One day, bang! The tight cover resounded
like the skin of a drum. Perhaps an oak had
dropped an acorn on the umbrella. Presently, one
after the other, bang, bang, bang! Can some prac-
tical joker have come to disturb my solitude and
fling acorns or little pebbles at my umbrella? I
leave my tent and inspect the neighbourhood : noth-
ing! The same sharp sound is repeated. I look
up at the ceiling, and the mystery is explained.
The Bembex of the vicinity, who all consume Gad-
flies, had discovered the rich provender that was
keeping me company, and were impudently pene-
trating my shelter to seize the flies on the ceiling.

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

Things were going to perfection; I had only to
sit still and look.

Every moment a Bembex would enter, swift as
lightning, and dart up to the silken ceiling, which
resounded with a sharp thud. Some rumpus was
going on aloft, where the eye could no longer dis-
tinguish between attacker and attacked, so lively
was the fray. The struggle did not last for an
appreciable time: the Wasp would retire forthwith
with a victim between her legs.

Obviously this suddenness of attack, followed
by the swift removal of the prey, does not allow
the Bembex to regulate her dagger-play.1

With ever-increasing accuracy, by the com-
bined efforts of observation and experiment,
that rich entomological material was amassed
which was one day to serve for the erection
of one of the finest and most enduring monu-
ments of contemporary science.

We should form but a very incomplete idea
of the sort of work to which the future au-
thor of the Souvenirs began to devote himself
at this early stage of his professorship were
we merely to note his frequent visits to Les
Angles and his long sessions beneath his um-
brella in trie Bois des Issarts.

Apart from this favourite field of observa-

1 Souvenirs, i., pp. 221, 240-241. The Hunting Wasps,
chap, xiv., " The Bembex."

132

The Professor: Avignon

tion, the enthusiastic curiosity of the natural-
ist found scope for its exercise on every
hand.

Whether at home or abroad, whether pass-
ing along the public highway or visiting a
friend, it was enough for an insect to appear
to capture and retain his attention without
regard for the circumstances and without a
thought as to what might be said of him.
On one occasion a Pelopaeus, that is, a Pot-
ter-wasp (TTT/AOTTOZ'OS'), holding her pellet of
mud in her jaws, came to his fireside one
washing-day, seeking access to the nest which
she was building behind the breast of the
fireplace. More anxious about the Wasp
than about the washing, he controlled the fire
so that it should not too greatly incommode
the little mason by eddies of smoke or flame,
and for two good hours he followed the com-
ing and going of the Pelopaeus, and the prog-
ress of her nest-building. This was in the
early days of his Avignon professorship.1

Another day it was once again the strange
mud-worker which attracted his attention, not
in his own house this time but in the kitchen
of Roberty, one of the chief farmhouses on
the outskirts of Avignon. Returning to din-
ner from their work in the fields, the farm

1 Souvenirs, iv., 3-5.

133

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

hands had hung, on pegs driven into the wall,
one his blouse and another his hat. While
they were devoting their attention to the
soup, the guest had his eyes fixed upon the
Pelopaei which came prowling about the men's
clothes and found them so well adapted to
their needs that they began to build their
nests upon them. Unfortunately for the
builders and the spectator, the men soon rose
from the table and shook their belongings,
dislodging masses of mud already as large
as an acorn. Ah ! If he had been the owner
of those garments, how gladly he would have
allowed the Pelopaei to work their will, in
order to learn the fate of a nest built upon
the shifting surface of a smock-frock.1

The unavoidable limitations imposed by ob-
servations undertaken at home are not more
disappointing to the investigator than the
possible disturbance caused by passers-by
should he attempt to watch the insect on the
public highways. Here is an example. The
professor, on one of his " days off," is qui-

1 However; the audacious insect had other surprises in
store for him: his notes speak of nests found more or less
by chance near the still of a distillery, on the top of a
steam-engine in a silk mill, on the walls and furniture of
a farmhouse kitchen, and even in the interior of a gourd
in which the farmer kept his shot on the chimney-piece;
in a word, wherever there was warmth and not too
much light. Souvenirs, iv., p. 8-12.

134

The Professor : Avignon

etly strollin'g along a narrow footpath on the
banks of the Rhone:

A Yellow-winged Sphex appears, hopping along,
dragging her prey. What do I see? The prey
is not a Cricket, but a common Acridian, a Lo-
cust! And yet the Wasp is really the Sphex with
whom I am so familiar, the Yellow-winged Sphex,
the keen Cricket-huntress. I can hardly believe
the evidence of my own eyes.

The burrow is not far off: the insect enters it
and stores away the booty. I sit down, determined
to wait for a new expedition, to wait hours if
necessary, so that I may see if the extraordinary
capture is repeated. My sitting attitude makes
me take up the whole width of the path. Two
raw conscripts heave in sight, their hair newly
cut, wearing that inimitable automaton look which
the first days of barrack-life bestow. They are
chatting together, talking no doubt of home and
the girl they left behind them; and each is inno-
cently whittling a willow-switch with his knife. I
am seized with a sudden apprehension. I there-
fore got up without speaking and trusted to my
lucky star. Alas and alack, my star betrayed me:
the heavy regulation boot came straight down
upon the ceiling of the Sphex! A shudder ran
through me as though I myself had received the im-
press of the hobnailed sole.1

1 Souvenirs, I., p. 122. The Hunting Wasps, chap, vii.,
" Advanced Theories."

135

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

And the unfortunate observer "cries, with
an emotion which he does not attempt to
conceal :

Alas! It is no easy matter to experiment on the
public road, where, when the long-waited event
occurs at last, the arrival of a wayfarer is likely
to disturb or ruin opportunities that may never
return !

But the entomological hero does not allow
himself to be discouraged by those unfortu-
nate encounters with the profane, nor does
he shrink from the humiliation which they
sometimes inflict upon him. The following
is a characteristic example :

Ever since daybreak I have been ambushed, sit-
ting on a stone, at the bottom of a ravine. The
subject of my matutinal visit is the Languedocian
Sphex. Three women, vine-pickers, pass in a group,
on the way to their work. They give a glance at
the man seated, apparently absorbed in reflection.
At sunset the same pickers pass again, carrying
their full baskets on their heads. The man is still
there, sitting on the same stone, with his eyes fixed
on the same place. My motionless attitude, my
long persistency in remaining at that deserted spot,
must have impressed them deeply. As they passed
by me, I saw one of them tap her forehead and
heard her whisper to the others:
136

The Professor: Avignon

"Un paoure inoucent, pecdire!"

And all three made the sign of the Cross.1

This last scene was enacted on one of the
deeply-sunken roads on the outskirts of Car-
pentras, whither Fabre was fond of repair-
ing for his researches. From an early period,
indeed, his craze for exploration had led him
far beyond the Avignon district. On this
third stage of his excursions, he struck out to
some extent in all directions, but the locality
which he preferred for his insect-hunting was
undoubtedly the " Sunken Road," as it was
called, in the neighbourhood of Carpentras.
A lonely valley with a sandy soil, with high,
steep slopes on either hand, its flanks deeply
scored into ravines and burned by the sun,
the " Sunken Road " was an ideal home for
the Hymenoptera, those lovers of sunny
slopes and soils that are easily worked; and
this was enough to make it the favourite
haunt of the intrepid biologist.2

Among the Hymenoptera that frequent the
slopes and embankments of the " Sunken
Road," in addition to the Hunting-wasps,
which feed their larvae on living flesh, there
are other species which provide them with

1 Souvenirs, I., p. 136. The Hunting Wasps, chap, viii.,
" The Languedocian Sphex."

2 Souvenirs, I., pp. 50, 52 ; n., p. 262 et seq.

137

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

honey. These also attracted the naturalist's
attention; these also provided a protracted
test for his ingenuity and patience, and finally
rewarded his pains beyond all hopes.

The following is an interesting description
of the naturalist's encounter with a swarm of
Bees in the " Sunken Road " while endeav-
ouring to observe the installation of the
Sitares in the cell of the Anthophora:

In front of a high expanse of earth a swarm
stimulated by the sun, which floods it with light
and heat, is dancing a crazy ballet. It is a hover
of Anthophorae, a few feet thick and covering an
area which matches the sort of house-front formed
by the perpendicular soil. From the tumultuous
heart of the cloud rises a monotonous, threatening
murmur, while the bewildered eye strays through
the inextricable evolutions of the eager throng.
With the rapidity of a lightning-flash, thousands
of Anthophorae are incessantly flying off and scat-
tering over the country-side in search of booty;
thousands of others also are incessantly arriving,
laden with honey or mortar, and keeping up the
formidable proportions of the swarm.

I was at that time something of a novice as re-
gards the nature of these insects.

"Woe," said I to myself, "woe to the reckless
wight bold enough to enter the heart of this swarm
and, above all, to lay a rash hand upon the dwell-
ings under construction! Forthwith surrounded
138

The Professor: Avignon

by the furious host, he would expiate his rash at-
tempt, stabbed by a thousand stings!"

At this thought, rendered still more alarming
by the recollection of certain misadventures of
which I had been the victim when seeking to ob-
serve too closely the combs of the Hornet (Vespa
crabro) , I felt a shiver of apprehension pass through
my body.

Yet, to obtain light upon the question which
brings me hither, I must needs penetrate the fear-
some swarm ; I must stand for whole hours, per-
haps all day, watching the works which I intend
to upset ; lens in hand, I must scrutinise, unmoved
amid the whirl, the things that are happening in
the cells. The use moreover of a mask, of gloves,
of a covering of any kind, is impracticable, for ex-
treme dexterity of the ringers and complete liberty
of sight are essential to the investigations which
I have to make. No matter: even though I leave
this wasps'-nest with a face swollen beyond recog-
nition, I must to-day obtain a decisive solution of
the problem which has preoccupied me too long.

My preparations are made at once : I button my
clothes tightly, so as to afford the Bees the least
possible opportunity, and I enter the heart of the
swarm. A few blows of the mattock, which arouse
a far from reassuring crescendo in the humming
of the Anthophorae, soon place me in possession of
a lump of earth ; and I beat a hasty retreat, greatly
astonished to find myself still safe and sound and
unpursued. But the lump of earth which I have
removed is from a part too near the surface; it
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

contains nothing but Osmia-cells, which do not
interest me for the moment. A second expedition
is made, lasting longer than the first; and, though
my retreat is effected without great precipitation,
not an Anthophora has touched me with her sting,
nor even shown herself disposed to fall upon the
aggressor.

This success emboldens me. I remain perma-
nently in front of the work in progress, continu-
ally removing lumps of earth filled with cells,
spilling the liquid honey on the ground, eviscerat-
ing larvae and crushing the Bees busily occupied
in their nests. All this devastation results merely
in arousing a louder hum in the swarm and is not
followed by any hostile demonstration.

Thanks to this unexpected lack of spirit in the
Mason-bee, I was able for hours to pursue my in-
vestigations at my leisure, seated on a stone in the
midst of the murmuring and distracted swarm,
without receiving a single sting, although I took
no precautions whatever. Country-folk, happen-
ing to pass and beholding me seated, unperturbed
in the midst of the whirl of Bees, stopped aghast
to ask me whether I had bewitched them, whether I
charmed them, since I appeared to have nothing
to fear from them:

"Me, moun bel ami, li-z-ave doun escounjurado
que vous pougnioun pas, caneu de sort!"

My miscellaneous impediments spread over the
ground, boxes, glass jars and tubes, tweezers and
magnifying-glasses, were certainly regarded by these
good people as the implements of my wizardry.
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The Professor: Avignon

I can assert to-day, after a long experience, that
only the Social Hymenoptera, the Hive-bees, the
Common Wasps, and the Bumble-bees know how
to devise a common defence ; and only they dare
fall singly upon the aggressor, to wreak an in-
dividual vengeance.

But we would not leave the banks of the
" Sunken Road," which have been made clas-
sic by Fabre's observations on the Cerceris,
the Sitaris and tutti quanti, without letting the
reader hear an echo of the heartfelt accents
in which the now ageing scientist speaks of
these spots which witnessed his first endeav-
ours and his first achievements as an ento-
mologist, when he returns to them thirty
years later to complete his data respecting the
Anthophora's parasites:

Illustrious ravines whose banks are calcined by
the sun, if I have in some small degree contributed
to your fame, you, in your turn, have afforded me
some happy hours of oblivion spent in the joy of
learning. You, at least, have never lured me with
vain hopes; all that you have promised me you
have given me, often a hundredfold. You are my
promised land, in which I fain would finally have
pitched my observer's tent. It has not been pos-
sible to realise my desire. Let me at least salute
in passing my beloved insects of other days.

A wave of the hat to the Tuberculated Cerceris,
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

which I see on yonder bank busied with warehous-
ing her Cleonus. As I saw her long ago, so I see
her to-day . . . Watching her at work, a younger
blood flows in my veins; I scent, as it were, the
fragrance of some renewal of life. But time passes ;
let us pass on.

Yet another greeting here. I hear rustling over-
head, above that ledge, a community of Sphex-
wasps, stabbing their Crickets! Let us give them
a friendly glance, but no more. My acquaintances
here are too numerous: I have not time to resume
all my old relations.

Without stopping, a wave of the hat to the Eu-
menes . . . the Philanthus . . . the Tachytes . . .

At last we are there ! x

This last exclamation, a cry from the heart,
which reveals the object of this latest visit,
is addressed to the murmuring city of the
Anthophorae, in which he had formerly made
such valuable discoveries, and in which there
was still something left to discover: so true
is it that even in those regions which have
been most fully explored the scientist worthy
of the name never flatters himself that he has
reached the final limits of knowledge.

1 Souvenirs, 11., pp. 262-303, in., 194-195. The Gloiv-
Worm, chap, ii., "The Sitaris; " The Lije of the Fly,
chap, iv., " Larval Dimorphism."

142

CHAPTER XI

THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON (CONTINUED)

TN sketching for the reader's benefit, the
-•- characteristic features of the Avignon nat-
uralist, always busy with his researches, and
always on the alert for fresh discoveries, we
venture to flatter ourselves that we have
placed before him one of the most accom-
plished and attractive types of that harmoni-
ous synthesis of industry and genius, which
alone is capable of engendering great achieve-
ments, and which was so ably defined by the
Latin poet in the words :

"... Ego nee studium sine divite vena,
Nee rude quid possit video ingenium. Alterius sic
Altera poscit opera res et conjurat amice." 1

It will be no less interesting to see by what
varied and concurrent circumstances, by what
personal interventions, a virtuosity and an ac-
tivity so well co-ordinated were stimulated,
directed and controlled, sustained and pro-

1 HORACE, Ars Poetica, 409 et seg.
H3

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

tected against all causes of deviation or dis-
couragement.

Not in vain does a man breathe at birth
the air of the mountain-tops; not in vain
does he live his earliest summers with the
vision of the heights before him. He retains
as it were a nostalgia for the heights, and
a wild longing to climb them. It will not
surprise us to learn that the child of the Haut-
Rouergue, transplanted, by the vicissitudes of
life, from the Levezou mountains to the
Provencal plains, should calm his brain, burn-
ing with the stress of study, by gazing at
Mont Ventoux, and anticipating his approach-
ing expedition to the mountain of his dreams.1
We shall not be surprised to find that he
never allowed himself to be repulsed by the
difficulties of the enterprise, and that more
than a score of ascents failed to produce sa-
tiety, whereas many another found his cour-
age and his interest evaporate almost at the
outset.2 For the ascent of Mont Ventoux
is a difficult task, more difficult than that of
the majority of our mountains:

One might best compare the Ventoux with a
heap of stones broken up for road-mending pur-

1 Souvenirs, III., p. 193.

2 Ibid., I., p. 182. The Hunting Wasps, chap, xi., "An
Ascent of Mont Ventoux."

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The Professor: Avignon

poses. Raise this heap suddenly to a height of a
mile and a quarter, increase its base in proportion,
cover the white of the limestone with the black stain
of the forests, and you have a clear idea of the
general aspect of the mountain. This accumula-
tion of rubbish — sometimes small chips, sometimes
huge blocks — rises from the plain without prelim-
inary slopes or successive terraces that would ren-
der the ascent less arduous by dividing it into stages.
The climb begins at once by rocky paths, the best
of which is worse than the surface of a road newly
strewn with stones, and continues, becoming ever
rougher and rougher, right to the summit, the
height of which is 6270 feet. Green swards, bab-
bling brooks, the spacious shade of venerable trees,
all the things, in short, that lend such charm to
other mountains, are here unknown and are re-
placed by an interminable bed of limestone broken
into scales, which slip under our feet with a sharp,
almost metallic "click." By way of cascades the
Ventoux has rills of stones; the rattle of falling
rocks takes the place of the whispering waters.1

But the unsatisfied eagerness that draws
the exile from our cool green hills to repeat,
again and again, the ascent of the rocky Pro-
vengal height, is based on something more
than sensitiveness to impressions and a pre-
established harmony; he is also strongly at-

1 Souvenirs, i., pp. 182-3. The Hunting Was$i, chap.
xi., " An Ascent of Mont Ventoux."

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

tracted by the peculiar and unique variety of
the flora growing upon its slopes :

Thanks to its isolated position, which leaves it
freely exposed on every side to atmospheric influ-
ences; thanks also to its height, which makes it the
topmost point of France within the frontiers of
either the Alps or the Pyrenees, our bare Provenqal
mountain, Mont Ventoux, lends itself remarkably
well to the study of the climatic distribution of
plants. At its base the tender olive thrives, with
all that multitude of semi-ligneous plants, such as
the thyme, whose aromatic fragrance calls for the
sun of the Mediterranean regions; on the summit,
mantled with snow for at least half the year, the
ground is covered with a northern flora, borrowed
to some extent from Arctic shores. Half a day's
journey in an upward direction brings before our
eyes a succession of the chief vegetable types which
we should find in the course of a long voyage from
south to north along the same meridian.1

To any one with any love of plants, to any
one with blood in his veins, the expedition was
a tempting one. So we see Him set out for
the twenty-third time in company with two
colleagues 2 and five others. Let us join them
if we wish to make the acquaintance of the

1 Souvenirs, I., p. 180.

2 Th. Delacour and Bernard Valot of the Jardin des
Plantes.

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The Professor: Avignon

botanist of Mont Ventoux as well as the bot-
any; for Fabre is one who throws himself
wholly into all that he does, and his history
can no more be divorced from that of his
plants than from that of his beloved insects.

It is four o'clock in the morning. At the head
of the caravan walks Triboulet, with his Mule and
his Ass: Triboulet, the Nestor of the Ventoux
guides. My botanical colleagues inspect the vege-
tation on either side of the road by the cold light
of the dawn ; the others talk. I follow the party
with a barometer slung from my shoulder and a
note-book and pencil in my hand.

My barometer, intended for taking the altitude
of the principal botanical halts, soon becomes a
pretext for attacks on the gourd with the rum. No
sooner is a noteworthy plant observed than some-
body cries:

"Quick, let's look at the barometer!"

And we all crowd around the gourd, the scien-
tific instrument coming later. The coolness of
the morning and our walk make us appreciate these
references to the barometer so thoroughly that the
level of the stimulant falls even more swiftly than
that of the mercury. In the interests of the imme-
diate future I must consult Torricelli's tube a little
less often.

As the temperature grows too cold for them, first
the oak and the ilex disappear by degrees; then
the vine and the almond-tree; and next the mul-
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

berry, the walnut-tree, and the white oak. Box
becomes plentiful. We enter upon a monotonous
region extending from the end of the cultivated
fields to the lower boundary of the beech-woods,
where the predominant plant is Satureia montana,
the winter savory, known here by its popular name
of pebre d'ase, Ass's pepper, because of the acrid
flavour of its tiny leaves, impregnated with essen-
tial oil. Certain small cheeses forming part of our
stores are powdered with this strong spice. Al-
ready more than one of us is biting into them in
imagination and casting hungry glances at the pro-
vision bags carried by the Mule. Our hard morn-
ing exercise has brought appetite, and more than
appetite, a devouring hunger, what Horace calls
latrans stomachus. I teach my colleagues how to
stay this rumbling stomach until they reach the
next halt; I show them a little sorrel-plant, with
arrow-head leaves, the Rumex scutatus, or French
sorrel; and, practising what I preach, I pick a
mouthful. At first they laugh at my suggestion.
I let them laugh and soon see them all occupied,
each more eagerly than his fellow, in plucking the
precious sorrel.

While chewing the acid leaves we come to the
beeches. These are first big, solitary bushes, trail-
ing on the ground; soon after, dwarf trees, cluster-
ing close together ; and, finally, mighty trunks, form-
ing a dense and gloomy forest, whose soil is a mass
of rough limestone blocks. Bowed down in win-
ter by the weight of the snow, battered all the year
round by the fierce gusts of the Mistral, many of
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The Professor: Avignon

the trees have lost their branches and are twisted
into grotesque postures, or even lie flat on the
ground. An hour or more is spent in crossing this
wooded zone, which from a distance shows against
the sides of the Ventoux like a black belt. Then
once more the beeches become bushy and scattered.
We have reached their upper boundary and, to the
great relief of all of us, despite the sorrel-leaves,
we have also reached the stopping-place selected
for our lunch.

We are at the source of the Grave, a slender
stream of water caught, as it bubbles from the
ground, in a series of long beech-trunk troughs,
where the mountain shepherds come to water their
flocks. The temperature of the spring is 45° F. ;
and its coolness is a priceless boon for us who have
come from the sultry oven of the plain. The cloth
is spread on a charming carpet of Alpine plants,
with glittering among them the thyme-leaved par-
onychia, whose wide, thin bracts look like silver
scales. The food is taken out of the bags, the bot-
tles extracted from their bed of hay. On this side
are the joints, the legs of mutton stuffed with
garlic, the stacks of loaves; on that, the tasteless
chickens, for our grinders to toy with presently,
when the edge has been taken off our appetite. At
no great distance, set in a place of honour, are the
Ventoux cheeses spiced with winter savory, the
little pebre d'ase cheeses, flanked by Aries sausages,
whose pink flesh is mottled with cubes of bacon
and whole peppercorns. Over here, in this corner,
are green olives still dripping with brine and black
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

olives soaking in oil ; in that other, Cavaillon melons,
some white, some orange, to suit every taste; and,
down there, a jar of anchovies which make you
drink hard and so keep your strength up. Lastly,
the bottles are cooling in the ice-cold water of the
trough over there. Have we forgotten anything?
Yes, we have not mentioned the crowning side-
dish, the onions, to be eaten raw with salt. Our
two Parisians — for we have two among us, my
fellow-botanists — are at first a little startled by
this very invigorating bill of fare ; soon they will be
the first to burst into praises.1

But we will pass over the remarks made
at breakfast and the incidents of the last
stage of the climb; we will make direct for
the summit of Mont Ventoux, where the
leader of the expedition will give us a glimpse
of the delights that await the naturalist at
the end of his climb when he has taken the
precaution to make it at the right moment:

Would you do some really fruitful botanising?
Be there in the first fortnight of July; above all,
be ahead of the grazing herds: where the sheep
has browsed you will gather none but wretched
leavings. While still spared by the hungry flocks,
the top of the Ventoux in July is a literal bed of
flowers; its loose stony surface is studded with

1 Souvenirs, I., pp. 181-186. The Hunting Wasps,
chap, xi., "An Ascent of Mont Ventoux."
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The Professor: Avignon

them. My memory recalls, all streaming with the
morning dew, those elegant tufts of Androsace vil-
losa, with its pink-centred white blooms; the Mont-
Cenis violet, spreading its great blue blossoms over
the chips of limestone; the spikenard valerian, which
blends the sweet perfume of its flowers with the
offensive odour of its roots; the wedge-leaved globu-
laria, forming close carpets of bright green dotted
with blue capitula; the Alpine forget-me-not, whose
blue rivals that of the skies; the Candolla candy-
tuft, whose tiny stalk bears a dense head of little
white flowers and goes winding among the loose
stones.1

Our naturalist is evidently fascinated by
so many beauties, of such delicate quality.
Will he not be tempted to forsake his in-
sects for the flowers? Will not the botani-
cal wealth of the Ventoux make him forget
the entomological wonders of the " Sunken
Road"? No; he is saved from such an
error by God and the good genius that
watches over the destiny of him who is to
become the prince of entomologists. Even
in his lectures on botanical subjects the in-
sects are given their due; and now from time
to time they claim his attention and seduce
him from the spectacle of the vegetable curi-
osities which form the principal motive of

1 Souvenirs, I., pp. 192-193.

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

the expedition; it is now the Ammophila and
now the Decticus * that crosses the path of
the naturalist in search of plants and flow-
ers, recalling, by some of the most curious
problems of entomology, the first beginnings
of his vocation and the great task of his life.
But the silent language of the tiny crea-
tures destined to be his most intimate com-
panions through life was seconded, at an op-
portune moment, by the more expressive lan-
guage of human speech. Here we have one
of those events that were landmarks in Fa-
bre's life, marking the starting-point of a
fresh phase in the evolution of his ideas and
his labours. He alone can describe for us
the actual nature and exact significance of this
incident:

One winter evening, when the rest of the house-
hold was asleep, as I sat reading beside a stove
whose ashes were still warm, my book made me
forget for a while the cares of the morrow: these
heavy cares of a poor professor of physics who, after
piling up diplomas and for a quarter of a century
performing services of uncontested merit, was re-
ceiving for himself and his family a stipend of six-
teen hundred francs, or less than the wages of a
groom in a decent establishment. Such was the

1 Souvenirs, vi., p. 166; i., p. 187.
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The Professor: Avignon

disgraceful parsimony of the day where education
was concerned; such was the edict of our govern-
ment red-tape : I was an irregular, the offspring of
my solitary studies. And so I was forgetting the
poverty and anxieties of a professor's life amid my
books, when I chanced to turn over the pages of
an entomological essay that had fallen into my
hands I forget how.

It was a monograph by the then father of en-
tomology, the venerable scientist Leon Dufour, on
the habits of a Wasp that hunted Buprestis beetles.
Certainly, I had not waited till then to interest my-
self in insects; from my early childhood I had de-
lighted in Beetles, Bees, and Butterflies; as far
back as I can remember, I see myself in ecstasy be-
fore the splendour of a Ground-beetle's wing-cases
or the wings of Papilio machaon, the Swallowtail.
The fire was laid ; the spark to kindle it was ab-
sent. Leon Dufour's essay provided that spark.1

New lights burst forth : I received a sort of
mental revelation. So there was more in science
than the arranging of pretty Beetles in a cork box
and giving them names and classifying them; there
was something much finer : a close and loving study
of insect life, the examination of the structure and
especially the faculties of each species. I read of
a magnificent instance of this, glowing with ex-
citement as I did so. Some time after, aided by

iJLeon Dufour (1780-1865) was an Army surgeon
who in 1823 went through the Spanish campaign, and
on returning to France settled in his native town, Saint-
Sever, where he devoted himself chiefly to entomology.

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

those lucky circumstances which he who seeks them
eagerly is always able to find, I myself published
an entomological article, a supplement to Leon
Dufour's. This first work of mine won honourable
mention from the Institute of France, and was
awarded a prize for experimental physiology. But
soon I received a far more welcome recompense,
in the shape of a most eulogistic and encouraging
letter from the very man who had inspired me.
From his home in the Landes the revered master
sent me a warm expression of his enthusiasm and
urged me to go on with my studies. Even now,
at that sacred recollection, my old eyes fill with
happy tears. O fair days of illusion, of faith in
the future, where are you now ? 1

Moquin-Tandon converted Fabre to the
study of animals and plants. Dufour con-
verted him to the study of insects, and taught
him to publish the results of his entomological
studies.

Dufour's little work was a revelation; a
flash of light revealing his vocation. It was
like the electric impulse that bursts the seed
about to open, that sends the genius ready
to unfold its wings soaring into the heavens.

It was to the chance perusal of a certain
passage that another prince of science owed

1 Souvenirs, I., pp. 39-41. The Hunting Wasps, chap,
i., " The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris."

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The Professor : Avignon

the awakening of his genius. We are speak-
ing of Pasteur, whom we shall presently see
in his dealings with Fabre. " It was through
reading a note by the Russian chemist,
Mitscherlich, on the comparison of the spe-
cific characters of certain crystals that Pas-
teur became interested in those investigations
of the subject of molecular dissymmetry
which were the starting-point of so many won-
derful discoveries." 1

Does it not seem that there must be a spe-
cial Providence for the elect of science?

In Dufour's memoir, which gave Fabre so
decisive an impulsion toward entomology, a
singular fact is mentioned: the naturalist of
the Landes found in the nest of a species of
Wasp known as the Cerceris some small bee-
tles of the Buprestis family, which, although
apparently dead, remained as fresh as though
alive during the period occupied by the rear-
ing of the larvae for whose nourishment they
are destined to serve.

Dufour supposed that these Buprestes
were simply dead, and, " in order to explain
this marvellous preservation of their flesh,
which makes an insect that for several weeks
has been motionless as a corpse a kind of
game that does not become high but remain

1 Fabre, Poet of Science, p. 58.
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

as fresh as at the moment of capture during
the greatest heat of summer, he presumed
the use of a liquid antiseptic, acting in the
same manner as the preparations used to pre-
serve anatomical specimens. This liquid
could only be the venom of the Hymenop-
teron inoculated into the victim's body. The
tiny drop of poisonous humour that accom-
panies the sting, the lancet employed in the
inoculation, is supposed to perform the office
of a kind of pickle or preservative liquid for
preserving the flesh set aside for the nour-
ishment of the larvae.

But Fabre was burning with curiosity to
observe for himself a phenomenon which an
old practitioner like Dufour proclaims the
most curious and extraordinary known to the
history of the insect kingdom.1 He did not
hesitate to go to Carpentras, to search for
the Buprestis-hunting wasp, which does not
occur in the neighbourhood of Avignon. A
minute inspection of the Cerceris' victims en-
abled him to prove that, not only was the
flesh intact, but the joints were flexible, the
viscera were moist, defalcation persisted, and
vestiges of irritability even were present, all
of which facts were scarcely compatible

1 Souvenirs, I., pp. 41, 44. The Hunting Wasps, chap.
I., " The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris."
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The Professor: Avignon

" with the supposition of an animal abso-
lutely dead, the hypothesis of a true corpse
rendered incorruptible by the effect of a
liquid preservative." He was thus led to
conclude that the insect was not dead, but
only benumbed and reduced to a state of im-
mobility.

Fascinated and intrigued by Dufour's dis-
covery, Fabre wished to see the process for
himself, and as a result he made the first and
the finest of his own entomological discov-
eries, which he was later on to enrich by more
precise and more remarkable details.

But at the same time he was forced to re-
alise how incomplete and superficial were the
observations of the man whom he neverthe-
less revered as the first among his masters.

How often was he to find occasion for re-
vising the statements of his predecessors 1
They were not merely incomplete; they were
often erroneous, even when they had the
greatest names to recommend them.

Must we then ignore all that has been said
and written and wholly repudiate the inher-
itance of the centuries and the scientists of
the past? Heaven preserve us from such
stupidity! But while it would not be rea-
sonable or even possible to make a clean
sweep of all that has been acquired by our
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

predecessors, it is none the less prudent not
to accept, in blind confidence, the whole her-
itage of the past, but to subject to the con-
trol of facts the statements even of the mas-
ters when these appear at all extravagant.
Otherwise we run the risk, if not of perpe-
trating error by repeating it on our own re-
sponsibility, at all events of following a false
trail on which we may lose much time and
which may finally lead us to envy the lot of
those who are able to attack their subject,
from the very first, with minds empty of all
information and any preconceived ideas.
This was brought well home to Fabre by the
repeated experience of errors which had es-
caped the most learned authors and erroneous
methods suggested by the best books. And
the persuasive effect of the highly sympto-
matic example afforded by an absolutely un-
rivalled master was even more eloquent.

Unexpectedly, one fine day [writes Fabre], Pas-
teur rang my door-bell: the Pasteur who was
presently to acquire so great a celebrity. His name
was known to me. I had read his beautiful essay
on the dissymmetry of tartaric acid ; I had followed
with the keenest interest his researches concerning
the generation of the Infusoria.

Every period has its scientific craze; to-day it is
evolution; then it was spontaneous generation. By
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The Professor: Avignon

his glass bulbs, made sterile or fertile at will, by
his experiments, magnificent in their rigorous sim-
plicity, Pasteur exploded for ever the insanity which
professed to see life arising from a chemical con-
flict in a mass of putrescence.

Aware of this dispute, so victoriously elucidated,
I gave my illustrious visitor the best of welcomes.
The scientist had come to me in the first place for
certain information. I owed this notable honour
to my quality of colleague as a teacher of physics
and chemistry. Ah, but what a humble, obscure
colleague !

Pasteur's tour through the district of Avignon
was in connection with sericulture. For some
years the silk-worm nurseries had been at sixes and
sevens, ravaged by unknown plagues. The silk-
worms, without appreciable cause, became masses of
putrid deliquescence, or hardened into stony lumps.
The peasant, in dismay, saw one of his chief sources
of income disappearing; after much expense and
trouble he had to throw his litters on the dung-
heap.

A few words were exchanged concerning the
prevailing evil; then, without further pream-
ble:

" I wanted to see some cocoons," said my visitor;
" I have never seen any ; I know them only by name.
Could you get me some ? "

" Nothing simpler. My landlord is himself a
dealer in cocoons, and he lives across the road. If
you'll be good enough to wait a moment, I will
bring you what you want."

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A few long strides and I had reached my neigh-
bour's house, where I stuffed my pockets with
cocoons. On my return I offered them to the
scientist. He took one, turned it over and over in
his fingers; curiously he examined it, as we should
some singular object which had come from the
other end of the world. He shook it against his
ear.

"It rattles!" he said, quite surprised. "There
is something inside ! "

"Why, yes!"

"But what?"

" The chrysalis."

"What's that, the chrysalis?"

" I mean the sort of mummy into which the
caterpillar turns before it becomes a moth."

" And in every cocoon there is one of those
things ? "

" Of course ; it's to protect the chrysalis that the
caterpillar spins."

"Ah!"

And without more ado, the cocoons went into the
pocket of the scientist, who was to inform him-
self at leisure concerning this great novelty, the
chrysalis. This magnificent assurance impressed
me. Knowing nothing of caterpillar, cocoon, chrys-
alis, or metamorphosis, Pasteur had come to re-
generate the silkworm. The ancient gymnasts
presented themselves naked for the contest. This
ingenious thinker, who was to fight the plague of
the silk-worm nurseries, had also hastened to bat-
tle wholly naked: that is, devoid of the simplest
1 60

The Professor: Avignon

notions of the insect he was to save from danger.
I was astounded; more, I was filled with wonder.1

The fact is indeed so extraordinary that
it may well appear incredible, but it receives
authentic confirmation from the wholly con-
cordant account of Duclaux, Pasteur's pupil
and historiographer, as well as from the hon-
esty of the naturalist, who is assuredly in-
capable of having invented the story for our
amusement.

I still remember the day [says Duclaux] when
Pasteur, returning to the laboratory, said to me with
a touch of excitement in his voice:

" Do you know what M. Dumas has just asked
of me? To go to the Midi, to study the silk-worm
disease."

I don't know what I replied ; probably what he
himself replied to his illustrious master: Then
there is a silk-worm disease? There are provinces
that are being ruined by it? All this was happen-
ing so far from Paris, and we were so far from
Paris in the laboratory! . . .

Pasteur hesitated. He was not a physiologist.
But Dumas' insistence, the attraction of the un-
known, and an inward voice urged him to accept.
So he left for the Midi; it was early in June 1865.
He was invested with an official mission which con-
fronted him with a plague that had to be conquered

1 Souvenirs, ix., pp. 326-328.

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

and obliged him to render an account of the at-
tempts made and the results obtained.

To be sent to fight a fire and not to know what
fire is and to have no fire-engine or hose! It
needed Pasteur to accept and to shoulder such a
responsibility! . . . To his complaint that he had
no knowledge of the matter, Dumas had replied:

"So much the better! You will have no ideas
on the subject but those that will come to you as
a result of your own observations! "

This reply is not always a paradox, but one has
to be careful to whom one makes it ! x

In this case the choice was not mistaken,
and the lesson was as profitable to Pasteur
as it was to Fabre, to whom he was about to
hand it on, all unsuspecting.

When Pasteur was called upon to regener-
ate seri-culture, the silk-worm disease had
been known for twenty years. During that
period much research had been undertaken
and many efforts had been made, in France
as well as in Italy, to discover the nature of
the affection and to fight it. But " of all this
story, a mixture of truth and falsehood, Pas-
teur knew nothing when he began his re-
searches." More — and this was what aston-
ished Fabre — he knew nothing of the physi-
ology or the rearing of the silk-worm. " For

1 Duclaux, Pasteur, Histolre d'un Esprit, pp. 182-93.
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The Professor: Avignon

the first time he has seen a cocoon, and has
learned that there is something in the cocoon,
a rough model of the future moth," . . .
and he is about to revolutionise the hygiene
of the silk-worm nurseries and is preparing
to revolutionise medicine and general hy-
giene in the same way,1 by showing that the
maladies of silk-worms and most of our hu-
man maladies arise from the development in
the tissues of a microscopic living entity, a
microbe, the cause of the malady. And while
his other discoveries won for him only fame
and the admiration of his contemporaries,
this will give him immortality and place him
in the front rank of the benefactors of hu-
manity. Decidedly ignorance may have its
advantages.

Encouraged by the magnificent example of Pas-
teur (continues the entomologist), I have made it
a rule to adopt the method of ignorance in my in-
vestigations of the instincts. I read very little.
Instead of turning over the leaves of books, an
expensive method which is not within my means, in-
stead of consulting others, I set myself obstinately
face to face with my subject until I contrive to
make it speak. I know nothing. So much the
better; my interrogation will be all the freer, to-
day tending in one direction, to-morrow in an-
other, according to the information acquired. And

1 Souvenirs, IX., p. 330.

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

if by chance I do open a book, I am careful to leave
a section of my mind wide open to doubt.1

Beginning with that arising out of Du-
four's memoir, repeated experiences taught
Fabre not to be too greatly influenced, in his
conceptions of natural objects, by faith in his
reading or even in the assertions of his mas-
ters. To go still further, Pasteur's example
made him appreciate the advantage of com-
ing fresh to the facts, of confronting them
in a state of ignorance, of receiving impres-
sions from them alone, and of having no
ideas but those that truly emanate from the
reality.

Without going to extremes, Fabre bene-
fited by this twofold lesson. No one had a
greater respect for his masters; he quotes
them readily and is chary neither of praising
their works nor of expressing his gratitude
to them;2 but no one was ever more inde-
pendent in his researches and his conclusions,
which are often the very contrary of theirs.
If he revered his masters he revered the truth
still more, and he might well have made his
own the celebrated maxim: Amicus Plato,
magis arnica veritas.

1 Souvenirs, ix., pp. 330-331.

1 Souvenirs, I., p. 40, 73; II., pp. 78, 83, 181, 214, 234,
235> 283; v., pp. 76, 188, 229, etc.
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The Professor: Avignon

Let us add that while no one was ever
more interested in authors and their writings,
to purchase which he often sacrificed his last
coppers, and even his daily bread, no one
was more resolutely determined to give the
first place to the language of facts, and di-
rect intercourse with the tiny living creatures
whom he had chosen for his own. So much
so that, if we wish fully to describe his
method, we must complete the maxim which
we have just quoted by this other, which
forms its exact counterpart: Amiens liber,
magis arnica natura.

CHAPTER XII

THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON (CONTINUED)

WHEN Pasteur called upon Fabre, at
the beginning of his investigation of
the silk-growing industry, he was also greatly
interested in the improvement of wines by
the application of heat.1 Thus it was that,

1 Everybody knows to-day that heat kills, or so far
enfeebles as to render inoffensive, the microbes that in-
fact liquids and make it impossible to preserve them.

This again is one of Pasteur's happy discoveries, as
is conveyed by the very verb to pasteurise, which means
" to protect against microbes by the action of heat." We
pasteurise milk, beer, wine, etc.

The ancients used to practise the heating of wines.
In the house of St. John and St. Paul, discovered in Rome
in 1887, beneath the church dedicated to the two martyrs,
who were both officers of the Emperor Constantine,
the excavators found beside the cellar and the amphora;
of wine, the little room with a fireplace known as the
jurnarium, which was used for heating wine and drying
fruit.

The heating of wines was practised also at Meze, near
Cette, before Pasteur's discovery.

But the ancient method of heating had nothing in com-
mon with pasteurisation. The merchants of Herault,
like the ancients, used to heat wine in order to modify
its flavour, to mature it more quickly. Pasteur, on the
other hand, heats it to keep it unchanged. To mature
wine it is heated slowly in contact with the air. To
preserve it, the wine must be rapidly heated to 122° F.
in a vacuum. The object and the method are altogether
different.

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The Professor: Avignon

having obtained the needed information re-
specting the silk-worm from the Avignon
naturalist, he suddenly asked him to show
him his cellar. Fabre found the request ex-
tremely embarrassing:

To show him my cellar! My private cellar!
And I, poor wretch, but a while ago, with my pre-
posterous professor's salary, could not even permit
myself the expense of a drop of wine, so that I
used to make myself a sort of rough cider, by plac-
ing a jar, to ferment, a handful of brown sugar and
some grated apples! My cellar! Show him my
cellar! Why not my tuns of wine, my dusty bot-
tles, labelled according to age and vintage! My
cellar!

Completely confused, I tried to evade his re-
quest, to change the subject. But he was tena-
cious.

" Show me your cellar, I beg you."

There was no possibility of resisting such in-
sistence.

With my finger I pointed to a corner of the
kitchen where there was a chair without a seat,
and on the chair a demijohn holding a couple of
gallons.

"There's my cellar, monsieur!"

"Your cellar? That?"

" I have no other."

"That's all?"

"Alas, yes. That's all!"
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

"Ah!"

Not a word more from the scientist. Pasteur,
it was easy to see, knew nothing of those highly-
flavoured dishes which the common people call la
vache enragee. If my cellar, that is the old chair
and the hollow-sounding demijohn, had nothing to
tell concerning the ferments to be fought by means
of heat, it spoke very eloquently of another sub-
ject, which my illustrious visitor did not appear to
understand. One microbe evaded him, and it was
one of the most terrible; the microbe of misfor-
tune strangling good will.1

It is told of one of our most famous dram-
atists who, like Fabre, is a self-made man,
having raised himself by persistent effort
from the workshop to the Academy, that
when he was struggling against the difficul-
ties of the first steps upward, he had also
to contend against the impassive coldness of
eminent colleagues from whom he might have
expected some support. " Young man," said
one of these — and he was not one of the
least illustrious — " young man, la vache en-
ragee is excellent; to help you would be to
spoil you."

No doubt the vache enragee, like the
method d'ignorance, may have its virtues.
The story of Fabre's career, and of Brieux',

1 Souvenirs, IX., pp. 329-30.

168

The Professor: Avignon

goes to prove as much. But of this sort of
discipline, like that which extols the advan-
tages of ignorance, we may remark that one
may have too much of it; that it succeeds
only on condition of being applied with mod-
eration and discretion.

A robust child of the Rouergat peasantry,
such as Fabre, is capable of enduring an
abnormal dose with unusual results. But un-
der too great strain steel of the toughest
temper is in danger of being broken or fa-
tigued. In hours of difficulty and suffering,
if they are unduly prolonged, the most reso-
lute and courageous feel the need of an en-
couraging voice, and a hand outstretched to
give the moral or even the material help with
which one cannot always dispense with im-
punity.

This friendly voice, this helping hand,
which Fabre failed to find in the great bene-
factor of humanity who witnessed his distress
— so true is it that the best of us have their
defects and their seasons of inattention — he
was presently to find unexpectedly enough, in
one of his official chiefs, whose first appear-
ance in his life was to him like a warm " ray
of sunlight " piercing the icy atmosphere of
winter.

The incident is worth recording: it is all
169

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

the more delightful in that Fabre, instead of
thrusting himself forward, sought rather to
draw back, seeming more anxious to avoid
than to recommend himself for administra-
tive favours.

The chief inspectors visited our grammar-school.
These personages travel in pairs: one attends to
literature, the other to science. When the inspec-
tion was over and the books checked, the staff was
summoned to the principal's drawing-room, to re-
ceive the parting admonitions of the two luminaries.
The man of science began. I should be sadly put
to it to remember what he said. It was cold pro-
fessional prose, made up of soulless words which the
hearer forgot once the speaker's back was turned,
words merely boring to both. I had heard enough
of these chilly sermons in my time; one more of
them could not hope to make an impression
on me.

The inspector in literature spoke next. At the
first words which he uttered, I said to myself:

"Oho! This is a very different business!"

The speech was alive and vigorous and image-
ful; indifferent to scholastic commonplaces, the
ideas soared, hovering gently in the serene heights
of a kindly philosophy. This time, I listened with
pleasure; I even felt stirred. Here was no official
homily: it was full of impassioned zeal, of words
that carried you with them, uttered by an honest
man accomplished in the art of speaking, an orator
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The Professor: Avignon

in the true sense of the word. In all my school
experience, I had never had such a treat.

When the meeting broke up my heart beat faster
than usual:

" What a pity," I thought, " that my side, the
science side, cannot bring me into contact, some
day, with that inspector! It seems to me that we
should become great friends."

I inquired his name of my colleagues, who were
always better-informed than I. They told me it
was Victor Duruy.

Well, one day, two years later, as I was looking
after my Saint-Martial laboratory in the midst of
the steam from my vats, with my hands the colour
of boiled lobster-claws from constant dipping in
the indelible red of my dyes, there walked in, un-
expectedly, a person whose features straightway
seemed familiar. I was right ; it was the very man,
the chief-inspector whose speech had once stirred
me. M. Duruy was now Minister of Public In-
struction. He was styled " Your Excellency " ;
and this style, usually an empty formula, was well-
deserved in the present case, for our new minister
excelled in his exalted functions. We all held
him in high esteem. He was the workers' minis-
ter, the man for the humble toiler.

" I want to spend my last half-hour at Avignon
with you," said my visitor with a smile. " That
will be a relief from the official bowing and scrap-
ing."

Overcome by the honour paid me, I apologised
for my costume — I was in my short-sleeves — and
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

especially for my lobster-claws, which I had tried,
for a moment, to hide behind my back.

" You have nothing to apologise for. I came to
see the worker. The working-man never looks
better than in his overall, with the marks of his
trade on him. Let us have a talk. What are you
doing just now? "

I explained, in a few words, the object of my
researches; I showed my product; I executed un-
der the minister's eyes a little attempt at printing
in madder-red. The success of the experiment and
the simplicity of my apparatus, in which an evap-
orating dish, maintained at boiling-point under a
glass funnel, took the place of a steam-chamber,
caused him some surprise.

" I will help you," he said. " What do you
want for your laboratory?"

" Why, nothing, Monsieur le Ministre, noth-
ing! With a little application, the plant I have
is ample."

"What, nothing! You are unique there! The
others overwhelm me with requests; their labora-
tories are never well enough supplied. And you,
poor as you are, refuse my offers ! "

" No, there is one thing which I will accept."

"What is that?"

" The signal honour of shaking you by the
hand."

" There you are, my friend, with all my heart.
But that's not enough. What else do you
want? "

" The Paris Jardin des Plantes is under your
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The Professor: Avignon

control. Should a crocodile die, let them keep the
hide for me. I will stuff it with straw and hang
it from the ceiling. Thus adorned, my workshop
will rival the wizard's den."

The minister cast his eyes round the nave and
glanced up at the Gothic vault:

" Yes, it would look very well." And he gave
a laugh at my sally. " I now know you as a chem-
ist," he continued. " I knew you already as a
naturalist and a writer. I have heard about your
little animals. I am sorry that I shall have to
leave without seeing them. They must wait for
another occasion. My train will be starting pres-
ently. Walk with me to the station, will you ? We
shall be alone and we can chat a bit more on the
way."

We strolled along, discussing entomology and
madder. My shyness had disappeared. The self-
sufficiency of a fool would have left me dumb; the
fine frankness of a lofty mind put me at my ease.
I told him of my experiments in natural history,
of my plans for a professorship, of my fight with
harsh fate, my hopes and fears. He encouraged
me, spoke to me of a better future. We reached
the station and walked up and down outside, talk-
ing away delightfully.

A poor old woman passed, all in rags, her back
bent by age and years of work in the fields. She
furtively put out her hand for alms. Duruy felt
in his waistcoat, found a two-franc piece, and placed
it in the outstretched hand ; I wanted to add a cou-
ple of sous as my contribution, but my pockets were
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

empty, as usual. I went to the beggar-woman and
whispered in her ear:

" Do you know who gave you that? It's the
Emperor's minister."

The poor woman started ; and her astounded eyes
wandered from the open-handed swell to the piece
of silver and from the piece of silver to the open-
handed swell. What a surprise! What a wind-
fall!

" Que lou bou Dieu ie done longo vido e santa,
pecdire! " she said in her cracked voice.

And, curtseying and nodding, she withdrew, still
staring at the coin in the palm of her hand.
" What did she say ? " asked Duruy.
" She wished you long life and health."
" And pecdire? "

" Pecdire is a poem in itself : it sums up all the
gentler passions."

And I myself mentally repeated the artless vow.
The man who stops so kindly when a beggar puts
out her hand has something better in his soul than
the mere qualities that go to make a minister.

We entered the station, still alone, as promised,
and I quite without misgivings. Had I but fore-
seen what was going to happen, how I should have
hastened to take my leave! Little by little a group
formed in front of us. It was too late to fly: I
had to screw up my courage. Came the general
of division and his officers, came the prefect and
his secretary, the mayor and his deputy, the school-
inspector and the pick of the staff. The minister
faced the ceremonial semicircle. I stood next to
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The Professor: Avignon

him. A crowd at one side, we two on the other.
Followed the regulation spinal contortions, the
empty obeisances which my dear Duruy had come
to my laboratory to forget. When bowing to St.
Roch,1 in his corner niche, the worshipper at the
same time salutes the saint's humble companion.
I was something like St. Roch's dog in the pres-
ence of those honours which did not concern me.
I stood and looked on, with my awful red hands
concealed behind my back, under the broad brim of
my felt hat.

After the official compliments had been ex-
changed, the conversation began to languish; and
the minister seized my right hand and gently drew
it from the mysterious recesses of my wideawake:

" Why don't you show those gentlemen your
hands?" he said. "Most people would be proud
of them."

I vainly protested with a jerk of the elbow. I
had to comply, and I displayed my lobster-claws.

" Workman's hands," said the prefect's secre-
tary. " Regular workman's hands."

The general, almost scandalised at seeing me in
such distinguished company, added:

" Hands of a dyer and cleaner."

" Yes, workman's hands," retorted the minister,
" and I wish you many like them. Believe me,
they will do much to help the chief industry of your

1 St. Roch (1295-1327) is represented in his statues
with the dog that saved his life by discovering him in the
solitude where after curing the plague-stricken Italians,
he hid himself lest he should communicate the pestilence
to others. — A. T. DE M.

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

city. Skilled as they are in chemical work, they
are equally capable of wielding the pen, the pen-
cil, the scalpel, and the lens. As you here seem
unaware of it, I am delighted to inform you."

This time I should have liked the ground to
open and swallow me up. Fortunately the bell
rang for the train to start. I said good-bye to the
minister and, hurriedly taking to flight, left him
laughing at the trick which he had played me.

The incident was noised about, could not help
being so, for the peristyle of a railway station keeps
no secrets. I then learnt to what annoyances the
shadow of the great exposes us. I was looked upon
as an influential person, having the favour of the
gods at my entire disposal. Place-hunters and can-
vassers tormented me. One wanted a licence to
sell tobacco and stamps, another a scholarship for
his son, another an increase of his pension. I had
only to ask and I should obtain, said they.

O simple people, what an illusion was yours!
You could not have hit upon a worse intermediary.
I figuring as a postulant! I have many faults, I
admit, but that is certainly not one of them. I
got rid of the importunate people as best I could,
though they were utterly unable to fathom my
reserve. What would they have said had they
known of the minister's offers with regard to my
laboratory and my jesting reply, in which I asked
for a crocodile-skin to hang from my ceiling! They
would have taken me for an idiot.

Six months elapsed; and I received a letter sum-
moning me to call upon the minister at his office. I

176

The Professor: Avignon

suspected a proposal to promote me to a more im-
portant grammar-school, and wrote begging that I
might be left where I was, among my vats and my
insects. A second letter arrived, more pressing
than the first and signed by the minister's own
hand. This letter said:

" Come at once, or I shall send my gendarmes
to fetch you."

There was no way out of it. Twenty-four hours
later I was in M. Duruy's room. He welcomed
me with exquisite cordiality, gave me his hand and,
taking up a number of the Moniteur:

11 Read that," he said. " You refused my chem-
ical apparatus; but you won't refuse this."

I looked at the line to which his finger pointed.
I read my name in the list of the Legion of Honour.
Quite stupid with surprise, I stammered the first
words of thanks that entered my head.

" Come here," said he, " and let me give you
the accolade. I will be your sponsor. You will
like the ceremony all the better if it is held in pri-
vate, between you and me : I know you ! "

He pinned the red ribbon to my coat, kissed me
on both cheeks, made me telegraph the great event
to my family. What a morning, spent with that
good man !

I well know the vanity of decorative ribbonry
and tinware, especially when, as too often hap-
pens, intrigue degrades the honour conferred; but,
coming as it did, that bit of ribbon is precious to
me. It is a relic, not an object for show. I keep
it religiously in a drawer.

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

There was a parcel of big books on the table, a
collection of the reports on the progress of science
drawn up for the International Exhibition of 1867,
which had just closed.

" Those books are for you," continued the min-
ister. " Take them with you. You can look
through them at your leisure: they may interest
you. There is something about your insects in
them. You're to have this too: it will pay for
your journey. The trip which I made you take
must not be at your own expense. If there is any-
thing over, spend it on your laboratory."

And he handed me a roll of twelve hundred
francs. In vain I refused, remarking that my
journey was not so burdensome as all that; be-
sides, his embrace and his bit of ribbon were of in-
estimable value compared with my disbursements.
He insisted:

" Take it," he said, " or I shall be very angry.
There's something else : you must come to the Em-
peror with me to-morrow, to the reception of the
learned societies."

Seeing me greatly perplexed, and as though de-
moralised by the prospect of an imperial inter-
view:

" Don't try to escape me," he said, " or look out
for the gendarmes of my letter! You saw the fel-
lows in the bear-skin caps on your way up. Mind
you don't fall into their hands. In any case, lest
you should be tempted to run away, we will go to
the Tuileries together in my carriage."

Things happened as he wished. The next day, in
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The Professor : Avignon

the minister's company, I was ushered into a little
drawing-room at the Tuileries by chamberlains in
knee-breeches and silver-buckled shoes. They were
queer people to look at. Their uniforms and their
stiff gait gave them the appearance, in my eyes, of
Beetles who, by way of wingcases, wore a great,
gold-laced dress-coat, with a key in the small of
the back. There were already a score of persons
from all parts waiting in the room. These in-
cluded geographical explorers, botanists, geologists,
antiquaries, archaeologists, collectors of prehistoric
flints, in short, the usual representatives of provin-
cial scientific life.

The Emperor entered, very simply dressed, with
no parade about him beyond a wide, red, watered-
silk ribbon across his chest. No sign of majesty,
an ordinary man, round and plump, with a large
moustache and a pair of half-closed drowsy eyes.
He moved from one to the other, talking to each
of us for a moment as the minister mentioned our
names and the nature of our occupations. He
showed a fair amount of information as he changed
his subject from the ice-floes of Spitzbergen to the
dunes of Gascony, from a Carlovingian charter to
the flora of the Sahara, from the progress in beet-
root-growing to Caesar's trenches before Alesia.
When my turn came, he questioned me upon the
hypermetamorphosis of the Meloidae, my last es-
say in entomology. I answered as best I could,
floundering a little in the proper mode of address,
mixing up the everyday monsieur with sire, a word
whose use was so utterly new to me. I passed
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

through the dread straits, and others succeeded
me. My five minutes' conversation with an im-
perial majesty was, they say, a most distinguished
honour. I am quite ready to believe them, but I
never had a desire to repeat it.

The reception came to an end, bows were ex-
changed, and we were dismissed. A luncheon
awaited us at the minister's house. I sat on his
right, not a little embarrassed by the privilege: on
his left was a physiologist of great renown. Like
the others, I spoke of all manner of things, includ-
ing even Avignon Bridge. Duruy's son, sitting op-
posite me, chaffed me pleasantly about the famous
bridge on which everybody dances;1 he smiled at
my impatience to get back to the thyme-scented
hills and the grey olive-yards rich in Grasshop-
pers.

"What!" said his father. "Won't you visit
our museums, our collections ? There are some very
interesting things there."

" I know, Monsieur le Ministre, but I shall find
better things, things more to my taste, in the in-
comparable museum of the fields."
" Then what do you propose to do? "
" I propose to go back to-morrow."
I did go back, I had had enough of Paris: never
had I felt such tortures of loneliness as in that

1 The old, partly-demolished bridge at Avignon which
figures in the well-known French catch:
" Sur le pont d'Avignon,
Tout le monde y danse en rond."

(A. T. DE M.)
I 80

The Professor: Avignon

immense whirl of humanity. To get away, to get
away was my one idea.1

In re-reading this curious and attractive
episode of Fabre's career, our mind was
haunted by the no less attractive memory of
another illustrious son of our Aveyron, which
shares his glory with Provence.2

Like the author of the Souvenirs entomolo-
giques, the writer of the Poesie des Betes is
the son of humble Aveyron peasants, who
raised himself by his own efforts from the
first to the second grade of school teachers,
and whose genius, like that of Fabre, faith-
ful to the environment in which he was born,
confines itself, with jealous care, like that
of the naturalist, to the " incomparable mu-
seum of the fields," which he describes with
the same clearness of vision and the same
sincerity of feeling.

Like Fabre, Fabie is a modest man, who
does not readily emerge from the obscurity
in which his native timidity delights. In his
case again it needed the perspicacity and
kindliness of Duruy, " the champion of the

1 Souvenirs, x., pp. 343 et seq. The Life of the Fly,
chap xx., " Industrial Chemistry."

2 M. Frangois Fabie, ex-professor in the lycee of Tou-
lon, still lives in the neighbourhood of the city, in the
Villa des Troenes.

181

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

modest and the laborious," to single him out
and drag him out of his hole; just as, at the
present time, a Parisian publicist, of whom
his fine talents have made a conquest, has
truly remarked, it needed the energetic in-
tervention of his friends to give his poetic
genius the supreme consecration reserved for
the works of our most eminent writers:
" Thank heaven, the author of the Poesie
des Betes and Bonne Terre has friends who
admire the poet as greatly as they esteem
the man, and if M. Francois Fabie cannot
make up his mind to emerge from the ob-
scurity in which he has only too long, indeed
always, enveloped himself, I venture to hope
that they will not hesitate to take him by the
shoulders and bring him out into the broad
light of day, and that they will then propel
him willy-nilly across the Pont des Arts at
the end of which rises the dome of the illus-
trious Forty." 1

One might say the same of Fabre. Some
one should have taken him, too, by the shoul-
ders and pushed him forcibly across the Pont
des Arts, and should then have kept his eyes
upon him until he reached his destination, lest
he should turn aside and fly for the Pont
d' Avignon, for we must not forget that Du-

1 Journal d'Aveyron, 8 November 1908.
182

The Professor : Avignon

ruy and his gendarmes, although they were
capable of making him come to Paris, were
incapable of keeping him there.

Fortunately Fabre's work is not of the
kind that needs, for its survival, the facti-
tious glitter of honours. By its own merit
it assures his name of an immortality greater
than that of the Immortal Forty.

There were three men, at this period of
Fabre's life, who contributed not a little to
kindle or revive the fires of his scientific ac-
tivity. Dufour's essays furnished the spark
that made the inward flame burst into a mag-
nificent blaze of light. Experience and the
example of Pasteur added fuel to the fire, by
teaching him to keep as far as possible in
close contact with nature. Duruy's good will
brought to this blaze the vivifying breath
without which all ardour becomes chilled and
all light extinguished.

But genius does not merely develop under
the impulse of the inner life, and the influ-
ence of the external life, which in some men
is more potent and more active; it is deter-
mined also by the pressure of events, of which
the most painful are not always the least
effectual. Who does not know that famous
line of Musset's, which has almost become a
proverb :

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

" L'homme est un apprenti, la douleur est son
maitre."

(Man's an apprentice, and his master, sorrow.)

Like so many others, Fabre learned this
by cruel yet fortunate experience. He had
to suffer poverty, lack of success, and per-
secution, yet these were to him so many step-
ping-stones by which he rose to the serene
and solitary height where his genius could
at last unfurl its wings in freedom and soar
at will.

While Fabre had no ambition in respect of
the Academic, he was ambitious where the
University was concerned. Absolutely care-
less of titles and dignities, he was particu-
larly eager to learn and to teach others as
widely and as completely as possible. It was
not enough for him to possess the knowledge
requisite for a professor in a lycee, as it had
not been enough to qualify for a primary
schoolmaster. He wanted to attain that rare
degree of knowledge which the higher edu-
cation demands; he dreamed of occupying a
chair of natural history in a faculty. Then
he could free himself from the material
tasks that constituted the danger as well as
the merit of the secondary schoolmaster; he
could devote himself at leisure to those won-
derful naturaf sciences in which he glimpsed,
184

The Professor: Avignon

not only a vitality and inspiration that ap-
pealed to his habit of mind, but a wealth of
new subjects to be treated, of rich veins to
be mined.

To serve this noble ambition he needed
the prestige of the degrees that would lead
to the coveted chair. He won them as he
had won those that gave him access to the
second degree of instruction, without guide
or master, by the sole effort of his mind and
will.

In 1858 he easily won his degree as licen-
tiate in the natural sciences before the Fac-
ulty of Toulouse.

It is an eloquent fact that instead of be-
ing, as it is for so many others, a goal and
an end in itself, the licentiate was for Fabre
but a brief parenthesis in his life of study,
a stage no sooner reached than crossed on
the infinite path of knowledge.

The next step was that of the doctorate.
It was achieved with no less ardour and suc-
cess than the previous one. This is almost
all we can say of it, for the hero of this
history speaks of it only incidentally, because
it is connected with the story of one of his
insects. But for the Languedocian Scorpion
the Souvenirs would leave us in ignorance of
his degee of Doctor of Science.

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

It was not long before Fabre saw that it
was not enough to possess all the scientific
degrees you will in order to realise the long-
cherished project of teaching natural history
in a Faculty.

It was an inspector-general and a mathe-
matician of the name of Rollier who under-
took to inform him of this. Here is the in-
cident as related by Fabre himself:

My colleagues used to call him the Crocodile.
Perhaps he had given them a rough time in the
course of his inspections. For all his boorish ways
he was an excellent man at heart. I owe him a
piece of advice which greatly influenced my future
studies.

That day he suddenly appeared, alone, in the
schoolroom, where I was taking a class in geometri-
cal drawing. I must explain that, at this time, to
eke out my ridiculous salary, and, at all costs, to
provide a living for myself and my large family, I
was a mighty pluralist, both inside the college and
out. At the college in particular, after two hours
of physics, chemistry or natural history, came, with-
out respite, another two hours' lesson, in which I
taught the boys how to make a projection in de-
scriptive geometry, how to draw a geodetic plane,
a curve of any kind whose law of generation is
known to us. This was called graphics.

The sudden irruption of the dread personage
causes me no great flurry. Twelve o'clock strikes,
186

The Professor: Avignon

the pupils go out and we are left alone. I know
him to be a geometrician. The transcendental
curve, perfectly drawn, may work upon his gen-
tler mood. I happen to have in my portfolio the
very thing to please him. Fortune serves me well,
in this special circumstance. Among my boys there
is one who, though a regular dunce at everything
else, is a first-rate hand with the square, the com-
pass, and the drawing-pen: a deft-fingered num-
skull, in short.

With the aid of a system of tangents of which
I first showed him the rule and the method of con-
struction, my artist has obtained the ordinary cy-
cloid, followed by the interior and the exterior epi-
cycloid, and, lastly, the same curves both length-
ened and shortened. His drawings are admirable
Spiders' webs, encircling the cunning curve in their
net. The draughtsmanship is so accurate that it
is easy to deduce from it beautiful theorems which
would be very laborious to work out by the cal-
culus.

I submit the geometrical masterpieces to my
chief-inspector, who is himself said to be smitten
with geometry. I modestly describe the method of
construction, I call his attention to the fine deduc-
tions which the drawing enables one to make. It
is labour lost: he gives but a heedless glance at my
sheets and flings each on the table as I hand it to
him.

" Alas ! " said I to myself. " There is a storm
brewing; the cycloid won't save you; it's your turn
for a bite from the Crocodile ! "
I87

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

Not a bit of it. Behold the bugbear growing
genial. He sits down on a bench, with one leg
here, another there, invites me to take a seat by his
side and, in a moment, we are discussing graphics.
Then, bluntly:

" Have you any money ? " he asks.

Astounded at this strange question, I answer with
a smile.

" Don't be afraid," he says. " Confide in me.
I'm asking you in your own interest. Have you
any capital ? "

" I have no reason to be ashamed of my poverty,
Monsieur 1'inspecteur general. I frankly admit,
I possess nothing ; my means are limited to my mod-
est salary."

A frown greets my answer; and I hear, spoken
in an undertone, as though my confessor were talk-
ing to himself:

" That's sad, that's really very sad."

Astonished to find my penury treated as sad, I
ask for an explanation: I was not accustomed to
this solicitude on the part of my superiors.

" Why, yes, it's a great pity," continues the man
reputed so terrible. " I have read your articles in
the Annales des sciences naturelles. You have an
observant mind, a taste for research, a lively style
and a ready pen. You would have made a capital
university-professor."

" But that's just what I'm aiming at! "

" Give up the idea."

" Haven't I the necessary attainment?"

''Yes, you have; but you have no capital."
188

The Professor: Avignon

The great obstacle stands revealed to me: woe
to the poor in pocket! University teaching de-
mands a private income. Be as ordinary, as com-
monplace as you please; but, above all, possess the
coin that lets you cut a dash. That is the main
thing; the rest is a secondary condition.

And the worthy man tells me what poverty in
a frock-coat means. Though less of a pauper than
I, he has known the mortification of it; he de-
scribes it to me, excitedly, in all its bitterness.
I listen to him with an aching heart; I see the
refuge which was to shelter my future crumbling
before my eyes:

" You have done me a great service, sir," I
answer. " You put an end to my hesitation. For
the moment, I give up my plan. I will first see
if it is possible to earn the small fortune which I
shall need if I am to teach in a decent manner."

Thereupon we exchanged a friendship grip of
the hand and parted. I never saw him again.
His fatherly arguments had soon convinced me: I
was prepared to hear the blunt truth. A few
months earlier I had received my nomination as an
assistant-lecturer in zoology at the university of
Poitiers. They offered me a ludicrous salary.
After paying the costs of moving, I should have
had hardly three francs a day left; and, on this
income, I should have had to keep my family,
numbering seven in all. I hastened to decline
the very great honour.

No, science ought not to practise these jests. If
we humble persons are of use to her, she should
189

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

at least enable us to live. If she can't do that,
then let her leave us to break stones on the high-
way. Oh, yes, I was prepared for the truth when
that honest fellow talked to me of frock-coated
poverty! I am telling the story of a not very dis-
tant past. Since then things have improved con-
siderably; but, when the pear was properly rip-
ened, I was no longer of an age to pick it.

However, notwithstanding Rollier's con-
fidences, Fabre had deferred rather than defi-
nitely abandoned the execution of his project.
Since his impecuniosity was the only obstacle
to the realisation of his wishes, could he not
seek to uplift himself, as others had done, by
daring and willing? In the meantime was it
not better to make a great effort in this di-
rection than to remain for ever sunk in the
material anxieties and ungrateful tasks of the
lyceef

The question as to how to free and simul-
taneously uplift himself exercised the mind of
Fabre at this time.

And what was I to do now [he writes] to
overcome the difficulty mentioned by my inspec-
tor and confirmed by my personal experience? I
would take up industrial chemistry. The munici-
pal lectures at Saint-Martial placed a spacious and
fairly well-equipped laboratory at my disposal.
Why not make the most of it?
190

The Professor: Avignon

The chief manufacture of Avignon was madder.
The farmer supplied the raw material to the fac-
tories, where it was turned into purer and more
concentrated products. My predecessor had gone
in for it and done well by it, so people said. I
would follow in his footsteps and use the vats and
furnaces, the expensive plant which I 'had inherited.
So to work.

What should I set myself to produce? I pro-
posed to extract the colouring-substance, alizarin,
to separate it from the other matters found with
it in the root, to obtain it in the pure state and
in a form that allowed of the direct printing of
the stuffs, a much quicker and more artistic method
than the old dyeing process.

Nothing could be simpler than this problem, once
the solution was known; but how tremendously ob-
scure while it had still to be solved! I dare not
call to mind all the imagination and patience spent
upon endless endeavours which nothing, not even
the madness of them, discouraged. What mighty
meditations in the sombre church! What glowing
dreams, soon to be followed by sore disappoint-
ment when experiment spoke the last word and
upset the scaffolding of my plans! Stubborn as
the slave of old amassing a peculium for his en-
franchisement, I used to reply to the check of yes-
terday by the fresh attempt of to-morrow, often
as faulty as the others, sometimes the richer by an
improvement; and I went on indefatigably, for I,
too, cherished the indomitable ambition to set my-
self free.

191

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

Should I succeed? Perhaps so. I at last had
a satisfactory answer. I obtained, in a cheap and
practical fashion, the pure colouring-matter, con-
centrated in a small volume and excellent for both
printing and dyeing. One of my friends took up
my process on a large scale in his works; a few
calico-factories adopted the produce and expressed
themselves delighted with it. The future smiled
at last ; a pink rift opened in my grey sky. I should
possess the modest fortune without which I must
deny myself the pleasure of teaching in a university.
Freed of the torturing anxiety about my daily
bread, I should be able to live at ease among my
insects.1

To these delights of industrial chemistry,
the mistress of her problems and rich in fu-
ture promise, were added, by an additional
stroke of good fortune, the flattering con-
gratulations and encouragement of the Min-
ister Duruy and the Emperor Napoleon.2 It
seemed as though, after struggling long
against the tide, his frail vessel had a fair
wind astern; it seemed about to come into
port; surely at last his utmost desires were
about to be realised !

Once home amidst my family, I felt a mighty
load off my mind and a great joy in my heart,

1 Souvenirs, x., pp. 338-43 ; The Life of the Fly, chap.
xx., " Industrial Chemistry."

2 Cf. supra., p. 135.

192

The Professor: Avignon

where rang a peal of bells proclaiming the de-
lights of my approaching emancipation. Little by
little, the factory that was to set me free rose sky-
wards, full of promises. Yes, I should possess the
modest income which would crown my ambition
by allowing me to descant on animals and plants
in a university chair.

" Well, no," said Fate, " you shall not acquire
the freedman's peculium; you shall remain a slave,
dragging your chain behind you; your peal of bells
rings false ! "

Hardly was the factory in full swing, when a
piece of news was bruited, at first a vague rumour,
an echo of probabilities rather than certainties, and
then a positive statement leaving no room for doubt.
Chemistry had obtained the madder-dye by arti-
ficial means; thanks to a laboratory concoction, it
was utterly overthrowing the agriculture and indus-
tries of my district. This result, while destroying
my work and my hopes, did not surprise me un-
duly. I myself had toyed with the problem of
artificial alizarin; and I knew enough about it to
foresee that, in no very distant future, the product
of the chemist's retort would take the place of
the product of the fields.1

It was only a step from the Capitol to the
Tarpeian Rock. He who but now had dis-
covered Peru was about to feel more keenly
than ever the sharp pangs of poverty; he

1 Souvenirs, x., p. 353. The Life of the Fly, chap, xx.,
" Industrial Chemistry."

193

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

whom science and fortune had lately con-
spired to raise to one of the highest chairs
in the University was to be forced to descend
from the modest desk of a lycee professor;
he whom the friendship and admiration of
Duruy had dreamed, it is said, of promot-
ing to the high dignity of tutor to the Prince
Imperial * was now to be forbidden to teach
the schoolgirls of his own Provence \

For it was about this time that " he at-
tempted to found at Avignon a sort of sys-
tem of secondary education for young girls,"
and delivered, in the ancient abbey of Saint-
Martial, those famous free lectures which
remained so celebrated in the memory of the
generation of that period, and at which an
eager crowd thronged to hear him, among
the most assiduous members being Rouma-
nille, the friend of Mistral, who knew the
exquisite secret of weaving into his melo-
dies " the laughter of young girls and the
flowers of spring."

For no one could explain a fact better than
Fabre; no one could elucidate it so fully and
so clearly. No one could teach as he did,
so simply, so picturesquely, yet in so original
a fashion.

1 Revue scientifique, May 7, 1910, speech by M. Ed-
mond Perrier.

194

The Professor: Avignon

And he had the power of communicating
to his hearers his own conviction, his pro-
found faith, the sacred fire that inspired him,
the passion which he felt for all natural
things.

But there were sufficient reasons to set the
sectarians all agog and excite the rancour
of the envious, some regarding this great nov-
elty of placing the natural sciences within
reach of young girls as a heresy and even a
scandal, others finding it unsatisfactory that
this " irregular person, the child of his own
solitary studies, should fill, by his work, his
successes, and the magic of his teaching, a
place so apart and so disproportionate.
Their cavilling, their underhand cabals, their
secret manoeuvring won an easy triumph."
In what hateful and tragic fashion we must
let him tell us in his own words:

The first of these removals took place in 1870.
A little earlier, a minister who has left a lasting
memory in the university, that fine man Victor
Duruy,1 had instituted classes for the secondary
education of girls. This was the beginning, as far
as was then possible, of the burning question of

1Jean Victor Duruy (1811-1894), author of a number
of historical works, including a well-known Histoire des
Remains, and Minister of Public Instruction under Napo-
leon in. from 1863 to *869. Cf. The Life of the Fly,
chap. xx. — A. T. DE M.

195

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

to-day. I very gladly lent my humble aid to this
labour of light. I was put to teach physical and
natural science. I had faith, and was not sparing
of work, with the result that I rarely faced a more
attentive or interested audience. The days on
which the lessons fell were red-letter days, espe-
cially when the lesson was botany and the table
disappeared from view under the treasures of the
neighbouring conservatories.

That was going too far. In fact, you can see
how heinous my crime was: I taught those young
persons what air and water are ; whence the light-
ning comes and the thunder; by what device our
thoughts are transmitted across the seas and con-
tinents by means of a metal wire; why fire burns
and why we breathe; how a seed puts forth shoots
and how a flower blossoms: all eminently hateful
things in the eyes of some people, whose feeble
eyes are dazzled by the light of day.

The little lamp must be put out as quickly as
possible and measures taken to get rid of the
officious person who strove to keep it alight. The
scheme was darkly plotted with the old maids who
owned my house and who saw the abomination of
desolation in these new educational methods. I
had no written agreement to protect me. The
bailiff appeared with a notice on stamped paper.
It baldly informed me that I must move out within
four weeks from date, failing which the law would
turn my goods and chattels into the street. I had
hurriedly to provide myself with a dwelling. The
first house which we found happened to be at
I96

The Professor: Avignon

Orange. Thus was my exodus from Avignon ef-
fected.1

After this we understand why it was that
Fabre cried:

" It is all over; the downfall of my hopes
is complete!"

But no, beloved master ! All was not over.
The immortal work with which your name
is connected was as yet to be begun. This
ruin, this mortification, this grievous over-
throw of all your hopes in connection with
the University were even needed to lead you
back to the fields, to enable you to raise,
in all its amplitude and its exquisite original-
ity, the scientific edifice of which you may
say, with the ancient poet: Exegi monumen-
tum acre perennis.2

M. Edmond Perrier very judiciously re-
marked, in his speech at Serignan : " In Paris,
in a great city, you would have had great
difficulty in finding your beloved insects, and
entomology would have lost a great part of
those magnificent observations which are the
glory of French science."

So it was, in reality, advantageous, as re-
gards his destiny, that Fabre suffered, at this

1 Souvenirs, n., pp. izs-i26. The Mason Bees, chap, v.,
"The story of my Cats."

2 HORACE, Ode xxx., Bk. iii.

197

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

juncture of his history, this accumulation of
trials, so grievous to experience, yet so for-
tunate in their consequences that they remind
us of the sublime passage of the Gospel,
whose sayings regarding eternal life are often
rich in lessons for this our present life: '* He
that loses his life shall save it."

(End of the first volume in the French
edition.)

198

CHAPTER XIII

RETIREMENT: ORANGE

IT is commonly enough thought that a pro-
fessor on his vacations and a pensioned
official are very much the same — that both
art created and put into the world merely to
kill time and savour the delights of far niente.
Such was never Fabre's opinion. While he
loved nothing so well as his Thursdays and
vacations, this was because he then had more
freedom to devote himself to his favourite
studies. If he resigned himself readily to a
premature retirement, if he was even happy
to shake off the yoke of the lycee, this was
because he had quite definitely determined to
work more quietly and continuously; because
he hoped to increase the ardour and fertility
of his mind by a closer and more lasting in-
tercourse with the world of Nature.

At the same time he found himself com-
pelled to look to his pen for that assurance
of material life which his retorts had refused
him, and which his meagre professor's pen-
sion afforded but insufficiently. " What is
to be done now?" he cried, after the col-
199

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

lapse of his industrial hopes and professorial
ambitions. " Let us try another lever and
resume rolling the Sisyphean stone. Let us
seek to draw from the ink-pot what the mad-
der-vat and the Alma Mater refuses us.
Laboremus! "

Laboremusf That indeed is the fitting
motto for this period of his life, no less than
for the earlier part of it. For it was then
that he wrote the greater number of his nu-
merous handbooks, now classic, and it was
then that he began to write and to publish
his Souvenirs entomologiques, without ceas-
ing on that account his great life-work, the
passionate observation of the living world.

Still, it is not so much the man's work as
the man, and not so much the student as the
man himself, that we wish to evoke in this
chapter.

To live happily, we must live hidden from
sight, far from the troubles of the world,
exercising our minds and cultivating our tal-
ents at leisure. Such evidently was Fabre's
idea from the time of his departure from
Avignon; and it plainly reveals to us one of
the salient features of his moral physiog-
nomy.

But he could not have had the illusion that
in thus taking refuge from the tribulations
200

Retirement: Orange

of which the world is the source, he was plac-
ing himself beyond the reach of any trials.
Is it not written that the life of man upon
earth is a perpetual struggle against suffer-
ing? And if it were not for the cruel
wounds which it inflicts upon the poor hu-
man heart, we ought rather perhaps to bless
this law of our destiny; for it is one of the
qualities of human greatness, of the beauty
of the soul as of the power of the intellect,
that it does not fully reveal itself save un-
der the discipline and empire of suffering.

Among the moral qualities of Fabre as we
have been able to divine them there is one
which the vicissitudes of life revealed more
especially during this phase of his existence :
I mean his kindliness.

Fabre had the simplicity of the kindly man
as well as that of the truthful man. He,
who instinctively withdrew from the gaze and
the malice of men, cared nothing for their
smiles or their disdain when there was a
question of adding to his store of scientific
data or kindly actions, however trivial the
matter might be.

The following episode is illuminating.
Our entomologist was interested, as a scien-
tist, in discovering whether the bite of the
Black-bellied Tarantula, deadly to insects,
201

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

was dangerous to other animals, and to man,
or whether it was not, in the latter case, a
negligible accident. He therefore experi-
mented upon a bird:

I make a Tarantula bite the leg of a young, well-
fledged Sparrow, ready to leave the nest. A drop
of blood flows: the wounded spot is surrounded
by a reddish circle, changing to purple. The bird
almost immediately loses the use of its leg, which
drags, with the toes doubled in; it hops upon the
other. Apart from this, the patient does not seem
to trouble much about his hurt; his appetite is good.
My daughters feed him on flies, bread-crumb, apri-
cot-pulp. He is sure to get well, he will recover
his strength; the poor victim of the curiosity of
science will be restored to liberty. This is the
wish, the intention of us all. Twelve hours later,
the hope of a cure increases ; the invalid takes nour-
ishment readily; he clamours for it, if we keep him
waiting. But the leg still drags. I set this down
to a temporary paralysis which will soon disappear.
Two days after, he refuses his food. Wrapping
himself in his stoicism and his rumpled feathers,
the Sparrow hunches into a ball, now motionless,
now twitching. My girls take him in the hollow
of their hands and warm him with their breath.
The spasms become more frequent. A gasp pro-
claims that all is over. The bird is dead.

There was a certain coolness among us at the
evening meal. I read mute reproaches, because
2O2

Retirement: Orange

of my experiment, in the eyes of my home-circle;
I read an unspoken accusation of cruelty all around
me. The death of the unfortunate Sparrow had
saddened the whole family. I myself was not
without some remorse of conscience: the poor re-
sult achieved seemed to me too dearly bought. I
am not made of the stuff of those who, without
turning a hair, rip up live Dogs to find out nothing
in particular.1

Is there not something touching in the
simplicity of the father who, with such good
will, becomes a child with his children; and
in the compassionate kindness of the man
who cannot without grieving witness the
death of a Sparrow? Fabre indeed pos-
sessed in no common degree that quality
which, according to Saint Augustine, is the
foremost characteristic of spiritual beauty
and, according to the poet of the animals,
constitutes the essential nobility of the French
mind:

" La bonte, c'est le fond de tout ame franchise."
(Kindness, the base of every Frenchman's mind.)

It was, at all events, the basis of his own.
And we are conscious of a fundamental emo-
tion, an intimate reprobation, that ascends
from the depths of his being to oppose all
ideas of violence and hatred.

1 Souvenirs, II., pp. 202-203. The Life of the Spider,
chap, i., "The Black-bellied Tarantula."
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

It does not surprise us to see the serene
kindliness of our compatriot veiling itself in
dejection and becoming almost pugnacious
when confronted by the melancholy exploits
of force; for how could he remain unaffected
before the stupendous barbarism and iniquity
of 1870?

At the time of his retirement to Orange,
Fabre was already the father of five children :
Antonia, Aglae, Claire, Emile, and Jules,
who, in course of time, were joined by three
others, Paul, Anna, and Marie-Pauline.

It was not with Fabre as with some intel-
lectuals, whose thoughts and life remain al-
most strangers to the home which they estab-
lish one day as though in a moment of dis-
traction, and who divide their lives into two
parts — one being devoted to their profes-
sional labours and the other reserved for the
exigencies of family life.

Like the pages of his native country who
live surrounded by their wives and children,
sharing their tasks and breaking bread with
them, Fabre loved to make his family share
in his work as well as in his leisure. He too
was a worker in the fields, and was per-
suaded that, just as there can never be too
many hands at work to extract their wealth,
so there could never be too many eyes at
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Retirement: Orange

work contemplating their wonders. He
made all his children, little as well as big,
boys and girls, so many collaborators in his
researches, and he loved to scatter their
names about the pages of his books. And
it is not the least charm of the Souvenirs that
we meet in them, at every step, the father
hand in hand with his children. Passing to
and fro, like a refreshing breeze that blows
through the scientific aridities of the subject,
we feel a twofold current of sympathy flow-
ing from the father to his children and the
naturalist to his insects.

Incapable of living without either of them,
he found a way to devote himself to both,
and so closely that the bond between them
was truly one that held fast in life and death.
Aglae, Antonia, Claire, Emile, and Jules
were recruited in turn, and Fabre informs
us that their help was often of the greatest
value in his entomological researches. And
he liked to attach his children's names to
those of his insects and his discoveries.
Jules above all was distinguished by these en-
tomological honours, which a father's grati-
tude piously laid, with regretful tears, upon
his untimely grave.

Not content with dedicating to him the
first volume of his Souvenirs, Fabre again
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre
did homage to Jules in the second volume:

To MY SON JULES. — Beloved child, my zealous
collaborator in the study of insects, my perspicacious
assistant in the study of plants, it was for your
sake that I began this volume; I have continued
it for the sake of your memory, and I shall con-
tinue it in the bitterness of my mourning. Ah!
how hateful is death when it reaps the flower in all
the radiance of its blossoming! Your mother and
your sisters bring to your tomb wreaths gathered
in the rustic flower-bed that you delighted in. To
these wreaths, faded by a day's sunshine, I add this
book, which, I hope, will have a to-morrow. It
seems to me that it thus prolongs our common stud-
ies, fortified as I am by my indomitable faith in
a reawakening in the Beyond.1

When the separation from loved ones
wounds the heart so grievously and wrings
from the soul such accents of hope and faith,
we need seek no other standard to judge a
man's moral worth.

The spectacle of a man, thus moved by the
death of his dear ones, who yet welcomes his
own death with serenity, is admirable. Such
was the case with Fabre, as proved by the
following episode of the same date — i.e.
1879.

1 Souvenirs, H., p. i.

206

Retirement: Orange

I am living at Orange in the year 1879. My
house stands alone among the fields. . . .

After a hard winter, when the snow had lain
on the ground for a fortnight, I wanted once more
to look into the matter of my Halicti. I was in
bed with pneumonia and to all appearances at the
point of death. I had little or no pain, thank God,
but extreme difficulty in living. With the little
lucidity left to me, being able to do no other sort
of observing, I observed myself dying; I watched
with a certain interest the gradual falling to pieces
of my poor machinery. Were it not for the terror
of leaving my family, who were still young, I would
gladly have departed. The after-life must have
so many higher and fairer truths to teach us.

My hour had not yet come. When the little
lamps of thought began to emerge, all flickering,
from the dusk of unconsciousness, I wished to take
leave of the Hymenoptera, my fondest joy, and first
of all of my neighbour, the Halictus.1 My son
Emile took the spade and went and dug the frozen
ground. Not a male was found, of course; but
there were plenty of females, numbed with the cold
in their cells.

A few were brought for me to see, and, roused
from their torpor by the warmth of the room, they

1 The Halicti produce two generations each year: one,
in the spring, is the issue of mothers who, fecundated in
the autumn, have passed through the winter; the other,
produced in the summer, is the fruit of parthenogenesis,
that is, of procreation by the maternal virtualities alone.
Of the concourse of the two sexes only females are born;
parthenogenesis gives rise to both males and females.
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

began to wander about my bed, where I followed
them vaguely with my failing eyes.2

It is very true that, on leaving Orange,
Fabre still had " much to learn " from the
company of Hymenoptera and other insects
— the great period of his entomological ca-
reer had not yet begun — but the regret with
which he left Orange was soon dissipated
by the wealth of observations and the facili-
ties for study which his new home offered
him.

Living in retirement at Orange, on the
confines of the town, at the gate of the fields,
he was as yet only in sight of the promised
land. At Serignan, in the quiet obscurity of
quite a little village, in the very midst of
" the great museum of the fields," he was
truly in possession of the country of his
dreams; he had found his ideal abiding-place,
the spot which was in most perfect conform-
ity with his tastes and most favourable to his
genius.

1 Souvenirs, VIIL, pp. 144-160. The Bramble-Bees,
chap, xiv., " Parthenogenesis." It was only a later date,
by combining a series of successive observations which
were spread over a great length of years, that he was
able to define exactly the various modes of generation
employed by the Halicti, as described in the preceding
note.

208

CHAPTER XIV

THE HERMIT OF SERIGNAN (1879-1910)

OTARTING from Orange and crossing the
*-J Aygues, a torrent whose muddy waters are lost
in the Rhone, but whose bed is dried by the July and
August suns, leaving only a desert of pebbles, where
the Mason-bee builds her pretty turrets of rock-
work, we come presently to the Serignaise country;
an arid, stony tract, planted with vines and olives,
coloured a rusty red, or touched here and there
with almost the hue of blood ; and here and there
a grove of cypress makes a sombre blot. To the
north runs a long black line of hills, covered with
box and ilex and the giant heather of the south.
Far in the distance, to the east, the immense plain
is closed in by the wall of Saint-Amant and the
ridge of the Dentelle, behind which the lofty Ven-
toux rears its rocky, cloven bosom abruptly to the
clouds. At the end of a few miles of dusty road,
swept by the powerful breath of the mistral, we
suddenly reach a little village. It is a curious lit-
tle community, with its central street adorned by
a double row of plane-trees, its leaping fountains,
and its almost Italian air. The houses are lime-
washed, with flat roofs; and sometimes, at the side
of some small or decrepit dwelling, we see the un-
209

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

expected curves of a loggia. At a distance the
faqade of the church has the harmonious lines of
a little antique temple; close at hand is the grace-
ful campanile, an old octagonal tower surmounted
by a narrow mitre wrought in hammered iron, in
the midst of which are seen the black profiles of
the bells.

At the entrance of the little market-town, in a
solitary corner, in the centre of an enclosure of
lofty walls, which are taller than the crests of
the pines and cypresses, Fabre's dwelling is hidden
away. A pink house with green shutters, half-
hidden amid the sombre foliage, appears at the
end of an alley of lilacs, " which sway in the spring
under the weight of their balmy thyrsi." Before
the house are the shady plane-trees, where during
the burning hours of August the cicada of the flow-
ering ash, the deafening cacan, concealed beneath
the leaves, fills the hot atmosphere with its eager
cries, the only sound that disturbs the profound
silence of this solitude.

There, in this " hermit's retreat," as he himself
has defined it, the sage is voluntarily sequestered ;
a true saint of science, an ascetic living only on
fruits, vegetables, and a little wine; so in love with
retirement that even in the village he was for a
long time almost unknown, so careful was he to
go round instead of through it on his way to the
neighbouring mountain, where he would often spend
whole days alone with wild nature.

It is in this silent Theba'id, so far from the atmos-
phere of cities, the vain agitations and storms of
2IO

The Hermit of Serignan

the world, that his life has been passed, in un-
changing uniformity; and here he has been able
to pursue, with resolute labour and incredible pa-
tience, that prodigious series of marvellous observa-
tions which for nearly fifty years he has never
ceased to accumulate.

Francois Sicard, in his faultless medal and his
admirable bust, has succeeded with rare felicity in
reproducing for posterity this rugged, shaven face,
full of laborious years; a peasant face, stamped
with originality, under the wide felt hat of Prov-
ence; touched with geniality and benevolence, yet
reflecting a world of energy. Sicard has fixed for
ever this strange mask; the thin cheeks, ploughed
into deep furrows, the strained nose, the pendent
wrinkles of the throat, the thin, shrivelled lips,
with an indescribable fold of bitterness at the cor-
ners of the mouth. The hair, tossed back, falls
in fine curls over the ears, revealing a high, rounded
forehead, obstinate and full of thought. But what
chisel, what graver could reproduce the surprising
shrewdness of that gaze, eclipsed from time to
time by a convulsive tremor of the eyelids! What
Holbein, what Chardin could render the almost
extraordinary brilliance of those black eyes, those
dilated pupils — the eyes of a prophet, a seer; sin-
gularly wide and deeply set, as though gazing al-
ways upon the mystery of things, as though made
expressly to scrutinise Nature and decipher her enig-
mas? Above the orbits, two short, bristling eye-
brows seem set there to guide the vision ; one, by
dint of knitting itself above the magnifying-glass,
211

The Life of Jean Henri Fabrc

has retained an indelible fold of continual atten-
tion; the other, on the contrary, always updrawn,
has the look of defying the interlocutor, of fore-
seeing his objections, of waiting with an ever-ready
return-thrust.1

Is not the reader dazzled by the brilliant
colours, the warm tones of this picture? The
Provengal light shines upon his face, splen-
didly avenging us for the obscurity which had
too long withheld him from the admiration
of the world.

We could not choose a better guide to in-
troduce us to the home of the Hermit of
Serignan, and to give us access to his person.

In front of the house, beyond a low wall,
of a comfortable height to lean on, is the
most unexpected and improbable of gardens,
a kind of couderc — that is, a tract of poor,
stony ground, of which the naturalist has
made a sort of wild park, jealously protected
from the access of the profane, and literally
invaded by all sorts of plants and insects.
Fabre speaks of this retreat as follows:

This is what I wished for, hoc erat in votis: a
bit of land, oh, not so very large, but fenced in,
to avoid the drawbacks of a public way; an aban-
doned, barren, sun-scorched bit of land, favoured

1 Fabre, Poet of Science, G. V. Legros, pp. 108-115.
212

The Hermit of Serignan

by thistles and by Wasps and Bees. Here, without
distant expeditions that take up my time, without
tiring rambles that strain my nerves, I could con-
trive my plans of attack, lay my ambushes, and
watch their effects at every hour of the day. Hoc
erat in votis. Yes, this was my wish, my dream,
always cherished, always vanishing into the mists
of the future.

And it is no easy matter to acquire a laboratory
in the open fields, when harassed by a terrible
anxiety about one's daily bread. For forty years
have I fought, with steadfast courage, against the
paltry plagues of life; and the long-wished-for lab-
oratory has come at last. What it has cost me
in perseverance and relentless work I will not try
to say. It has come; and with it — a more serious
condition — perhaps a little leisure. I say perhaps,
for my leg is still hampered by a few links of the
convict's chain.

But this is not my business for the moment:
I want to speak of the bit of land long cherished
in my plans to form a laboratory of living ento-
mology, the bit of land which I have at last ob-
tained in the solitude of a little village. It is a
harmas, the name given, in this district,1 to an
untilled, pebbly expanse abandoned to the vege-
tation of the thyme. It is too poor to repay the
work of the plough; but the sheep passes there
in spring, when it has chanced to rain and a little
grass shoots Up*

!The country round Serignan, in Provence.— A. T.
DE M.

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

My harmas, however, because of its modicum of
red earth, swamped by a huge mass of stones, has
received a rough first attempt at cultivation: I
am told that vines once grew here. The three-
pronged fork is the only implement of husbandry
that can penetrate such a soil as this; and I am
sorry, for the primitive vegetation has disappeared.
No more thyme, no more lavender, no more clumps
of kermes-oak, the dwarf oak that forms forests
across which we step by lengthening our stride a
little. As these plants, especially the first two,
might be of use to me by offering the Bees and
Wasps a spoil to plunder, I am compelled to rein-
state them in the ground whence they were driven
by the fork.

What abounds without my mediation is the in-
vaders of any soil that is first dug up and then
left for a long time to its own resources. We
have, in the first rank, the couch-grass, that ex-
ecrable weed which three years of stubborn war-
fare have not succeeded in exterminating. Next,
in respect of number, come the centauries, grim-
looking one and all, bristling with prickles or starry
halberds. They are the yellow-flowered centaury,
the mountain centaury, the star-thistle and the
rough centaury: the first predominates. Here and
there, amid their inextricable confusion, stands,
like a chandelier with spreading orange flowers for
lights, the fierce Spanish oyster-plant, whose spikes
are strong as nails. Above it towers the Illyrian
cottage-thistle, whose straight and solitary stalk
soars to a height of three to six feet and ends in
214

The Hermit of Serignan

large pink tufts. Its armour hardly yields before
that of the oyster-plant. Nor must we forget the
lesser thistle tribe, with, first of all, the prickly
or " cruel " thistle, which is so well armed that
the plant-collector knows not where to grasp it;
next, the spear-thistle, with its ample foliage, each
of its nervures ending in a spear-head ; lastly, the
black knap-weed, which gathers itself into a spiky
knot. In among these, in long lines armed with
hooks, the shoots of the blue dewberry creep along
the ground. To visit the prickly thicket where the
Wasp goes foraging, you must wear boots that
come to mid-leg or else resign yourself to a smart-
ing in the calves. As long as the ground retains
some traces of the vernal rains, this rude vegeta-
tion does not lack a certain charm. But let the
droughs of summer come and we see but a desolate
waste, which the flame of a match would set ablaze
from one end to the other. Such is, or rather was,
when I took possession of it, the Eden of bliss
where I mean to live henceforth alone with the
insects. Forty years of desperate struggle have won
it for me.

Eden, I said ; and, from the point of view that
interests me, the expression is not out of place.
This accursed ground, which no one would have
had at a gift to sow with a pinch of turnip-seed,
is an earthly paradise for the Bees and the Wasps.
Its mighty growth of thistles and centauries draws
them all to me from everywhere around. Never,
in my insect-hunting memories, have I seen so large
a population at a single spot; all the trades have
215

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

made it their rallying-point. Here come hunters
of every kind of game, builders in clay, weavers
of cotton goods, collectors of pieces cut from a
leaf or the petals of a flower, architects in paste-
board, plasterers mixing mortar, carpenters boring
wood, miners digging underground galleries, work-
ers in goldbeater's skin, and many more.

If I tried to continue this record of the guests
of my thistles, it would muster almost the whole
of the honey-yielding tribe. A learned entomologist
of Bordeaux, Professor Perez, to whom I submit
the naming of my prizes, once asked me if I had
any special means of hunting, to send him so many
rarities and even novelties. The whole secret of
my hunting is reduced to my dense nursery of
thistles and centauries.1

What has become of the days when the
entomologist lived far from his beloved in-
sects, when he had to seek them in all direc-
tions, and even to chase them through fields
and vineyards, at the risk of alarming the
passers-by or having a crow to pluck with
the garde-champetre? To-day the insects are
always there, within reach of his eyes and
his hand. He has hardly to look for them
nowadays. They come to him, into his gar-
den and even into his house.

All Fabre's preferences are for the insect,

1 Souvenirs, n., pp. 1-8. The Life of the Fly, chap, i.,
"The Harmas."

2l6

The Hermit of Serignan

but he loves the other creatures also and
gladly gives them the rights of citizenship
in the harmas. He has a peculiar sympathy
for those that are misunderstood and scorned
by the vulgar.

In front of the house is a large pond, fed by
the aqueduct that supplies the village pumps with
water. Here, from half a mile and more around,
come the Frogs and Toads in the lovers' season.
In May, as soon as it is dark, the pond becomes
a deafening orchestra: it is impossible to talk at
table, impossible to sleep.

We have had a glimpse of the natural
wealth of the harmas, but we have no idea as
yet of some of the artificial improvements
which the inventive industry of the naturalist
has introduced.

I have [writes Fabre] wished for a few things
in my life, none of them capable of interfering
with the common weal. I have longed to possess
a pond, screened from the indiscretion of the
passers-by, close to my house, with clumps of rushes
and patches of duckweed. There, in my leisure
hours, in the shade of a willow, I should have
meditated upon aquatic life, a primitive life, easier
than our own, simpler in its affections and its
brutalities. I should have studied the eggs of the
Planorbis, a glairy nebula wherein foci of life are
217

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

condensed even as suns are condensed in the nebulae
of the heavens. I should have admired the nascent
creature that turns, slowly turns, in the orb of
its egg and describes a volute, the draft perhaps
of the future shell. No planet circles round its
centre of attraction with greater geometrical ac-
curacy.

I should have brought back a few ideas from
my frequent visits to the pond. Fate decided other-
wise: I was not to have my sheet of water. I have
tried the artificial pond, between four panes of
glass. A poor makeshift!

A louis has been overlooked in a corner of a
drawer. I can spend it without seriously jeopar-
dising the domestic balance. The blacksmith makes
me the framework of a cage out of a few iron
rods. The joiner, who is also a glazier on occa-
sion— for, in my village, you have to be a Jack-
of-all trades if you would make both ends meet —
sets the framework on a wooden base and sup-
plies it with a movable board as a lid ; he fixes
thick panes of glass in the four sides. Behold the
apparatus, complete, with a bottom of tarred sheet-
iron and a tap to let the water out. Many an
inquisitive caller has wondered what use I intend
to make of my little glass trough. The thing
creates a certain stir. Some insist that it is meant
to hold my supplies of oil and to take the place
of the receptacle in general use in our parts, the
urn dug out of a block of stone. What would
those utilitarians have thought of my crazy mind,
had they known that my costly gear would merely
2l8

The Hermit of Serignan

serve to let me watch some wretched animals kick-
ing about in the water?1

The delight of my earliest childhood, the pond,
is still a spectacle of which my old age can never
tire.

But even with all the visions which it
evokes, how far inferior is the " pond " of
Serignan to the pond of Saint-Leons, " the
pond with the little ducks on it, so rich in
illusions ! Such a pond is not met with twice
in a lifetime. One needs to be equipped with
one's first pair of breeches and one's earliest
ideas in order to have such luck! " 2

In spring, with the hawthorn in flower and the
Crickets at their concerts, a second wish often came
to me. Beside the road I light upon a dead Mole,
a Snake killed with a stone, victims both of human
folly. The two corpses, already decomposing, have
begun to smell. Whoso approaches with eyes that
do not see turns away his head and passes on.
The observer stops and lifts the remains with his
foot ; he looks. A world is swarming underneath ;
life is eagerly consuming the dead. Let us replace
matters as they were and leave death's artisans to
their task. They are engaged in a most deserv-
ing work.

1 Souvenirs, vii., pp. 270-273. The Life of the Fly, chap,
vii., "The Pond."

2 Ibid., vii., 260-270.

219

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

To know the habits of those creatures charged
with the disappearance of corpses, to see them busy
at their work of disintegration, to follow in detail
the process of transmutation that makes the ruins of
what has lived return apace into life's treasure-
house: these are things that long haunted my mind.
I regretfully left the Mole lying in the dust of
the road. I had to go, after a glance at the corpse
and its harvesters. It was not the place for philos-
ophising over a stench. What would people say
who passed and saw me!

I am now in a position to realise my second wish.
I have space, air, and quiet in the solitude of the
harmas. None will come here to trouble me, to
smile or to be shocked at my investigations. So
far, so good; but observe the irony of things: now
that I am rid of passers-by, I have to fear my
cats, those assiduous prowlers, who, finding my
preparations, will not fail to spoil and scatter them.
In anticipation of their misdeeds, I establish work-
shops in mid-air, whither none but genuine corrup-
tion-agents can come, flying on their wings. At
different points in the enclosure, I plant reeds, three
by three, which, tied at their free ends, form a
stable tripod. From each of these supports I hang,
at a man's height, an earthenware pan filled with
fine sand and pierced at the bottom with a hole
to allow the water to escape, if it should rain. I
garnish my apparatus with dead bodies. The Snake,
the Lizard, the Toad receive the preference, be-
cause of their bare skins, which enable me better
to follow the first attack and the work of the in-
220

The Hermit of Serignan

vaders. I ring the changes with furred and feath-
ered beasts. A few children of the neighbourhood,
allured by pennies, are my regular purveyors.
Throughout the good season they come running
triumphantly to my door, with a Snake\at the end
of a stick, or a Lizard in a cabbage-leaf. They
bring me the Rat caught in a trap, the Chicken
dead of the pip, the Mole slain by the gardener,
the Kitten killed by accident, the Rabbit poisoned
by some weed. The business proceeds to the mu-
tual satisfaction of sellers and buyer. No such
trade had ever been known before in the village,
nor ever will be again.1

Yet despite all his inventions Fabre had
no illusion as to their value. He well knew
that art cannot replace nature who said,
speaking of his glass-walled " pond," the
aquarium of which he seemed so proud: " A
poor makeshift, after all! " You may think
that he is reverting to his childhood and that
he will tell us again of the pond with its
ducklings. But he tells us something far
better :

" Not all our laboratory aquaria are worth
the print left in the clay by the shoe of a
mule, when a shower has filled the humble

1 Souvenirs, vm., 278-280, 255-295. The Life of the Fly,
chap, v., "The Greenbottles " ; The Mason-wasps, chap.
ix., " Insect Geometry " ; The Life of the Fly, chap, ix.,
" The Grey Flesh-Flies."

221

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

basin and life has peopled it with her mar-
vels." J

Who but he could have found such a pearl
in this clay?

1 Souvenirs, VIH., p. 228. The Life of the Fly, chap, ix.,
"The Greenbottles."

222

CHAPTER XV

THE HERMIT OF SERIGNAN (CONTINUED)

VI7HILE the domain of the landowner
** and manufacturer ended at the walls
of his field of pebbles and botanical garden,
that of the entomologist extended far be-
yond them, as far as his eyes could see and
his steps lead him.

For this reason a panoramic view of the
surrounding country is desirable.

With its peaceful plains, its gracious hills,
overgrown with strawberry-tree and ilex, and
the sublime mountain of Provence rising upon
the horizon, with its varied outlines and its
sun-illumined flanks, the Serignan landscape
gently forces itself upon the spectator's at-
tention. And if the spirit moved him, Fabre
had only to raise his head from his appa-
ratus to find all about him something to
soothe the eye and refresh the mind.

But however keen his feeling for the beau-
ties of Nature, it is not so much as artist or
dilettante but as the insect historiographer
that he appreciates the value of the land-
223

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

scape, and the wealth of the plains and hills
outspread before him.

From this point of view the whole sur-
roundings of his hermitage seem as though
created to continue and complete the harmas,
and the scientific pleasures which this affords
him.

The Gymnopleuri abound in the pebbly plains of
the neighbourhood, where the sheep pass amid the
lavender and thyme; and, should we wish to vary
the scene of observation, the mountain * is but a few
hundred steps away, with its tangle of arbutus,
rock-roses, and arborescent heather; with its sandy
spaces dear to the Bembeces; with its marly slopes
exploited by different Wasps and Bees.

We have already made mention of the
Aygues, and the time has come to pay it a
formal visit, as one of the favourite haunts
of the Serignan hermit:

The geographers define the Aygues as a water-
course. As an eye-witness I should call it rather
a stream of flat pebbles. Understand me: I do not
mean that the dry pebbles flow of their own accord ;
the feeble incline would not permit of such an
avalanche. But let it rain: then they will flow.
Then, from my home, which is more than a mile
distant, I hear the uproar of the clashing pebbles.

1 Mont Ventoux, an outlying summit of the Alps, 6270
feet high. Cf. Insect Life, chap. xiii. — A. T. DE M.
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The Hermit of Serignan

During the greater part of the year the Aygues
is a vast sheet of flat white stones; of the torrent
only the bed is left, a furrow of enormous width,
comparable to that of its mighty neighbour, the
Rhone. When persistent rains fall, when the snows
melt on the slopes of the Alps, the dry furrow
fills for a few days, complaining, overflowing to
a great distance, and displacing, amid the uproar,
its pebbly banks. Return a week later: the din
of the flood is succeeded by silence. The terrible
waters have disappeared, leaving on the banks, as
a trace of their brief passage, some wretched muddy
puddles quickly drunk up by the sun.

These sudden floods bring a thousand living
gleanings, swept off the flanks of the mountains.
The dry bed of the Aygues is a most curious botani-
cal garden. You may find there numbers of vege-
table species swept down from the higher regions,
some temporary, dying without offspring in a sea-
son, others permanent, adapting themselves to the
new climate. They come from far away from
a great height, these exiles; to pluck certain of
them in their actual home you would have to
climb Ventoux, passing the girdle of beeches and
reaching the height at which woody vegetation
ceases.

An insect which is sometimes found by chance
in the osier-beds of the Aygues, and is by itself
worth the journey, is the Apoderus of the hazel-
tree.

It tells us also many things, this little red
Weevil " from the heights rich in hazel-bushes "
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

and carried by the storm into the alder-thickets of
the Aygues.

It reminds us, too, of that other emigrant,
whose intimate acquaintance it has become.

And we are touched by the analogy between
its fate and his own. Fabre too was a child of
the heights rich in hazel-bushes.1 He too had
to leave the place of his birth, carried away by
the storm that tore him from the bosom of his
native mountains to bear him into the plains of
Provence. He too made the voyage with very poor
and very fragile equipment. For a long time,
terribly tossed by the waves, he was more than
once sorely bruised, but was yet not broken upon
the stones of the torrent; more than once he was
whirled suddenly round, but he nevertheless con-
tinued to pursue his aim, and finally he pierced the
husk and emerged from the shell, to give his activ-
ity free scope, as soon as he was able to free him-
self and establish his lot in a favourable environ-
ment.

However, contrary to what occurs in the case
of the Apoderus, the conditions of his life seem

1 Fabre lived the first years of his life (cf. chap, i.) on
the mountains of Lavaysse, which are almost of the birth
and bifurcation of the two ranges of the Levezon and
the Palanger. In the language of his country La Vaysse,
pronounced Lo Baisso, means " the hazel-bush."

An alien zoology too is represented in the osier-beds
of the Aygues, whose peace is never disturbed save in
freshets of exceptional duration. The wild spates of the
Aygues bring into our countryside and strand in the
osier-thickets the largest of our Snails, the glory of Bur-
gundy, Helix pramatias.

226

The Hermit of Serignan

to have been modified as profoundly as those of
his geographical habitat; they became perhaps even
further removed from those of his origin and his
forebears. We know what his paternal ancestors
were, and that they had no intimate knowledge
of the insect world. His mother's people were
equally regardless of and devoid of affection for
the little creatures that so absorbed and delighted
him.1

I did not know my maternal grandfather. This
venerable ancestor was, I have been told, a process-
server in one of the poorest parishes of the
Rouergue.2 He used to engross on stamped paper
in a primitive spelling. With his well-filled pen-
case and ink-horn, he went drawing out deeds up
hill and down dale, from one insolvent wretch to
another more insolvent still. Amid his atmosphere
of pettifoggery, this rudimentary scholar, waging
battle on life's acerbities, certainly paid no atten-
tion to the insect; at most, if he met it, he would
crush it under foot. The unknown animal, sus-
pected of evil-doing, deserved no further inquiry.
Grandmother, on her side, apart from her house-
keeping and her beads, knew still less about any-
thing. She looked on the alphabet as a set of
hieroglyphics only fit to spoil your sight for noth-
ing, unless you were scribbling on paper bearing

1 Souvenirs, vi., pp. 26-37, 4-2- The Life of the Fly,
chap, v., "Heredity."

2 A district of the province of Guienne, having Rodez
for its capital. The author's maternal grandfather,
Salgues by name, was the huissier, or, as we should say,
sheriff's officer, of Saint-Leons. — A. T. DE M.

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

the government stamp. Who in the world, in her
day among the small folk, dreamt of knowing how
to read and write? That luxury was reserved for
the attorney, who himself made but a sparing use
of it. The insect, I need hardly say, was the least
of her cares. If sometimes, when rinsing her salad
at the tap, she found a Caterpillar on the lettuce-
leaves, with a start of fright she would fling the
loathsome thing away, thus cutting short relations
reputed dangerous. In brief, to both my maternal
grandparents the insect was a creature of no in-
terest whatever and almost always a repulsive ob-
ject, which one dared not touch with the tip of
one's finger. Beyond a doubt, my taste for ani-
mals was not derived from them. Nor from either
of my own parents. My mother, who was quite
illiterate, having known no teacher but the bitter
experience of a harassed life, was the exact oppo-
site of what my tastes required for their develop-
ment. My peculiarity must seek its origin else-
where; that I will swear.

Nor shall I find it in my father. The excel-
lent man, who was hard-working and sturdily-built
like grandad, had been to school as a child. He
knew how to write, though he took the greatest
liberties with spelling; he knew how to read and
understood what he read, provided the reading
presented no more serious literary difficulties than
occurred in the stories in the almanack. He was
the first of his line to allow himself to be tempted
by the town, and he lived to regret it. Badly off,
having but little outlet for his industry, making
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The Hermit of Serignan

God knows what shifts to pick up a livelihood,1
he went through all the disappointments of the
countryman turned townsman. Persecuted by bad
luck, borne down by the burden for all his energy
and good will, he was far indeed from starting me
in entomology. He had other cares, cares more
direct and more serious. A good cuff or two when
he saw me pinning an insect to a cork was all the
encouragement that I received from him. Perhaps
he was right.

The conclusion is positive: there is nothing in
heredity to explain my taste for observation. You
may say that I do not go far enough back. Well,
what should I find beyond the grandparents where
my facts come to a stop? I know, partly. I
should find even more uncultured ancestors: sons
of the soil, ploughmen, sowers of rye, neat-herds;
one and all, by the very force of things, of not
the least account in the nice matters of obser-
vation.2

Between the parents and the son, what a
difference, what a change of life and of des-
tiny! Quantum mutatus ab illisf This, no
doubt, is the first thing to strike one; and
here, too, we have one of the most salient
features of the superiority of the human in-
telligence; this almost infinite possibility of

1 The author's father kept a cafe at Pierrelatte and
other small towns in the south of France. — A. T. DE M.

2 Souvenirs, vi., pp. 26-37, 42. The Life of the Fly,
chap, v., " Heredity."

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

transformation and progress, which forms
such a striking contrast with the rigid immu-
tability of instinct which is barely suscep-
tible of the slightest variation.

But for all this Fabre still bears the stamp
of the soil and of his ancestry, and I am
certain that the pages of the banks of the
Viaur, were they to descend to the banks of
the Aygues to visit the hermit of Serignan,
would recognise by more than one charac-
teristic the child of their native soil and their
own race. Under his wide felt hat, " in his
linen jacket " 1 and his heavy shoes, with a
face like theirs in its simplicity and good na-
ture, he would see almost one of them-
selves. And if, after entering his home, they
were to follow him into the enclosure, among
his crops and his appliances, if they were to
see him valiantly digging up the soil of the
harmas in search of fresh burrows of the
Scarabaei, or assembling a few thick planks
to contrive some new entomological appa-
ratus, or simply beating the brushwood over
his inverted umbrella in search of insects,
they would certainly be tempted to join in
and lend him a hand as though dealing with
a fellow-labourer.

Others may be surprised to find in the

1 Fabre had a sort of natural horror of luxury.
230

The Hermit of Serignan

scholar and scientist the features and the
manners of a peasant. Let us rather rejoice
to see that our eminent fellow-countryman
has never renounced the simplicity of his
origins, and take pleasure in noting how
closely the hermit of Serignan resembles the
urchin of Malaval.

We have attempted to show the hermit
of Serignan in his own setting, as he really
is. It remains for us to see how he glorifies
his solitude and ennobles his rustic life; how
the poor, simple peasant whom he has al-
ways been has done more for science than
the most elegantly dressed and profusely dec-
orated savants.

231

CHAPTER XVI

THE HERMIT OF SERIGNAN (CONTINUED)

OH, if you could now observe at your ease, in the
quiet of your study, with nothing to distract
your mind from your subject, far from the profane
wayfarer who, seeing you so busily occupied at a spot
where he sees nothing, will stop, overwhelm you
with queries, take you for some water-diviner, or
— a graver suspicion this — regard you as some ques-
tionable character searching for buried treasure and
discovering by means of incantations where the old
pots full of coin lie hidden! Should you still wear
a Christian aspect in his eyes, he will approach
you, look to see what you are looking at, and smile
in a manner that leaves no doubt as to his poor
opinion of people who spend their time in watch-
ing Flies. You will be lucky indeed if the trouble-
some visitor, with his tongue in his cheek, walks
off at last without disturbing things and without
repeating in his innocence the disaster brought about
by my two conscripts' boots.

Should your inexplicable doings not puzzle the
passer-by, they will be sure to puzzle the village
keeper, that uncompromising representative of the
law in the ploughed acres. He has long had his
eye on you. He has so often seen you wandering
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The Hermit of Serignan

about, like a lost soul, for no appreciable reason;
he has so often caught you rooting in the ground,
or, with infinite precautions, knocking down some
strip of wall in a sunken road, that in the end
he has come to look upon you with dark suspicion.
You are nothing to him but a gipsy, a tramp,
poultry-thief, a shady person, or, at the best, a mad-
man. Should you be carrying your botanising-case,
it will represent to him the poacher's ferret-cage;
and you would never get it out of his head that,
regardless of the game-laws and the rights of land-
lords, you are clearing the neighbouring warrens of
their rabbits. Take care. However thirsty you
may be, do not lay a finger on the nearest bunch
of grapes: the man with the municipal badge will
be there, delighted to have a case at last and so
to receive an explanation of your highly perplex-
ing behaviour.

I have never, I can safely say, committed any
such misdemeanour; and yet, one day, lying on the
sand, absorbed in the details of a Bembex's house-
hold, I suddenly heard beside me:

" In the name of the law, I arrest you! You
come along with me!"

It was the keeper of Les Angles, who, after
vainly waiting for an opportunity to catch me at
fault and being daily more anxious for an answer
to the riddle that was worrying him, at last re-
solved upon the brutal expedient of a summons.
I had to explain things. The poor man seemed
anything but convinced:

"Pooh!" he said. "Pooh! You will never
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

make me believe that you come here and roast in
the sun just to watch Flies. I shall keep an eye
on you, mark you! And, the first time I . . . !
However, that'll do for the present." 1

We must recall these adventures and tribu-
lations of his early days, and others of a
like kind which we have already recorded,
before we can understand the ease and the
delight experienced by Fabre when he was
able to take refuge within the walls of his
hermitage. There, at least, no one would
upset his plans, or distract him from his re-
searches and observations. He could station
himself where he pleased; he had room to
turn round. He had leisure to await the op-
portunity and seize upon it when it occurred.
He had nothing to think of now but himself
and his insects, and the latter always ended
by yielding to him and complying with all
his wishes. They surrendered themselves to
him as he to them. The days were over
when he had to divide himself, as it were;
when they kept him on the rack, maliciously
waiting to make overtures or intimate dis-
closures to him just as he had to leave them,
just as the class-bell rang or his holiday was
over. Now there was nothing like that. He

1 Souvenirs, I., pp. 134-136. The Hunting Wasps, chap,
viii., " The Languedocian Sphex."

234

The Hermit of Serignan

was theirs from morning to night, from night
to morning. He was always watching, al-
ways listening; his mind was always on the
alert where they were concerned. And the
veils were lifted, secrets were revealed, confi-
dences followed confidences, and a light was
shed upon points which had so far remained
impenetrable for a space of twenty or thirty
years.

In the laboratory of the harmas the day
begins early; as soon as nature awakens with
the first rays of sunlight, directly our hermit
hears the call of his vigilant life-companions.
This appeal is sometimes very early, when,
for example, he pushes complaisance to the
length of permitting the swallow to nest in
his study.

The room is closed for the night. The father
lies outside; the mother does the same when the
fledglings are a certain size. Then, from the earli-
est dawn, they are at the windows, greatly troubled
by the glass barricade. In order to open the win-
dow to the afflicted parents, I have to rise hur-
riedly with my eyelids still heavy with sleep.

But here is something to repay the valiant
naturalist for his early sacrifice: the delights
of " prayer in the chapel of the lilacs."

My hermitage contains an alley of lilacs, long
and wide. When May is here, when the two

235

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

rows of bushes, yielding beneath the burden of the
heads of blossom, bow themselves, forming pointed
arches, this walk becomes a chapel, in which the
most beautiful festival of the year is celebrated in
the enchanting morning sunlight; a quiet festival,
without flags flapping at the windows, without the
burning of gunpowder, without quarrels after drink-
ing; the festival of the simple, disturbed neither
by the raucous brass band of the dancers, nor by
the shouts of the crowd. . . . Vulgar delights of
maroons and libations, how far removed are you
from this solemnity!

I am one of the faithful in the chapel of the
lilacs. My prayer is not such as can be translated
by words; it is an intimate emotion that stirs in
me gently. Devoutly I make my stations from
one pillar of verdure to the next; step by step
I tell my observer's rosary.1

His " prayer is an Oh! of admiration," ad-
dressed to that creative Power who, in His
works, is always the geometer, according to
Plato's sublime saying: which is, that He
everywhere sheds order, light, and harmony.

The contemplation of the living world that
is stirring all about him gives him yet fur-
ther cause to marvel at the wisdom of Him
" who has made the plans on which life is

1 Souvenirs, p. 319, viii., p. x.

2 Ibid., p. 294.

236

The Hermit of Serignan

working." 1 It is easy to understand that,
for Fabre, the harmas assumed the colours
and the charms of Eden, and that his soli-
tary life therein was like a perpetual ecstasy.
For the rest, the scene changes as well as
the protagonists. After the harmas with its
breeding-cages and its customary inhabitants,
the Serignan country-side with its fortuitous
encounters. When the weather is propitious
the whole household sets out in a party. But
the heat is torrid and the time of day un-
suitable for walking. The naturalist sets out
none the less. Bull alone dares to brave with
his master the blazing heat of the sun. But
even he will not hold out to the end! The
goal is reached; but the most difficult thing
is not to walk the distance to the post of ob-
servation; it is to settle down and remain
there, under the scorching sun, waiting for
an opportunity that is often slow to occur.

Ah, how long the hours seem, spent motionless,
under a burning sun, at the foot of a declivity
which sends the heat of an oven beating down
upon you! Bull, my inseparable companion, has
retired some distance into the shade, under a clump
of evergreen oaks. He has found a layer of sand
whose depths still retain some traces of the last
shower. He digs himself a bed; and in the cool

1 Souvenirs, VI., p. 295.

2.37

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

furrow the sybarite stretches himself flat upon his
belly. Lolling his tongue and thrashing the boughs
with his tail, he keeps his soft, deep gaze fixed upon
me:

" What are you doing over there, you booby,
baking in the heat? Come here, under the fol-
iage; see how comfortable I am!

That is what I seem to read in my compan-
ion's eyes.

" Oh, my Dog, my friend," I should answer,
if you could only understand, " man is tormented
by a desire for knowledge, whereas your torments
are confined to a desire for bones and, from time
to time, a desire for your sweetheart! This,
notwithstanding our devoted friendship, creates a
certain difference between us, even though people
nowadays say that we are more or less related,
almost cousins. I feel the need to know things
and am content to bake in the heat; you feel no
such need and retire into the cool shade."

Yes, the hours drag when you lie waiting for
an insect that does not come.1

Yet from his expeditions into the country-
side, he almost always brings back some new
pensioner who serves to enrich his collection
of intimates admitted to the familiarities of
cohabitation. For not only the harmas but

1 Souvenirs, n., pp. 80, 81, 90, 91. The Mason Wasps,
chap, ii., " The Odyneri."

238

The Hermit of Serignan

his work-room becomes, by such chance
means, an entomological museum, in which
Flies, Scorpions, Caterpillars, Spiders, and
I know not what else live side by side and
in succession.

And when their turn is over, when the
first comers have to make room for new ar-
rivals, the master parts from his children
with regret, dismissing them with the most
kindly speeches, embellished by the most salu-
tary advice. Here, for example, is the little
speech which he makes to the Sphex:

You pretty Sphex-wasps hatched before my eyes,
brought up by my hand, ration by ration, on a bed
of sand in an old quill-box; you whose transforma-
tions I have followed step by step, starting up from
my sleep in alarm lest I should have missed the
moment when the nymph is bursting its swaddling-
bands or the wing leaving its case; you who have
taught me so much and learned nothing your-
selves: O my pretty Sphex-wasps, fly away without
fear of my tubes, my boxes, my bottles, or any
of my receptacles, through this warm sunlight be-
loved of the Cicadae; go, but beware of the Pray-
ing Mantis, who is plotting your ruin on the flow-
ering heads of the thistles, and mind the Lizard,
who is lying in wait for you on the sunny slopes;
go in peace, dig your burrows, stab your Crickets
scientifically and continue your kind, to procure

239

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

one day for others what you have given me: the
few moments of happiness in my life ! 1

One of the great joys of the Serignan her-
mit is, after supper, to isolate himself in the
restful quietude of the harmas, and there to
lend an attentive ear to the least vibrations
of sound from that little living world which
he can no longer see but can still hear. Noth-
ing will succeed in distracting him from this
entomological concert, which is one of his
delights. It makes him forget even the re-
joicings of the national festival which is be-
ing celebrated close at hand, and the splen-
dours of the starry sky that glitters above
his head.

This evening in the village they are celebrat-
ing the National Festival.2 While the little boys
and girls are hopping around a bonfire whose
gleams are reflected upon the church-steeple, while
the drum is banged to mark the ascent of each
rocket, I am sitting alone in a dark corner, in the
comparative coolness that prevails at nine o'clock,
harking to the concert of the festival of the fields,
the festival of the harvest, grander by far than
that which, at this moment, is being celebrated

1 Souvenirs, 1., p. 115. The Hunting Wasps, chap, vi.,
" The Larva and the Nymph."

2 The i4th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the
Bastille.— A. T. DE M.

240

The Hermit of Serignan

in the village square with gunpowder, lighted
torches, Chinese lanterns, and, above all, strong
drink. It has the simplicity of beauty and the
repose of strength.

It is late; and the Cicada? are silent. Glutted
with light and heat, they have indulged in sym-
phonies all the livelong day. It is now the time
of the nocturnal performers. Hard by the place
of slaughter, in the green bushes, a delicate ear
perceives the hum of the Grasshoppers. It is the
sort of noise that a spinning-wheel makes, a very
unobtrusive sound, a vague rustle of dry mem-
branes rubbed together. Above this dull bass there
rises, at intervals, a hurried, very shrill, almost
metallic clicking. There you have the air and
the recitative, interspersed with pauses. The rest
is the accompaniment.

Despite the assistance of a bass, it is a poor con-
cert, very poor indeed, though there are about
ten executants in my immediate vicinity. The tone
lacks intensity. My old tympanum is not always
capable of perceiving these subtleties of sound. The
little that reaches me is extremely sweet and most
appropriate to the calm of twilight. Just a little
more breadth in your bow-stroke, my dear Green
Grasshopper, and your technique would be better
than the hoarse Cicada's, whose name and repu-
tation you have been made to usurp in the coun-
tries of the north.

Still, you will never equal your neighbour, the
little bell-ringing Toad, who goes tinkling all
around, at the foot of the plane-trees, while you
241

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

click up above. He is the smallest of my batrachian
folk and the most venturesome in his expeditions.

How often, at nightfall, by the last glimmers
of daylight, have I not come upon him as I wan-
dered through my garden, hunting for ideas!
Something runs away, rolling over and over in
front of me. Is it a dead leaf blown along by
the wind? No, it is the pretty little Toad dis-
turbed in the midst of his pilgrimage. He hur-
riedly takes shelter under a stone, a clod of earth,
a tuft of grass, recovers from his excitement and
loses no time in picking up his liquid note.

On this evening of national merry-making there
are nearly a dozen of him tinkling one against
the other around me. Most of them are squatting
among the rows of flower-pots that form a sort of
lobby outside my house. Each has his own note,
always the same, lower in one case, higher in
another, a short, clear note, melodious and of ex-
quisite purity.

With their slow, rhythmical cadence, they seem
to be intoning litanies. Cluck, says one; click,
responds another, on a finer note; clock, adds a
third, the tenor of the band. And this is re-
peated indefinitely, like the bells of the village
pealing on a holiday: cluck, click, clock! cluck,
click, clock!

As a song this litany has neither head nor tail
to it; as a collection of pure sounds, it is delicious.1

1 Souvenirs, vi., pp. 196-203, 246-247. The Life of the
Grasshopper, chap, xiv., " The Green Grasshopper."
242

The Hermit of Serignan

" A little animated clay, capable of pleas-
ure and pain." To the scrutiny of this mira-
cle, with its infinity of forms, Fabre devotes
himself with touching sympathy and indefa-
tigable activity. He dedicates his day to it;
and at night he is still working. And in this
work, which seems to admit of no relaxa-
tion, he appears to know nothing of fatigue.
The love of his task upholds him and inspires
,him. When night has fallen, the observer
has still one resource left; he can listen for
the rustle or the song of the insect that has
so far escaped him in its coming and going.
We might, perhaps, have discovered the in-
sect, but he discovers something very differ-
ent. He makes a series of observations by
the light of a lantern in the brushwood or
before the apparatus in the harmas.

During the two hottest months, when the dark-
ness is profound and a little coolness follows the
furnace of the day, it is easy for me, with a lantern
in my hand, to watch that magnificent Spider, the
Epeira, in the manufacture of her web. She has
established herself at a height convenient for obser-
vation, between a row of cypress-trees and a thicket
of laurels, at the entrance of a path frequented
by nocturnal moths. The situation, it seems, is
a good one, for the Epeira does not change it all
243

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

the season, although she renews her net almost
every night.

When twilight is over, we punctually set out
to pay her a family visit. Old and young alike
are amazed by her gyrations in the midst of her
quivering cordage, and we marvel at her impeccable
geometry as her web takes shape. Gleaming in the
rays of the lantern, the fabric becomes a fairy rose-
window which seems to be woven of moon-
beams.

What a pity that we cannot wait for the
completion of a task so artistically begun !
But the hour is late, and we have still to
pay a visit to the Languedocian Scorpion, a
lover of darkness who has his own hours for
going abroad and rarely shows himself save
at night. Accordingly, it has taken time to
secure the last word of his history.

Rearing the Scorpion in a breeding-cage
tvill perhaps give better results, and in any
case will facilitate nocturnal observations
which alone may shed a little light on the ob-
scure habits of this unsociable hermit.

Interrogated by lantern-light, the Arach-
noid will indeed tell us more during a few
seconds of stealthy inspection than during
days and weeks of diurnal hunting. His
operations are, as a matter of fact, such as
call for closed doors, and wouU rightly
244

The Hermit of Serignan

shrink from displaying themselves in broad
daylight.

I have prepared beforehand the great glass cage,
peopled with twenty-five inhabitants, each with his
tile. Every night, from the middle of April, as
darkness falls, there is great animation in the glass
palace. By day seemingly to be deserted, it be-
comes a cheerful scene. Hardly is supper finished
when the whole household hastens thither. A lan-
tern hung upon the glazed window enables us
to follow what happens. This is our distraction
after the bustle of the day; it is like a visit to the
theatre. And in this theatre the plays are so inter-
esting that, as soon as the lantern is lit, all of us,
old and young, come to take our places in the
stalls; even down to Tom, the house-dog. Indif-
ferent to the affairs of the Scorpions, like the true
philosopher that he is, Tom lies at our feet and
sleeps, but only with one eye, the other being always
open upon his friends, the children.

Close to the glass panes, in the region discreetly
lit by the lantern, a numerous assembly has presently
gathered together. Some come from a distance;
they solemnly emerge from the shadow, and then,
suddenly, with a swift easy rush like a slide, they
join the crowd in the light. They investigate their
surroundings, fleeing precipitately at a touch as
though they had burned each other. Others, hav-
ing mixed with their comrades a little, suddenly
make off distractedly; they recover themselves in

245

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

the darkness and return. At moments there is a
violent tumult; a confused mass of swarming legs,
snapping pincers and coiling, clashing tails, threat-
ening or caressing, one does not quite know which.
All take part in the scuffle, large and small ; you
would think it a deadly battle, a general massacre,
but it is only a crazy game, like a scrimmage of
kittens. Presently the group disperses; they retire
for a little in all directions, without any sign of
a wound, without a sprain.1

What do you think of the saraband of
these horrible creatures, so full of mirth and
playfulness? Certainly it has its fascinating
side; but it is not equal to the scenes of be-
trothal and espousal.

Now the fugitives are once more assembled be-
neath the lantern. They pass to and fro, coming
and going, often meeting face to face. The one
in the greatest hurry walks over the other's back,
who allows him to do so without other protest
than a movement of the rump. The time has not
come for squabbling; at the most those encounter-
ing exchange the equivalent of a punch on the
head: that is, a thump of the tail.

We have something better here than entangled
legs and brandished tails; these are pauses of great
originality. Face to face, the claws drawn back,

1 Souvenirs, ix., pp. 94-97, 231, 299-310. The Life and
Love of the Insect, chaps, xvii., xviii.
246

The Hermit of Serignan

two combatants proceed to stand on their heads:
that is, supporting themselves only on the fore part
of the body, they raise the hinder part in the air,
so high that the thorax reveals the eight white
breathing-pockets. The tails, stretched out in a
straight line and raised into a vertical position,
rub together, slipping over each other, while their
extremities are bent into a hook and gently, over
and over again, knot themselves together and re-
lease themselves. Suddenly the amicable pyramid
falls to the ground and each scuttles off without
further ceremony.

What did these two wrestlers intend by their
original posture? Was it the grappling of two
rivals? It would seem not, so pacific was the
encounter. Subsequent observations tell me that
these are the allurements of the betrothal. To
declare his passion, the Scorpion stands on his
head.1

This reconnaissance and these first ad-
vances are followed by a sentimental prome-
nade.

Two Scorpions are face to face, their claws
outstretched, their hands clasped. Their tails
curved in graceful spirals, the couple wander with
measured steps the length of the window. The
male goes first, walking backwards, smoothly, en-

1 Souvenirs, ix., pp. 300-301. The Life and Love of the
Insect, chap. xvii.

24?

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

countering no resistance. The female follows obe-
diently, held by the tips of her claws, face to face
with her leader.

The promenade is interrupted by halts which
do not in any way modify the method of conjunc-
tion; it is resumed, now in this direction, now in
that, from one end of the enclosure to the other.
Nothing indicates the goal for which the strollers
are making. They loiter, musing and assuredly
exchanging glances. Thus in my village, on Sun-
day, after vespers, the young people stroll along
by the hedges, two by two.

Often they turn to one side. It is always the
male who decides the fresh direction to be followed.
Without releasing his companion's hands he grace-
fully turns about, placing himself side by side with
his companion. Then, for a moment, with his
tail lying flat, he caresses her back. The other
does not stir; she remains impassive. Sometimes
the two heads touch, bending a little to right
and left as if whispering into each other's ears.
What are they saying? How translate into words
their silent epithalamium?

Sometimes, too, their foreheads touch and the
two mouths meet with tender effusiveness. To de-
scribe these caresses the word " kisses " occurs to
the mind. One dare not employ it; for here is
neither head, face, lips, or cheeks. Truncated as
though by a stroke of the shears, the animal has
not even a snout. Where we should look for a
face, are two hideous jaws like a wall. And this
for the Scorpion is the height of beauty! With
248

The Hermit of Serignan

his fore legs, more delicate and agile than the rest,
he softly pats the dreadful mask, to his eyes an
exquisite face; voluptuously he nibbles at it, tickles
with his jaws the face touching his, as hideous
as his own. His tenderness and naivete are superb.
The dove, they say, invented the kiss. I know
of a precursor: the Scorpion. . . .

For a good hour I watch, unwearied, these in-
terminable wanderings to and fro. Part of the
household lends me the assistance of its eyes. De-
spite the lateness of the hour, our combined atten-
tion allows nothing essential to escape us. We ad-
mire the curious yoking of the couples which our
presence does not disturb in the least. We find
it almost graceful, and the expression is not exag-
gerated. Semi-translucid and gleaming in the light
of the lantern, the happy pair seem carved from
a block of yellow amber. With arms outstretched
and tails coiled into graceful spirals, they gently
stroll about with measured paces.

At last, about ten o'clock, a separation takes
place. The male has come across a potsherd whose
shelter appears to him suitable. He releases one
of his consort's hands, but only one, and still hold-
ing her firmly by the other he scratches with his
legs and sweeps with his tail. A grotto opens. He
enters it, and gradually, without violence, he draws
the patient female into it. Presently both have
disappeared. A little bank of sand closes their
dwelling. The couple are at home.

To disturb them would be a blunder; I should
249

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

intervene too soon, at an inopportune moment, if
I attempted to see at once what is happening down
there. The preliminaries will possibly last the
greater part of the night, and long vigils are be-
ginning to tell upon my eighty years. My legs
give way and sand trickles into my eyes. Let us
go to bed.

All night I dream of Scorpions. They run under
my blankets, they pass over my face, and I am
not greatly disturbed thereby, such remarkable
things do I see in my imagination ! 1

Incidentally we may remark that it is not
only in his imagination that insects frequent
his bed-clothes and caress his bare skin.
Here we come to an episode of the entomolo-
gist's private life.

When wearing his last costume, the Pine Pro-
cessionary caterpillar is very disagreeable to handle,
or even to observe at close quarters. I happened,
quite unexpectedly, to learn this more thoroughly
than I wished.

After unsuspectingly passing a whole morning
with my insects, stooping over them, magnifying-
glass in hand, to examine the working of their slits,
I found my forehead and eyelids suffering with red-
ness for twenty-four hours, and afflicted with an
itching even more painful and persistent than that

1 Souvenirs, ix., pp. 302-312. The Life and Love of the
Insect, chap. xxii.

250

The Hermit of Serignan

produced by the sting of a nettle. On seeing me
come down to dinner in this sad plight, with my
eyes reddened and swollen and my face unrecog-
nisable, the family anxiously inquired what had
happened to me, and were not reassured until I
told them of my mishap.

I unhesitatingly attribute my painful experience
to the red hairs ground to powder and collected
into flakes. My breath sought them out in the
open pockets and carried them to my face, which
was very near. The unthinking intervention of
my hands, which now and again sought to ease
the discomfort, merely aggravated the ill by spread-
ing the irritating dust.1

What would to another have been merely
an annoying accident without other bearing
than a commonplace lesson of prudence, be-
came for him the starting-point of a whole
series of instructive experiments.

Whatever his retirement has cost him, a
man so passionately devoted to animals must
bless the solitude of his village which enables
him to pass all his time in observing and
describing them. He congratulates himself,
indeed, upon his premature retirement, which
is dooming him to obscurity and impecuni-
osity for the rest of his days, at the same time

1 Souvenirs, vi., pp. 377-378. The Life of the Caterpillar,
chap, v., " The Moth."

251

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

allowing him wholly to give himself up to
entomology.

Ah, beloved village, so poor, so rustic, what a
happy inspiration was mine when I came to you
to demand of you a hermit's retreat, where I
could live in company with my dear insects and
thus trace in a worthy manner a few chapters of
their marvellous history ! 1

1 Souvenir t, in., p. 14.

252

CHAPTER XVII

THE COLLABORATORS

" A/T FABRE'S life-story is one of the fin-
1V1. est that could be related," said M.
Laffite lately, in a leading article in La
Nature. " It is simple. It is the humble and
tragic story of a persistent struggle between
two irreducible adversaries, on the one hand
the most precarious conditions of the strug-
gle for life, and on the other the power of
a vocation, as though riveted to his being,
which urged him despite everything to ob-
servation, study, and an understanding of the
world of living creatures, and in particular
of the insects." 1

Such, indeed, is one of the most striking
aspects of the great naturalist's life, and that
under which it appears more especially in its
early stages. But there is another aspect,
perhaps even more remarkable, under which
it was to reveal itself more particularly in
later years. Considering the first of these

126th March 1910,

253

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

aspects, we shudder at the violence of the
battles fought for the triumph of his ideal
and his vocation; considering the second, we
are filled with delighted admiration by the
fascinating and triumphant results achieved
by this ideal; I mean the marvels and allure-
ments of entomology.

Under the clear gaze of this observer of
genius, as at the bidding of a magic ring, a
whole world of tiny creatures rises and
moves before him, recalling the world of Lil-
liput, but still more marvellous, and more
fertile in dramatic incident of every kind.
" No romance of Jules Verne's or Fenimore
Cooper's is more exciting." *

Fabre is the first of writers to be con-
quered by the spectacle that unfolds itself
before his eyes; conquered in the whole of
his activities, in his imagination and sensi-
bility, and in his style, which quite naturally
adorns itself with the colours of his insects;
and no less naturally quivers and vibrates
with their emotions. Others before him had
studied the life of insects. " But no one
had put so much persevering perspicacity into
his study of them; no one above all had
spoken with such enthusiasm, with such po-
etical feeling, of the wonders of which it is

1E. Perrier, Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.
254

The Collaborators

full; no one had identified himself, as did
Fabre, with the creatures that he studied.

" The insect is no longer, for him, the low-
est of creatures, disdained by all; you would
think it was a person, a friend, whose
thoughts and emotions he divines, in whose
joys and sorrows he shares; he speaks to it,
reassures it, consoles it, advises it by voice
and gesture, and even helps it in its labours
when it seems at the end of its resources.
Of all these shared feelings, these anxieties
experienced in common, he retains a vivid
memory, and his ready, sympathetic, vibrant
pen runs across the page, halts, starts off
again, scratching the paper, uttering cries of
joy, or weeping, as it records the drama all
of whose vicissitudes he has experienced."

Not in vain are the insects " the children
of summer," and not in vain has he contem-
plated them " in the blessed season " under
the brilliance and the ardours of noon. 4< All
the sunshine of Provence is reflected by his
picturesque style; and it seems as though a
miraculous fairyland is unfolded before us,
whose scenery is all of the mother-of-pearl,
the gold, and the rainbow hues that Nature
has spread upon the aerial oars of the
Dragon-flies and the Bees, on the cuirass of
the Scarabsei, on the blazing fans that the

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

Butterflies wave voluptuously, intoxicating
themselves with the nectar of the flowers.

" Nothing in all this is far-fetched or de-
liberate. Henri Fabre has never plumed
himself on his literary achievements; it is his
real self, it is his whole mind that expresses
itself in his Souvenirs; the mind of an ardent
and passionately interested but precise ob-
server, a mind open to every emotion," * and
sensitive to all the impressions received from
all these little lives, that have no secrets from
him. This mind and these lives, intimately
and sincerely mingled, and ingenuously re-
flected in the pages of his books; this is the
secret of the most vital, the most picturesque,
and the least conventional style that can be
imagined.

Thus, it is that, aiding his imagination and
his sensibility, the insects themselves became
the entomologist's foremost collaborators.
Was not this the most graceful way of recog-
nising the services which he has rendered
them, and of repaying the love which he has
always borne them?

If they have received much, they have
also given much; so much, that we may well
ask who can have gained the most — they or
the entomologist — by this exchange of bene-

1 E. Perrier, he clt.

256

The Collaborators

fits? Were one of their number aware of
the merits of their partnership he would
doubtless consider that they have contributed
to his fame no less than he has magnified
theirs.

Conquered himself without reservation by
the unexpected beauties of entomology, Fa-
bre was fortunate enough to see a like fas-
cination exerting itself, as a result of his
teaching and example, in those about him, his
neighbours and his friends, just as it now
exerts itself through his books upon all his
readers.

When we attempted discreetly to lift the
veil of his first retirement from Orange,
which seemed to us peculiarly characteristic
of his private life, we had occasion to note
the eminently domestic nature of his life and
work, and the assiduous collaboration in the
common task of the first-born of his children.
We have seen Antonia, Claire, Jules and
Emile x rivalling one another in their eager-
ness to assist in their father's observations,
and this charming devotion outlived the
youthful ardour of the early springtide of
life.

Sometimes, too, the children anticipate

1 Souvenirs, I., pp. 304-306, 320; II., pp. 112, 130, 131 ; ill.,
p. 16; iv., pp. 142, 167, 183; vi., p. 15; viii., p. 159.
257

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

their father's entomological desires. For
example, his son Emile sends him from the
neighbourhood of Marseilles a nest of resin-
working Hymenoptera.1 His daughter Claire
sends him, from another part of Provence,
an entomological document of such value
that it " reawakened all the enthusiasm of his
early years." It related to one of his fa-
vourite insects, another Hymenopteron, the
Nest-building Odynerus.

It was the end of February. The weather was
mild ; the sun was kind. Setting out in a family
party, with food for the children, apples, and a
piece of a loaf in the basket, we were going to see
the almond-trees in flower. When it was time for
lunch we halted under the great oak-trees, when
Anna, the youngest of the household, always on
the look-out for small creatures with her new, six-
year-old eyes, called to me, at a few paces' dis-
tance from our party. " An animal," she said,
"two, three, four — and pretty ones! Come and
see, papa, come and see ! " 2

This was one of the rarest discoveries: a
dozen specimens of the Pearly Trox, which
were making a meal off a little rabbit's down
which some fox's stomach had been unable

1 Souvenirs, IV., pp. 167-168, 182-183. The Mason
Wasps, chap, viii., " The Nest-building Odynerus."

^Ibid., vi., pp. 4, 118-119, 249, 383; VIII., p. 295; X.,
pp. 15, 86, 112, etc.

258

The Collaborators

to exploit. " There is every sort of taste
in this world, so that nothing shall be
wasted! "

And not once or twice, but every moment
almost, little Paul,1 Marie Pauline,2 and
Anna enliven the narrative by their delight-
ful appearances and their inventive activity.
Little Paul above all is an auxiliary of the
highest value, who deserves to be introduced
to the reader as an acknowledged collabo-
rator :

I speak of my son Paul, a little chap of seven.
My assiduous companion on my hunting expedi-
tions, he knows better than any one of his age the
secrets of the Cicada, the Locust, the Cricket, and
especially the Dung-beetle, his great delight.
Twenty paces away, his sharp eyes will distinguish
the real mound that marks a burrow from casual
heaps of earth ; his delicate ears catch the Grass-
hopper's faint stridulation, which to me remains
silent. He lends me his sight and hearing; and
I, in exchange, present him with ideas, which he
receives attentively, raising wide, blue, questioning
eyes to mine.

Little Paul's exploits are innumerable, and
nothing deters him. " He will gather hand-

1 Souvenirs, I., p. 246; VI., p. 249; vm., p. 3; x., p.
n, etc.

* Ibid., vn., p. 29; vm., pp. 5, 272; x., pp. in, 254, etc.
For Lucie, bis grand-daughter, aged six, see n., p. 149.
259

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

fuls of the most repulsive caterpillars with
no more apprehension than if he were picking
a bunch of violets." Several times a day he
scrupulously inspects the under sides of the
dead moles placed for purposes of observa-
tion in the harmas, takes note of the labours
of the Necrophori, and, without more ado,
seizes upon the fugitives and returns them to
their workshop. He alone of the household
ventures to lend his assistance in such a dis-
gusting task.

Little Paul is always equal to the circum-
stances. If he is cool he is no less enthusi-
astic, but it is a well-directed enthusiasm.
For proof I need only cite the night of the
Great Peacock, the honour of which was due
almost wholly to little Paul.

It was a " memorable night," the night of
the Great Peacock.

Who does not know the magnificent Moth, the
largest in Europe, clad in maroon velvet with a
necktie of white fur? The wings, with their
sprinkling of grey and brown, crossed by a faint
zigzag and edged with smoky white, have in the
centre a round patch, a great eye with a black pu-
pil and a variegated iris containing successive black,
white, chestnut, and purple arcs.

Well, on the morning of the 6th of May, a fe-
male emerges from her cocoon in my presence, on
260

The Collaborators

the table of my insect laboratory. I forthwith
cloister her, still damp with the humours of the
hatching, under a wire-gauze bell-jar. For the
rest, I cherish no particular plans. I incarcerate
her from mere habit, the habit of the observer al-
ways on the look-out for what may happen.

It was a lucky thought. At nine o'clock in the
evening, just as the household is going to bed, there
is a great stir in the room next to mine. Little
Paul, half-undressed, is rushing about, jumping
and stamping, knocking the chairs over like a mad
thing. 1 hear him call me:

"Come quick!" he screams. "Come and see
these Moths, big as birds! The room is full of
them! "

I hurry in. There is enough to justify the
child's enthusiastic and hyperbolical exclamations,
an invasion as yet unprecedented in our house, a
raid of giant Moths. Four are already caught
and lodged in a bird-cage. Others, more numer-
ous, are fluttering on the ceiling.

At this sight, the prisoner of the morning is re-
called to my mind.

" Put on your things, laddie," I say to my son.
" Leave your cage and come with me. We shall
see something interesting.-"

We run downstairs to go to my study, which
occupies the right wing of the house. In the
kitchen I find the servant, who is also bewildered
by what is happening and stands flicking her apron
at great Moths whom she took at first for Bats.

The Great Peacock, it would seem, has taken
26l

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

possession of pretty well every part of the house.
What will it be around my prisoner, the cause of
this incursion? Luckily, one of the two windows
of the study had been left open. The approach
is not blocked.

We enter the room, candle in hand. What we
see is unforgettable. With a soft flick-flack the
great Moths fly around the bell-jar, alight, set
off again, come back, fly up to the ceiling and
down. They rush at the candle, putting it out with
a stroke of their wings; they descend on our shoul-
ders, clinging to our clothes, grazing our faces.
The scene suggests a wizard's cave, with its whirl
of Bats. Little Paul holds my hand tighter than
usual, to keep up his courage.

How many of them are there? About a score.
Add to these the number that have strayed into
the kitchen, the nursery, and the other rooms of
the house; and the total of those who have arrived
from the outside cannot fall far short of forty.
As I said, it was a memorable evening, this Great
Peacock evening. Coming from every direction
and apprised I know not how, here are forty lovers
eager to pay their respects to the marriageable
bride born that morning amid the mysteries of my
study.1

How could the news of the joyful event
have reached them? No doubt by some mys-

1 Souvenirs, vn., pp. 139-41. The Life of the Cater-
pillar, chap, xi., " The Great Peacock " ; also Social Life
in the Insect World, chap. xiv.
262

The Collaborators

terious wireless telegraphy which has not yet
found its Branly.

A few days later the miracle was repeated
before the wondering eyes of the naturalist
and his faithful acolyte, by another moth,
which in this case celebrated its nuptials by
daylight in the bright sunshine.

Let us hasten to say that the entomological
zeal of this little moth-hunter did not fade
with the feverish activity of the very young.
As we see him in 1897, at the age of seven,
so we find him at fifteen in 1906. The im-
portance and value of his services had only
increased as his capacities increased, and as
the vigour and muscular activity of his be-
loved father diminished. He lent him his
limbs for excursions by day and by night.

What will he not do to please his father?
As eagerly as he lends him his legs on his
long expeditions, he lends him his arms for
all the tasks that are forbidden his eighty
years: for example, the excavation of the
deep galleries of certain burrowing insects.

The rest of the family, including the mother,
being no less zealous, commonly accompanies us.
Their eyes are none too many when the trench
grows deep and the tiny details uncovered by the
spade have to be scanned from a distance. What
one does not see, another does. " Huber, having
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

grown blind, studied bees through the meditation
of a sharp-sighted and devoted servant. I am bet-
ter off than the great Swiss naturalist. My own
sight, which is still pretty good, although a good
deal fatigued, is assisted by the sharp-sighted eyes
of my whole family. If I am still able to pursue
my investigations I owe it to them; let me thank
them duly!"1

This man must be something of a sorcerer,
and his science must have something of magic
in it, thus to mobilise his wife and children
around the burrow of an insect; to keep them
there a whole morning without recking of
the heat and fatigue, and to bring them to
their hands and knees before the apparition
of a Dung-beetle.

This magic power of entomology, or let
us rather say this demoniacal proselytism of
the entomologist in favour of his beloved
science, was exerted not only upon his family,
but upon all persons liable to be subjected
to his influence or capable of serving his
projects.

It was upon children that he fixed his
choice in the first place. Fabre had always
made children so welcome, had always treat-
ed them so graciously, that he was assured
beforehand of their enthusiastic support of

1 Souvenirs, x., p. in.

264

The Collaborators

his proposals, even if he was not forestalled
by their offers of service. Allured by the coin
or the slice of bread and jam, or the sugar-
plums, and also, we may say, stimulated by
the evident good faith of the master, and
the delightful drollery o-f his enterprises, all
the juvenile unemployed of Serignan vie with
one another as purveyors to the entomologi-
cal laboratory. They zealously keep the lar-
der of the Scarabasi supplied, without neg-
lecting that of the Sexton-beetles and tutti
quanti. Thanks to them, not a creature in
the entomological laboratory goes hungry.
The most difficult to provide for have al-
ways a well-spread table, although this is
not always easy to ensure. One has to al-
low for the thoughtlessness of children and
the hazards of the chase.

But in spite of their heedlessness, and be-
cause of their very ingenuousness, there are
connections in which the child is an incom-
parable helper, difficult or even impossible
to replace. This Fabre was often to prove.

To continue an investigation into the ol-
factory faculties of insects a moth is re-
quired which is rather rare and difficult to
capture. Can he obtain this moth?

Yes, I shall find him; indeed I have him al-
ready. A little chap of seven, with a wide-awake
265

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

face that doesn't get washed every day, bare feet
and a pair of tattered breeches held up by a bit
of string, a boy who comes regularly to supply
the house with turnips and tomatoes, arrives one
morning carrying his basket of vegetables. After
the few sous due to his mother for the greens
have been counted one by one into his hand, he
produces from his pocket something which he found
the day before, beside a hedge, while picking grass
for the rabbits:

"And what about this?" he asks, holding the
thing out to me. "What about this? Will you
have it?"

" Yes, certainly, I'll have it. Try and find me
some more, as many as you can, and I'll promise
you plenty of rides on the roundabout on Sun-
day. Meanwhile, my lad, here's a penny for you.
Don't make a mistake when you give in your ac-
counts; put it somewhere where you won't mix it
up with the turnip-money." *

The precious discovery was none other
than the cocoon from which would presently
emerge the desired Moth, vainly sought after
during twenty years' residence in Serignan.

Of all children Fabre must have had a
weakness for the most rustic specimens; for
those who, by virtue of their situation and
by inclination, lived more nearly in contact

1 Souvenirs, VH, 360.

266

The Collaborators

with Nature and the animal creation. If
they are ever so little wide-awake, they are at
once, for him, friends whose society he seeks
and helpers whose assistance he appreciates.
Such is the " young shepherd, a friend of the
household," who is without a peer in catch-
ing the pill-rolling beetles,1 so greatly does he
excel in profiting by the truly exceptional ad-
vantages which the pastoral calling offers
from this point of view.

In such company insect-hunting is so en-
gaging and profitable that our naturalist de-
cides to accompany him. Among these mem-
orable mornings there is one which deserves
particular mention, for it was truly a his-
toric occasion:

The young shepherd who had been told in his
spare time to watch the doings of the Sacred Beetle
came to me in high spirits, one Sunday in the lat-
ter part of June, to say that he thought the time
had come to begin our investigations. He had de-
tected the insect issuing from the ground, had dug
at the spot where it made its appearance, and had
found, at no great depth, the queer thing which he
was bringing me.

Queer it was, and calculated to upset the little
that I thought I knew. In shape it was exactly
like a tiny pear that had lost all its fresh colour

1 Souvenirs, v., pp. 43-44. The Sacred Beetle and
Others, chap, iv., "The Sacred Beetle: The Pear."
267

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and turned brown in rotting. What could this
curious object be, this pretty plaything that seemed
to have come from a turner's workshop? Was it
made by human hands? Was it a model of the
fruit of the pear-tree intended for some children's
museum? One would say so.

The shepherd was at his post by daybreak. I
joined him on some slopes that had been lately
cleared of their trees, where the hot summer sun,
which strikes with such force on the back of one's
neck, could not reach us for two or three hours.
In the cool morning air, with the sheep browsing
under Sultan's care, the two of us started on our
search.

A Sacred Beetle's burrow is soon found : you can
tell it by the fresh little mound of earth above it.
With a vigorous turn of the wrist, my companion
digs away with the little pocket-trowel which I
have lent him. Incorrigible earthscraper that I
am, I seldom set forth without this light but serv-
iceable tool. While he digs I lie down, the better
to see the arrangement and furniture of the cellar
which we are unearthing, and I am all eyes. The
shepherd uses the trowel as a lever and, with his
other hand, holds back and pushes aside the soil.

Here we are! A cave opens out, and, in the
moist warmth of the yawning vault, I see a splen-
did pear lying full-length upon the ground. No, I
shall not soon forget this first revelation of the
Scarab's maternal masterpiece. My excitement
could have been no greater had I been an arch-
a?ologist digging among the ancient relics of Egypt
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and lighting upon the sacred insect of the dead,
carved in emerald, in some Pharaonic crypt. O in-
effable moment, when truth suddenly shines forth!
What other joys can compare with that holy rap-
ture! The shepherd was in the seventh heaven;
he laughed in response to my smile and was happy
in my gladness.1

There was truly good reason for the natu-
ralist and his young friend to exult. Henri
Fabre had just discovered what he had
vainly been seeking for more than thirty
years. He now knew the secret of the Sa-
cred Beetle's nest; he knew that the loaf
of the future nursling was not in the least
like that which the insect rolls along the
ground for its own use. He was now in a
position to correct the error of centuries
which he himself had accepted on the word
of the masters. And thanks to whom?
Thanks to a shepherd barely " brightened by
a little reading " who had acted as his as-
sistant. The poet was indeed right who
said:

" On a souvent besoin d'un plus petit que soi."
(Of those less than ourselves we oft have need.)

So much the worse for the proud who

1 Souvenirs, v., pp. 27-29. The Sacred Beetle and
Others, chap, i., "The Sacred Beetle."
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refuse to realise this ! Fabre was not of their
number; and more than once it was greatly
to his advantage that he was not.

In the choice of his collaborators, then,
Fabre addressed himself by preference to
children, for he loved their perspicacity, and
above all " the naive curiosity so like his
own."

But he would also solicit the help of the
adult members of his entourage, if by their
situation, their character, their good nature,
or their mental temper he judged them ca-
pable of understanding him or, at all events,
of giving him information and assisting him
in his labours.

The gardener, the butcher, the farmers,
the house-wives, the schoolmasters, the car-
penter, the truffle-hunter, and I know not
whom besides, were all in turn called upon
to lend a hand, which they did with the best
grace in the world, each according to his
means and his speciality.

It is amusing to see the worthy villagers
of Serignan wondering at the naturalist's
questions, and ostensibly flattering them-
selves that they know more than he does
of worm-eaten vegetables. On the other
hand, they often consult him, thereby mak-
ing amends and affording a practical recog-
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The Collaborators

nition of " his knowledge concerning plants
and little creatures."

A late frost came during the night, withering
the leaf-buds of the mulberry-trees just as the first
leaves were unfolding.

On the following day there was a great commo-
tion in the neighbouring farm-houses; the silk-
worms were hatched, and suddenly there was no
food for them. They must wait until the sun re-
paired the disaster. But what were they to do to
keep the famished newly-born caterpillars alive for
a few days? They knew me as an expert in the
matter of plants; my cross-country harvesting ex-
peditions had won me the reputation of a medical
herbalist. With the flower of the poppy I pre-
pared an elixir which strengthened the sight; with
borage I made a syrup sovereign against whoop-
ing-cough; I distilled camomile, I extracted the
essence of wintergreen. In short, my botany had
given me the reputation of a quack-salver. That
was something, after all. . . .

The housewives came seeking me from all direc-
tions; with tears in their eyes they explained how
matters stood. What could they give their grubs
while they were waiting for the mulberry to leaf
again? A serious affair this, well deserving of
commiseration. One was counting on her litter
to buy a roll of linen for her daughter who was
about to get married ; another confided to me her
plan of buying a pig, which she would fatten for
the following winter; all deplored the handful of
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five-franc pieces, which, placed at the bottom of
the secret hiding-place in the wardrobe, in an old
stocking, would have afforded relief in difficult
times. Full of their woes, they unfolded before
my eyes a scrap of flannel on which the little crea-
tures were swarming:

" Regardas, Moussu; venoun espeli, et ren per
lour douna! Ah! pecdire! "

Poor people, what a hard life is yours: honour-
able above all, but of all the most uncertain ! You
exhaust yourselves with labour, and when you are
almost within sight of its reward a few hours of a
cold night, which has come upon you suddenly,
have destroyed the harvest. To help these afflicted
women would, it seemed to me, be a very difficult
task. However, I tried, guided by botany, which
recommended me to offer, as a substitute for the
mulberry, the plants of related families: the elm,
the nettle-tree, the nettle, the pellitory. Their
budding leaves, chopped small, were offered to the
silkworms. Other experiments, much less logical,
were tried according to individual inspiration.
None of them succeeded.1 One and all, the newly-
born larvae starved to death. My fame as a quack
must have suffered somewhat from this failure.
But was it really my fault? No, it was the silk-

1 It is exceedingly curious that neither Fabre nor the
silk-growers knew what every English schoolboy knows
sc well — that silkworms thrive upon lettuce leaves, the
ordinary substitute, in England, for the mulberry-leaf.
Botany, of course, would not suggest such a substitute. —
B. M.

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worm's, too faithful to its mulberry-leaf. . . . Lar-
vae that live on a vegetable diet will not by any
means lend themselves to a change of food. Each
has its plant or group of plants, apart from which
nothing is acceptable.1

Science as this great naturalist understands
it is amiable and by no means pedantic; full
of sympathy with the humble, since he him-
self has never ceased to be one of them, he
does not disdain to consider their least pre-
occupations, and to become, by turns, their
master and their disciple.

1 Souvenirs, ill., pp. 297-299.

273

CHAPTER XVIII

THE COLLABORATORS: (CONTINUED)

T all the naturalist's experiments are
dedicated to practical folk; some are

reserved rather for the intellectual. Let us

proceed to the facts:

To-day is Shrove Tuesday, a reminiscence of the
ancient Saturnalia. I am meditating, on this occa-
sion, a fantastic dish which would have delighted
the gourmets of Rome. . . .

There will be eight of us; first of all my family,
and then two friends, probably the only persons
in the village before whom I could permit myself
such eccentricities of diet without jocular com-
ment upon what would be regarded as a depraved
mania.

One of these is the schoolmaster. Since he per-
mits it and does not fear the comments of the fool-
ish, if by chance the secret of our feast should be
divulged, we will call him by his name, Jullian. A
man of broad views and reared upon science, his
mind is open to truth of every kind.

The second, Marius Guigne, is a blind man
who, a carpenter by profession, handles his plane
and saw in the blackest darkness with the same
274

The Collaborators

sureness of hand as that of a skilful-sighted person
in broad daylight. He lost his sight in his youth,
after he had known the joys of light and the won-
ders of colour. As a compensation for perpetual
darkness he has acquired a gentle philosophy, al-
ways smiling; an ardent desire to fill, as far as
.possible, the gaps in his meagre primary educa-
tion; a sensitiveness of hearing able to seize the
subtle delicacies of music; and a fineness of touch
most extraordinary in fingers calloused by the la-
bours of the workshop. During our conversations,
if he wishes to be informed as to this or that
geometrical property, he holds out his widely-
opened hand. This is our blackboard. With the
tip of my forefinger, I trace on it the figure to be
constructed; accompanying my light touches with
a brief explanation. This is enough; the idea is
grasped, and the saw, plane, and lathe will trans-
late it into reality.

On Sunday afternoons, in winter especially, when
three logs flaming on the hearth form a delicious
contrast to the brutalities of the Mistral, they meet
in my house. The three of us form the village
Athenaeum, the Rural Institute, where we speak
of everything except hateful politics. ... At such
a meeting, the delight of my solitude, to-day's din-
ner was devised. The special dish consists of the
cossus, a delicacy of great renown in ancient times.

When he had eaten a sufficient number of na-
tions, the Roman, brutalised by excess of luxury,
began to eat worms. Pliny tells us: " Romanis in
hoc luxuria esse coep'it, preegrandesque roborurn
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

vermes delicatiore sunt in cibo : Cossos vacant."
(The Romans have reached such a degree of lux-
ury at the table that they esteem as delicious tit-bits
the great worm from the oak-tree known as Cos-
sus.)

I do not know with what sauce the Cossus was
eaten in the days of the Csesars, the Apicius of the
period having left us no information on this point.
Ortolans are roasted on a spit; it would be profan-
ing them to add the relish of complicated prepara-
tion. Let us proceed in the same manner with the
Cossus, these Ortolans of entomology. Spitted in
rows, they are exposed on the grill to the heat of
live embers. A pinch of salt, the necessary condi-
ment of our dish, is the only addition made to it.
The roast grows golden, softly sizzling, weeps a
few oily tears which catch fire on contact with the
coals and burn with a white flame. It is done!
Let us serve it hot.

Encouraged by my example, my family bravely
attack their roast. The schoolmaster hesitates,
the dupe of his imagination, which sees the great
grubs of a little while ago crawling across his
plate. He has taken for himself the smaller speci-
mens, as the recollection of these disturbs him less.
Less subject to imaginary dislikes, the blind man
ruminates and savours them with every sign of
satisfaction.

The testimony is unanimous. The roast is juicy,
tender, and extremely tasty. One recognises in it
a certain flavour of burnt almonds which is en-
hanced by a vague aroma of vanilla. In short,
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The Collaborators

the vermicular dish is found to be highly accept-
able, one might even say excellent. What would
it be if the refined art of the gourmets of antiquity
had cooked it! ...

If I have made this investigation it was cer-
tainly not in the hope of enriching the bill of fare.
The rarity of the great grubs and the repugnance
which all kinds of vermin arouses in most of us
will always stand in the way of my discovery be-
coming a common dish. . . .

As far as I am concerned, it was still less the
desire for a dainty mouthful that actuated me. My
sobriety is not easily tempted. A handful of cher-
ries pleases me better than the preparations of our
kitchens. My only desire was to elucidate a point
of natural history.1

I certainly admire this zeal for science
and this absence of prejudice even in the
choice of food; yet 1 am tempted to remark
that in the matter of intrepidity, whether
in respect of food or of science, there is one
of Fabre's circle of acquaintances who sur-
passed the schoolmaster and perhaps equals
Fabre himself. I am referring to Favier.
Who, then, is Favier?

Favier is an old soldier. He has pitched his hut
of clay and branches under the African carob-trees ;

1 Souvenirs, x., pp. 102-109.
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

he has eaten sea-urchins at Constantinople; he has
shot starlings in the Crimea, during a lull in the
firing. He has seen much and remembered much.
In winter, when work in the fields ends at four
o'clock and the evenings are long, he puts away
rake, fork, and barrow, and comes and sits on the
hearth-stone of the kitchen fireplace, where the
billets of ilex-wood blaze merrily. He fetches out
his pipe, fills it methodically with a moistened
thumb and smokes it solemnly. He has been think-
ing of it for many a long hour; but he has ab-
stained, for tobacco is expensive. The privation
has doubled the charm ; and not one of the puffs re-
curring at regular intervals is wasted.

Meanwhile, we start talking. Favier is, in his
fashion, one of those bards of old who were given
the best seat at the hearth, for the sake of their
tales; only my story-teller was formed in the bar-
rack-room. No matter: the whole household, large
and small, listen to him with interest; though his
speech is full of vivid images, it is always decent.
It would be a great disappointment to us if he did
not come, when his work was done, to take his
ease in the chimney-corner.

What does he talk about to make him so popu-
lar? He tells us what he saw of the coup d'Etat
to which we owe the hated Empire; he talks of the
brandy served out and of the firing into the mob.
He — so he assures me — always aimed at the wall;
and I accept his word for it, so distressed does he
appear to me and so ashamed of having taken a
hand, however innocent, in that felon's game.
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He tells us of his watches in the trenches before
Sebastopol; he speaks of his sudden terror when,
at night, all alone on outpost duty, squatting in
the snow, he saw fall beside him what he calls a
flower-pot. It blazed and flared and shone and lit
up everything around. The infernal machine
threatened to burst at every second ; and our man
gave himself up for lost. But nothing happened:
the flower-pot went out quietly. It was a star-
shell, an illuminating contrivance fired to recon-
noitre the assailant's outworks in the dark.

The tragedy of the battle-field is followed by
the comedy of the barracks. He lets us into the
mysteries of the stew-pan, the secrets of the mess,
the humorous hardships of the cells. And, as his
stock of anecdotes, seasoned with racy expressions,
is inexhaustible, the supper hour arrives before any
of us has had time to remark how long the eve-
ning is.

Favier first attracted my notice by a master-
stroke. One of my friends had sent me from Mar-
seilles a pair of enormous Crabs, the Maia, the Sea-
spider or Spider-crab of the fishermen. I was
unpacking the captives when the workmen returned
from their dinner: painters, stone-masons, plasterers
engaged in repairing the house which had been
empty so long. At the sight of those strange ani-
mals, studded with spikes all over the carapace
and perched on long legs that give them a certain
resemblance to a monstrous Spider, the onlookers
gave a cry of surprise, almost of alarm. Favier,
for his part, remained unmoved; and, as he skil-
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

fully seized the terrible Spider struggling to get
away, he said:

" I know that thing; I've eaten it at Vasna.
It's first-rate."

And he looked round at the bystanders with an
air of humorous mockery which was meant to
convey :

" You've never been out of your hole, you peo-
pie."

Favier knows many things; and he knows them
more particularly through having eaten them. He
knows the virtues of a Badger's back, the tooth-
some qualities of the leg of a Fox; he is an expert
as to the best part of that Eel of the bushes, the
Snake; he has browned in oil the Eyed Lizard,
the ill-famed Rassade of the South; he has thought
out the recipe of a fry of Locusts. I am astounded
at the impossible stews which he has concocted dur-
ing his cosmopolitan career.

I am no less surprised at his penetrating eye and
his memory for things. I have only to describe
some plant, which to him is but a nameless weed,
devoid of the least interest; and, if it grows in our
woods, I feel pretty sure that he will bring it to
me and tell me the spot where I can pick it for
myself. The botany of the infinitesimal even does
not foil his perspicacity.

But, above all, he excels in ridding me of the
troublesome folk whom I meet upon my rambles.
The peasant is naturally curious, as fond of ask-
ing questions as a child ; but his curiosity is flavoured
with a spice of malice and in all his questions there
280

The Collaborators

is an undercurrent of chaff. What he fails to un-
derstand he turns into ridicule. And what can be
more ludicrous than a gentleman looking through a
glass at a Fly captured with a gauze net, or a bit
of rotten wood picked up from the ground ? Favier
cuts short the bantering catechism with a word.1

Favier has other qualities: he does not
hesitate in the face of difficulties, and it is
a point of honour with him to acquit him-
self manfully, however arduous the task.

Favier is not content with faithfully exe-
cuting his master's orders. Like all intel-
ligent and devoted servants, he divines and
anticipates his desires. He has happy ideas
of initiative.

On the 1 4th of April 1880, Favier was clearing
away a heap of mould resulting from the waste
weeds and leaves heaped up in a corner against
the enclosing wall. ... In the midst of his work
with spade and wheelbarrow, he suddenly called
me:

" A find, sir, a splendid find ! Come and look ! "
I hurried up. There, indeed, was a splendid dis-
covery, and of a kind to fill me with delight, re-
awakening all my old memories of the Bois des
Issarts.2

^Souvenirs, II., pp. i to 19.
2 I bid., p. 104.

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There swarmed a whole population of
Scarabaei, in the form of larvae, nymphs, and
adult insects. There, too, were crowds of
Rose-beetles (Cetoniae), all stages being rep-
resented. There, too, were great numbers of
Scoliae, the Two-striped Scoliae having re-
cently emerged from their cocoons, which still
had beside them the skins of the game served
to the larvae; and there, before the natural-
ist's eyes, was the solution of the problem
of the Scolia's food, which " his painful re-
searches in the Bois des Issarts had not en-
abled him to solve." * Less than this had
been needed for Favier to merit mention in
the order of the day!

At the beginning of this chapter should we
not have placed the insects themselves at the
head of Fabre's collaborators in his re-
searches? When the insect takes a hand,
Favier himself is out of the running.

In the meantime we have no intention of
belittling Favier, or of retracting the praise
which has been lavished upon him. Despite
his inevitable deficiencies, and sometimes even
because of them, Fabre owes him much. He
owes him important manual services; he owes
him curious data and inestimable discoveries;
lastly, he owes him hitherto unknown opin-

1 Souvenirs, in., pp. 12-14.
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ions relating to evolution, for Favier is an
evolutionist, and a highly original one.

For him the bat is a rat that has grown wings ;
the cuckoo is a sparrow-hawk that has retired from
business; the slug, a snail which, through advanc-
ing age, has lost its shell; the night-jar, the etraou-
cho-grepaou, as he calls it, is an old toad which,
having developed a passion for milk, has grown
feathers in order to enter the folds and milk the
goats. It would be impossible to get these fantastic
ideas out of his head. Favier is, as will be seen,
an evolutionist after his fashion, and a daring evo-
lutionist. Nothing gives him pause in tracing the
descent of animals. He has a reply for every-
thing: this comes from that. If you ask why, he
replies: "See how like they are!"

Shall we reproach him for these insanities when
we hear scientists acclaiming the pithecanthropos
as the precursor of man, led astray as they are by
the formation of the monkey? Shall we reject the
metamorphoses of the chavucho-grapaou when there
are men who will seriously tell us that in the pres-
ent condition of science it is absolutely proved that
man is descended from some vaguely sketched mon-
key? Of the two transformations Favier's seems
to me the more admissible. A painter, a friend of
mine, the brother of the great musician, Felicien
David, imparted to me one day his reflections con-
cerning the human structure. " Ve, moun bd
ami," he said, " ve: Thome a lou dintre d'un por et
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

lou deforo d'uno mounino " (Man has the inside of
a pig and the outside of a monkey). I recommend
the painter's jest to those who wish to derive man
from the wild boar, when the monkey is out of
fashion. According to David the descent is con-
firmed by internal resemblances: " L'home a lou
dintre d'un por"

And, therefore, the naturalist proceeds to
make some wise reflections which we owe in
the first place to Favier:

Let us avoid generalisations that are not founded
upon sufficiently numerous and solid foundations.
Where these foundations are lacking the child is
the great generalise!.

For him the feathered race means just the bird,
and the reptile family the snake, without other
differences than those of magnitude. Ignorant of
everything, he generalises to the utmost, simplify-
ing in his inability to see the complex. Later on
he will learn that the Sparrow is not the Bull-
finch, that the Linnet is not the Greenfinch ; he will
particularise, and he will do so more and more
daily as his faculty of observation is more widely
exercised. At first he saw nothing but resem-
blances, now he sees differences, but not yet so
clearly as to avoid incongruous comparisons and
zoological solecisms like those which my gardener
utters.1

1 Souvenirs, iv., pp. 59-60.

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This chapter was to have taken the form of a
letter addressed to Charles Darwin, the illustrious
naturalist who now lies buried beside Newton in
Westminster Abbey. It was my task to report to
him the result of some experiments which he had
suggested to me in the course of our correspond-
ence: a very pleasant task, for, though facts, as I
see them, disincline me to accept his theories, I
have none the less the deepest veneration for his
noble character and his scientific honesty. I was
drafting my letter when the sad news reached
me : Darwin was dead : x after searching the mighty
question of origins, he was now grappling with the
last and darkest problem of the hereafter.2

This is what we need at the head of the
seventh chapter of the second volume of the
Souvenirs. Especially coming after what has
gone before them, these few lines shed a
more brilliant light upon Fabre's secret at-
titude toward those very thinkers whose ideas
he opposes most keenly than could any num-
ber of lectures. We have here the practical
exemplification of that beautiful profession
of faith inspired by Saint Augustine, which
he has recorded elsewhere: "I wage war
boldly upon those ideas that I believe untrue :

1 Darwin died at Down, in Kent, on the igth of April,
1882.— A. T. DE M.

2 Souvenirs, II., p. 99.

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

but God preserve me from ever doing so
upon those who maintain them." 1

In his constant skirmishes against the
theory of evolution, even in the set battles
which he occasionally fights, whenever he
writes Charles Darwin's name he mentions
it with evident accents of respect and sym-
pathy, gladly referring to him as " the mas-
ter," " the illustrious master," " the vener-
ated master."

On his part the English scientist does full
justice to the French scientist's incomparable
mastery in the study of insects. We have
often mentioned the title of " inimitable ob-
server " which he gives him in his work on
the Origin of Species. In a letter dated the
1 6th of April 1881, he wrote to Mr. Ro-
manes, who was preparing a book on Animal
Intelligence: " I do not know whether you

1 Souvenirs, H., p. 160. He makes this declaration in
respect of an error which he had incorrectly attributed
to Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of the famous
Charles Darwin, on the faith of an unfaithful transla-
tion due to the entomologist Lacordaire. The mistake,
which is really Lacordaire's, not Erasmus Darwin's, con-
sisted in confusing the Sphex with a common Wasp.
Charles Darwin, having informed Fabre that his grand-
father had said "a wasp," the French naturalist imme-
diately inserted this correction in a note, in the second
volume of the Souvenirs, which I had not yet come across
when I cited the passage in question. I can therefore
say with M. Fabre: "May this note amend, within the
proper limits, the assertions which I made in all good
faith."

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would care to discuss in your book some of
the more complicated and marvellous in-
stincts. It is an ungrateful task . . . But
if you discuss some of these instincts, it seems
to me that you could not take a more inter-
esting point than that of the animals that
paralyse their prey, as Fabre has described
in his astonishing memoir in the Annales
des sciences naturelles, a memoir which he
has since amplified in his admirable Sou-
venirs."

When he wrote this Darwin was ac-
quainted only with the first volume of the
Souvenirs.1 What would he have said if
he could have enjoyed the whole of the
learned entomologist's masterly work?

In reading this first volume, the attention
of the English naturalist had been especially
struck by the operations of the Hunting
Wasps, which were peculiarly upsetting to his
theories.

Darwin was visibly preoccupied by the
problem of instinct as propounded by the ir-
refutable observations of the French ento-
mologist, but he did not despair of finding
a solution in conformity with his system.
Fabre, on his side, believed that his position

1 Darwin died in 1882, and the second volume of the
Souvenirs appeared in 1883.

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

was inexpugnable, and was not without hope
of converting Darwin by what appeared to
him to be the evidence of the facts.

Nowhere does the theory of evolution come full
tilt against so immovable an obstacle. Darwin, a
true judge, did not fail to realise this. He greatly
dreaded the problem of the instincts. My first re-
sults in particular had left him anxious. If he had
known the tactics of the Hairy Ammophila, the
Mantis-hunting Tachytus, the Philanthus apivorus,
the Calicurgus, and other predatory insects which
have since been investigated, his anxiety, I believe,
would have become a frank avowal of his inability
to get instinct to enter the world of his formula.
Alas! the philosopher of Down left us when the
discussion was only just beginning, with experiment
to fall back upon, a method superior to all argu-
ments. The little that I had published at that
period left him still some hope of explanation. In
his eyes instinct is always an acquired habit.

We have already mentioned Fabre's rela-
tions with Moquin-Tandon, Dufour, Pasteur,
and Duruy. Other names might be added
to complete the list of his friends, or the cor-
respondents whom he succeeded in interest-
ing in entomology and admitting more or
less to participation in his researches.1 We

1 Souvenirs, I., pp. 188, 189; H., pp. 103; VI., pp. 25, 166,
203 ; VH., pp. 8, 9, 57, 161, etc.
288

The Collaborators

will confine ourselves here to mentioning a
worthy Brother of the Christian Colleges
who afforded him one of the great pleasures
of his life by enabling him to satisfy, at a
small expense, without emptying his purse or
too greatly curtailing his patient observations,
one of the wilder longings of his youth, from
which he was not always exempted by age :

To travel the world, by land and sea, from pole
to pole; to cross-question life, under every clime,
in the infinite variety of its manifestations: that
surely would be glorious luck for him that has eyes
to see ; and it formed the radiant dream of my
young years, at the time when Robinson Crusoe
was my delight. These rosy illusions, rich in voy-
ages, were soon succeeded by dull, stay-at-home
reality. The jungles of India, the virgin forests
of Brazil, the towering crests of the Andes, be-
loved by the condor, were reduced, as a field for
exploration, to a patch of pebbles enclosed within
four walls.

Heaven forfend that I should complain! The
gathering of ideas does not necessarily imply dis-
tant expeditions. Jean-Jacques Rousseau herbor-
ised with the bunch of chick-weed whereon he fed
his canary; Bernardin de Saint-Pierre discovered a
world on a strawberry plant that grew by acci-
dent in a corner of his window ; Xavier de Maistre,
using an armchair by way of post-chaise, made one
of the most famous of journeys around his room.
289

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

This manner of seeing country is within my
means, always excepting the post-chaise, which is
too difficult to drive through the bushes. I go
the circuit of my enclosure over and over again,
a hundred times, by short stages; I stop here and
I stop there; patiently I put questions and, at long
intervals, I receive some scrap of a reply.

The smallest insect village has become familiar
to me : I know each fruit-branch where the Pray-
ing Mantis perches; each bush where the pale
Italian Cricket strums amid the calmness of the
summer nights; each downy plant scraped by the
Anthidium, that maker of cotton bags; each cluster
of lilac worked by the Megachile, the Leaf-cutter.

If cruising among the nooks and corners of the
garden do not suffice, a longer voyage shows ample
profit. I double the cape of the neighbouring
hedges and, at a few hundred yards, enter into
relations with the Sacred Beetle, the Capricorn,
the Geotrupes, the Copris, the Decticus, the
Cricket, the Green Grasshopper, in short with a
host of tribes the telling of whose story would ex-
haust a lifetime. Certainly, I have enough and even
too much to do with my near neighbours, without
leaving home to rove in distant lands.

Nevertheless, it were well to compare what hap-
pens under our eyes with that which happens else-
where; it were excellent to see how, in the same
guild of workers, the fundamental instinct varies
with climatic conditions.

Then my longing to travel returns, vainer to-day
than ever, unless one could find a seat on that car-
290

The Collaborators

pet of which we read in the Arabian Nights, the
famous carpet whereon one had but to sit to be
carried whithersoever he pleased. O marvellous
conveyance, far preferable to Xavier de Maistre's
post-chaise! If I could only find just a little corner
on it, with a return-ticket!

I do find it. I owe this unexpected good for-
tune to a Brother of the Christian Schools, to
Brother Judulien, of the La Salle College at Buenos
Aires. His modesty would be offended by the
praises which his debtor owes him. Let us simply
say that, acting on my instructions, his eyes take the
place of mine. He seeks, finds, observes, sends me
his notes and his discoveries. I observe, seek and
find with him, by correspondence.

It is done; thanks to this first-rate collaborator,
I have my seat on the magic carpet. Behold me
in the pampas of the Argentine Republic, eager to
draw a parallel between the industry of the Serig-
nan Dung-beetles and that of their rivals in the
western hemisphere.1

To close the history of the Serignan her-
mit by opening such remote perspectives is
not so inconsistent as it may seem, for, after
having obstinately imprisoned himself within
the narrow horizon of his village all his life,
the Provencal recluse was beginning to be

1 Souvenirs, vi., p. 70. The G\o<w-Worm and Other
Beetles, chap, ix., " Dung-beetles of the Pampas." There
is also mention of Brother Judulien in a long note in vol.
v., p. 131; The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, p. 238.
291

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

drawn out of it by the intelligent zeal of cer-
tain friends, who forced him to make a tri-
umphant tour of France, and we might almost
say of the world.

The magic carpet on which they made him
sit for this magnificent journey was, however,
by no means a borrowed article. It was he
himself who had provided it. It was none
other than the marvellous series, so rich and
so varied, of his entomological works, which
had only to be known in order to ensure for
the author everywhere the welcome which he
deserved, a truly enthusiastic welcome, and
the place which was due to him: one of the
foremost places among our scientists and our
writers.

292

CHAPTER XIX

FABRE'S WRITINGS

MY study-table, the size of a pocket-handker-
chief, occupied on the right by the inkstand —
a penny bottle — and on the left by the open exercise-
book, gives me just the room which I need to wield
the pen. I love that little piece of furniture, one of
the first acquisitions of my early married life. It
is easily moved where you wish: in front of the
window, when the sky is cloudy; into the discreet
light of a corner, when the sun is tiresome. In
winter it allows you to come close to the hearth,
where a log is blazing.

Poor little walnut board, I have been faithful to
you for half a century and more. Ink-stained, cut
and scarred with the pen-knife, you know how to
lend your support to my prose as you once did
to my equations. This variation in employment
leaves you indifferent; your patient back extends
the same welcome to my formulae of algebra and
the formulas of thought. I cannot boast this placid-
ity; I find that the change has not increased my
peace of mind: the hunt for ideas troubles the
brain even more than does the hunt for the roots
of an equation.

You would never recognise me, little friend, if
293

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

you could give a glance at my grey mane. Where
is the cheerful face of former days, bright with
enthusiasm and hope? I have aged, I have aged.
And you, what a falling off, since you came to me
from the dealer's, gleaming and polished and smell-
ing so good with your beeswax! Like your mas-
ter, you have wrinkles, often my work, I admit;
for how many times, in my impatience, have I not
dug my pen into you, when, after its dip in the
muddy inkpot, the nib refused to write decently!

One of your corners is broken off; the boards
are beginning to come loose. Inside you, I hear,
from time to time, the plane of the Death-watch,
who despoils old furniture. From year to year
new galleries are excavated, endangering your solid-
ity. The old ones show on the outside in the shape
of tiny round holes. A stranger has seized upon
the latter, excellent quarters, obtained without
trouble. I see the impudent intruder run nimbly
under my elbow and penetrate forthwith into the
tunnel abandoned by the Death-watch. She is
after game, this slender huntress, clad in black,
busy collecting Wood-lice for her grubs. A whole
nation is devouring you, you old table; I am writ-
ing on a swarm of insects! No support could be
more appropriate to my entomological notes.

What will become of you when your master is
gone? Will you be knocked down for a franc,
when the family come to apportion my poor spoils?
Will you be turned into a stand for the pitcher
beside the kitchen-sink? Will you be the plank on
which the cabbages are shredded ? Or will my chil-
294

Fabre's Writings

dren, on the contrary, agree among themselves and
say:

" Let us preserve the relic. It was where he
toiled so hard to teach himself ancl make himself
capable of teaching others; it was where he so long
consumed his strength to find food for us when
we were little. Let us keep the sacred plank."

I dare not believe in such a future for you. You
will pass into strange hands, O my old friend ; you
will become a bedside-table laden with bowl after
bowl of linseed-tea, until, decrepit, rickety, and
broken-down, you are chopped up to feed the flames
for a brief moment under the simmering saucepan.
You will vanish in smoke to join my labours in
that other smoke, oblivion, the ultimate resting-
place of our vain agitations.1

The little table protests to-day. It has no
desire whatever to go up in smoke with the
labour in which it has borne its part; it flat-
ters itself, on the contrary, with the hope
that having shared in the toil it may also
have some chance of sharing the honour.
Rather than this unjust sentence of death, it
seems to hear a summons to life:

" Let us go back, O my table, to the days
of our youth, the days of your French polish
and my smiling illusions," and it stands
proudly upon its legs, as though to serve as

1 Souvenirs, ix., pp. 184-186. The Life of the Fly, chap,
xiii., "Mathematical Memories: My Little Table."
295

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

a support for these pages destined to reca-
pitulate Fabre's written work, all that work
which it has helped him to compose, from
the first line to the last.

Of the first literary or scientific exercises
of the youthful Fabre and the first quivers
of the little table under the nervous, valiant,
indefatigable pen of the young Carpentras
schoolmaster, we shall say nothing, unless
that there was really some excuse for trem-
bling before the audacious and strenuous toil
of the beginning, and all the exercise-books
stuffed with figures and formulae, diagrams
and texts which represent the solitary and
strictly personal work of preparation for two
bachelor's degrees, quickly followed by those
of the licentiate and the doctor. It was an
anatomical work, a memoir on the reproduc-
tive organs of the Myriapods, or Centipedes,
that won for Fabre the degree of Doctor of
Science.

Fabre's first contribution to the Press was
a memoir on the Predatory Hymenoptera,
published in the Annales des sciences natu-
relles. This attracted great attention among
the masters of science. The Institute of
France awarded him a prize for experimental
physiology. Darwin, then at the height of
his fame, saluted him with amazed and
296

Fabre's Writings

rather uneasy admiration. Leon Dufour, the
patriarch of entomology in those days, wrote
the author a most eulogistic and encouraging
letter; happy to have directed his researches
toward discoveries which he himself had not
suspected, the venerable scientist emphati-
cally exhorted his young friend to continue
his journey along the path that was opening
before him, a path so full of promise.

Some time after this he published another
entomological work which was by no means
calculated to disappoint the hopes aroused by
the first It dealt with an insect related to
the Cantharides, the Sitaris humeralis, and it
contained matter no less unsuspected and no
less astonishing than the first.

The impression produced was all the more
profound in that the miracle of instinct was
here accompanied by a physiological miracle,
a phenomenon of metamorphosis wholly un-
known, to describe which Fabre hit upon the
very happy term hypermetamorphosis. To
the ordinary series of transformations
through which the insect passes in proceed-
ing from the larval condition to that of the
nymph and the perfect insect, this strange
little beast adds another as a prelude to the
first, so that the larva of the Sitaris passes
through four different forms, known as the
297

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

primary larva, the secondary larva, the
pseudo-chrysalis, and the tertiary larva, and
these resemble one another so little that only
the most sustained attention on the observ-
er's part enables him to believe the testi-
mony of his eyes.

All these revelations keenly stimulated the
curiosity and emulation of the specialists, and
set them " on the track of the history, hith-
erto mysterious, of the Cantharides and all
the insects resembling them. ... A number
of naturalists, Beauregard, Riley, Valery-
Mayet, Kunckel d'Herculais, Lichtenstein,
and others began to study the insects more or
less adapted to the preparation of blisters:
the Mylabres, the Meloes, the Cantharides.
Lichtenstein even carried the larvae of the
Cantharides in his watch pocket, enclosed in
small glass tubes, so that he could keep them
warm and observe them at any moment."

It was by reading the memoir on the
peregrinations and metamorphoses of the
Sitaris that M. Perrier 1 made the acquaint-
ance of Fabre's work, of which he was to
become one of the most competent judges and
fervent and eloquent admirers. He referred
to this essay last year in his speech at the
Serignan jubilee:

*£. Perrier, Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.
298

Fabre's Writings

It was in 1868. I had only just left the Higher
Normal College, and was a very youthful assistant
naturalist at the Museum. I can still see myself
on the box-seat of an omnibus, crossing the Place
de la Concorde, with an open book on my knees;
I was reading the history of the Sitaris humeralis;
I was marvelling at its complicated metamor-
phoses and its ruses for making its way into the
nest of the solitary Bee.1

These early essays were followed by many
others, also published in the Annales des sci-
ences naturelles, and were always received
with the same favour by all the notable sci-
entists of the time.

While he was soaring toward the heights,
and making his way into unexplored regions,
under the astounded gaze of the most emi-
nent authorities, who saw themselves sud-
denly equalled and even surpassed, his sci-
entific genius loved also to look downwards,
to approach the beginners, to return, as it
were, to the starting-point, in order to hold
out his hand to them, and to trace out for
them, through all the stages of science, the
path that he had opened up for himself in the
face of unheard-of difficulties.

He laboured to give them what he himself
had felt the lack of almost as much as the

1 Revue Scientifique, May 7, 1910.
2Q9

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

help of masters : the assistance of luminous,
living books, capable of teaching without fa-
tigue and without tedium. His class books
are, in fact, models of their kind. In them
you will find no vague phraseology, but the
simplest, most precise, yet most natural lan-
guage; no idle excess of erudition, but the
most perfect lucidity of text as of diagram;
no dryness, nothing commonplace, but every-
where something picturesque, original, and
full of life, giving charm and relief to all
that is learned; and above all the constant
care never to isolate oneself from life, to
keep in touch with reality, by leading the
youthful mind from the spectacles which are
most familiar to it to the conceptions of sci-
ence and from these to such of their appli-
cations as are most usual and most familiar.
To sum up, a rare talent for simply and
clearly expounding the most difficult theories
in such a way as to render them accessible to
the youngest minds; a wonderful power of
capturing the attention from all sides, of
breaking down the water-tight partition
which too often exists between the mind and
the heart, between science and life, between
theory and practice: such are the essential
characteristics which earned Fabre the title
of *' the incomparable populariser."
300

Fabre's Writings

About 1866 and 1867, at the Normal College of
Rodez, one of our professors used to read to us
and teach us to admire certain little books by our
as yet but little known compatriot, J. H. Fabre,
who was born at Saint-Leons, so he told us, and
had graduated from the Normal College of Avig-
non.

Such is the information recently given us
by M. Frangois Fabie, as " a detail that
might perhaps give us pleasure, and which
proves, in any case, that not all the inhab-
itants of the Rouergue, as was mistakenly
said of late, were ignorant of the name,
origin, and talent of J. H. Fabre." x

1 Our eminent compatriot will forgive the writer for
quoting the following passage from a letter of his, which
so fully expresses both his admiration for our hero and
his profound affection for the land of our fathers: "For
the second time, on reading in the Journal d'Aveyron your
comprehensive and loving study of the life and work
of your illustrious namesake, I was agreeably surprised
to see that you compared our characters and our work.
This comparison is extremely flattering to me, and I
thank you from the bottom of my heart. ... It is in-
deed a somewhat curious thing that two Rouergats should
have conceived the idea of celebrating the Animals; that
both should have been led by their destiny to Provence;
that both should have had the course of their lives af-
fected by the intervention of Duruy, etc. It is true that
one must not push these analogies too far. Duruy merely
advanced me from the Normal College of Rodez to that
of Cluny; and in so doing, alas! he uprooted me. . . .
As for the Animals, what are the poetic fancies which
I have dedicated to them beside the masterly essays of
the man who has been called ' the Homer of the in-
sects!'" M. Fabie does not dispute, any more than we
ourselves, that Fabre's fame qune legitimately belongs
301

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

We are, indeed, glad to think that if he
was unduly overlooked at a later time, he
was at least known and admired at an early
period in Aveyron, and that as early as 1866
his class books were especially recommended
to the attention of our young schoolmasters
at the Normal College of Rodez. They
could have had none better conceived or com-
piled. Would to heaven our public school-
masters had always been as happily inspired
or as well advised in the choice of their text-
books! Would to heaven that, instead of
the dismal and misleading suggestions of ma-
terialism and impiety, there were still a place
in the manuals of science, put in the hands
of our children, for reflections as sane and as
lofty as these. " By their practical side the
sciences verge upon agriculture, medicine, and
industry; but they have before all a moral
advantage which is not shared in the same
degree by any other branch of human knowl-
edge : in that by giving us a knowledge of the
created universe they uplift the soul and
nourish the mind with noble and salutary
thoughts." *

to Provence, which has become his second country; he
merely regrets that we in our " loyal kingdom " have too
long allowed our good friends of the Empire to monop-
olise him.

1 Cours elementaire d'hisloire naturelle: Zoologie, p. i,
5th edition.

302

Fabre's Writings

The study of the heavenly bodies in par-
ticular has this inestimable result: " The
things that we are told by stellar astronomy
overwhelm the understanding and leave no
room in our minds except for an impulse of
religious wonder at the author of these mar-
vels, the God whose unlimited power has peo-
pled the abysses of space with immeasurable
heaps of suns." x But the divine work " per-
haps appears more marvellous still in the
infinity of littleness than in the infinity of mag-
nitude: Magnus in magnisf it has been said
of God, maximus in minimis." 2 This fine
saying is verified and more or less explicitly
confirmed in a thousand passages of the
Souvenirs.

Fabre's works of popularisation are very
numerous: they include no less than seventy
to eighty volumes; they embrace all the ele-
ments of the sciences learned and taught by
the author: arithmetic, algebra, geometry,
trigonometry, mechanics, physics, chemistry,
etc.; but their principal aim was to teach the
natural sciences, which furnish the material of
more than fifty volumes intended for the
primary or secondary degree of education.

1 Cours elementaire d'Astronomie, p. 272, 7th edition.

2 Op. cit., " Avertissement ou Avant-Propos du Direc-
teur de la collection, couronnee par 1'Academie fran-
c,aise."

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

In his favourite domain of the natural sci-
ences, as in that of the other sciences, the
practical tendency of his teaching was by
preference directed toward agricultural ap-
plications, as is shown by the very titles of
many of his books : Elements usuels des sci-
ences physiques et naturelles, avec applica-
tions a I hygiene et a I' agriculture — Le Livre
des Champs — Les Auxiliaires — Les Rava-
geurs — Arithmetique agricole — Chimie agri-
cole: indeed it was with the last volume that
he inaugurated his series of initiatory text-
books. For the use of young girls and fu-
ture housewives, he published books on Le
Menage, Hygiene and Economie domes-
tique.

And all these little books are presented
in a picturesque and attractive form. The
very titles have nothing austere about them:
Entretien de I'oncle Paul avec ses neveux
sur les choses d'agriculture — Chimie de
I'oncle Paul. There is also The Livre de
Maitre Paul, the Histoire des Betes, the
Leqons des choses, the Livre d'Histoires
and the Livre des Champs. Under different
titles the other volumes evoke, like these,
a sort of family atmosphere; they display
the same concrete style of narrative and the
same lifelike charm of dialogue.
304

Fabre's Writings

Evidently Fabre was not one of these
whose " life was strangled," and his initia-
tive stifled by the springes of University
methods and the programmes beloved of
the bureaucrats. On every side there was
little but disdain for animals and plants;
and it was these above all that he strove to
popularise. When they are studied, it is
only to dissect them or reduce them to ab-
stract formulae ; but he considers them rather
as they are in themselves and in their re-
lations with human life. And while others
speak of them as dead objects or as indif-
ferent objects, to indifferent readers, Fabre
speaks of them with sympathy and feeling,
with the tenderness and geniality of an
uncle speaking to his nephews, and he excels
in communicating to his hearers the sacred
fire which inspires him — the passionate love
which he feels for all natural things.

It was Fabre's fine independence that
made him a pioneer. Certain of his manuals
may no longer be sufficiently up to date, but
his methods and his tendencies are precisely
those that best respond to the needs and
aspirations of the present time. For a wave
of serious public opinion is revealing itself
in favour* of a. renewal of our public
education.

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

A time will come, let us hope, when the
schools will be less artificial and removed
from real life, and will no longer systemati-
cally ignore religion, the family, the country
and the vocation of the pupils. When that
time comes, the schoolmasters will turn
again to the classic Fabre handbooks, or at
all events to books modelled upon his, in
order to teach the little peasant boys to love
their fields, their beasts, their agricultural
and pastoral labours; to teach them also
sometimes to lift their heads from the fur-
rows in order to look up at the returning
stars.

Begun in 1862 by the publication of a
book on agricultural chemistry, Fabre's work
of popularisation was continued until the
appearance in 1879 of his first volume of
the Souvenirs. It forms as it were a preface
to the great entomological masterpiece.
Thanks to the deserved success of the series,
rather than to his wretched emoluments as
professor, he achieved the security and inde-
pendence necessary to the accomplishment
of his mission. His class-books were the
ransom that set him free. They enabled
him to leave the town and escape into the
fields. They even enabled him to realise
his dream of a solitary corner of the earth
306

Fabre's Writings

and a life of leisure wholly dedicated to the
patient and disinterested study of his beloved
insects.

From another point of view this long
and patient effort of scientific popularisa-
tion and intense literary production was not
without its results as regard his later work.
It enabled him to obtain a mastery of his
medium, to exercise his faculty of expression
and his mind, to vary and mature his obser-
vations, and finally to realise that tour de
force of writing, for specialists, books that
he who runs may read, and of performing
the miracle of arousing the enthusiasm of
men of letters for books that compel the
admiration of scientists, and attracting the
attention of the scientists to books that de-
light the man of letters.

The brilliance, colour, and vitality which
enhance without ever diminishing the high
scientific value of his Souvenirs are due, no
doubt, to his native qualities, to the limpid
and harmonious Gallic genius of which he
affords so admirable a type; he owes them
also, as we have said, to all those tiny lives,
so vibrant with diligence, and so picturesque,
whose lights and shades and nai've emotions
seem to have found their way into his own
heart, into his style; but he owes them still
307

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

more to his young friends, the primary
school-children, to the pains which he took,
the ingenuity which he expended in bringing
within the grasp of the child's mind, in im-
pressing upon his imagination and sensibility
as well as his understanding, the creatures
and the doings of the living world.

As we have recorded, it was only in 1879
that Fabre inaugurated his great and im-
mortal collection of Souvenirs entomolo-
giques.

From this same year dates the acquisi-
tion, so greatly desired, of the open-air
laboratory and his installation in the
cherished solitude of Serignan, where he was
able to give free play to his entomological
tastes, and to continue to add to the
Souvenirs.

Henri Fabre was then fifty-five years of
age, and apparently broken by fatigue and
suffering. This did not prevent him from
undertaking and accomplishing a task in
which we know not which to admire the
most: the acuteness of observation or the
vigour of thought, the enthusiasm of the in-
vestigator or the animation of the writer.
Here is a wonderful example to all those
whom advancing age and life have already
cruelly bruised; to all those who might be
308

Fabre's Writings

tempted to give up or to flinch under the
burden of grief or disappointment, instead
of listening to the voice of their talents, the
appeal of their friends, the summons of God
Himself to generous and devoted action,
and to the great harvest of souls and ideas.

For forty years [says Fabre] I have struggled
with unshakable courage against the sordid mis-
eries of life ; and the corner of earth I have dreamed
of has come at last.

The wish is realised. It is a little late, O my
pretty insects! I greatly fear that the peach is of-
fered to me when I am beginning to have no teeth
wherewith to eat it. Yes, it is a little late; the
wide horizons of the outset have shrunk into a low
and stifling canopy, more and more straitened day
by day. Regretting nothing in the past, save those
whom I have lost; regretting nothing, not even
my first youth ; hoping nothing either, I have
reached the point at which, worn out by the experi-
ence of things, we ask ourselves if life be worth
the living.1

In the touching, desolate accents of these
lives we may, no doubt, hear the echoes of
a whole lifetime of toil and trial; but above
all they express the cruel grief which had
just wrung the kindly, tender heart of the
great scientist. He was still suffering from

1 Souvenirs, II., p. 3. The Life of the Fly, chap, i.,
" The Harmas."

309

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

the blow dealt him by the death of his be-
loved son Jules at the moment of writing
these lines on the first page of the second
volume of the Souvenirs, piously dedicated
to the memory of the lost child.

Happily he found in his " insuperable
faith in the Beyond " 1 the courage to over-
come his grief and in his " love of scientific
truth " the possibility of taking up his life
again and resuming his work.

Amid the ruins that surround me, one strip of
wall remains standing, immovable upon its solid
base; my passion for scientific youth. Is that
enough, O my busy insects, to enable me to add yet
a few seemly pages to your history? Will my
strength not cheat my good intentions? Why, in-
deed, did I forsake you so long? Friends have re-
proached me for it. Ah, tell them, tell those friends,
who are yours as well as mine, tell them that it
was not forgetfulness on my part, not weariness,
nor neglect: I thought of you; I was convinced
that the Cerceris' cave had more fair secrets to
reveal to us, that the chase of the Sphex held fresh
surprises in store. But time failed me; I was
alone, deserted, struggling against misfortune. Be-
fore philosophising, one had to live. Tell them
that; and they will pardon me.2

1 Dedication of vol. n. of the Souvenirs.

2 Souvenirs, n., p. 4. The Life of the Fly, chap, i.,
"The Harmas."

310

Fabre's Writings

From the very beginning of his great en-
tomological work Fabre sought to free
himself from another reproach, which
wounded him to the quick, because it struck
at his fidelity to his chosen study, and, what
is more, to scientific truth :

Others again have reproached me with my style,
which has not the solemnity, nay, better, the dry-
ness of the schools. They fear lest a page that is
read without fatigue should not always be the ex-
pression of the truth. Were I to take their word
for it, we are profound only on condition of being
obscure. Come here, one and all of you — you, the
sting-bearers, and you, the wing-cased armour-clads
— take up my defence and bear witness in my fa-
vour. Tell of the intimate terms on which I live
with you, of the patience with which I observe you,
of the care with which I record your actions. Your
evidence is unanimous: yes, my pages, though they
bristle not with hollow formulae nor learned smat-
terings, are the exact narrative of facts observed,
neither more nor less; and whoso cares to question
you in his turn will obtain the same replies.

And then, my dear insects, if you cannot convince
those good people, because you do not carry the
weight of tedium, I, in my turn, will say to them:

" You rip up the animal and I study it alive; you
turn it into an object of horror and pity, whereas I
cause it to be loved ; you labour in a torture-cham-
ber and dissecting-room, I make my observations

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

under the blue sky, to the song of the Cicadas ; l
you subject cell and protoplasm to chemical tests,
I study instinct in its loftiest manifestations; you
pry into death, I pry into life.

Our author's strong personality is re-
vealed no less in the bulk of his work than
in this declaration of principles which might
serve as a prologue to the latter.

"With the originality of genius he is
from the first totally opposed to the point
of view of those naturalists who are fasci-
nated by morphology and anatomy." 2 He
believes that the characteristics of life are
to be found in life itself, and that if we wish
truly to know the insect, nothing will help
us so much as seeing it at work. " Mere
common sense, the reader will say, yet it is
by no means common "; and it usually hap-
pens that writers "forget to take perform-
ance into their reckoning when they are
describing life." 3

To study living entomology, that is, to
study the insect living its life and in the

1 The Cicada is the Cigale, an insect akin to the Grass-
hopper and found more particularly in the south of
France. Cf. Social Life in the Insect World, chaps.
i.-iv., and The Life of the Grasshopper, chaps. i.-v. —
A. T. DE M.

2F. Marguet, Revue des Deux Mondes, December 15,
1910.

3 Ibid.

312

Fabre's Writings

highest manifestations of its life, in its in-
stincts and its habits, in its aptitudes and its
passions, in a word, in its psychic faculties;
to replace the dominant standpoint of mor-
phology and physiology by the standpoint
of biology and psychology; such is the es-
sential programme of the writer of the
Souvenirs.

And he adheres to it all the more strictly
the more he sees it neglected by those about
him, judging it to be of still greater im-
portance for one who is seeking to know the
insect, more advantageous to practice and
speculation, more essential to the open-air
life and the most abstruse inquiries of the
human mind. By curiously interrogating the
life of the insects one may render inestimable
services to agriculture, as Pasteur did in his
investigation of serici-culture; one may also
"furnish general psychology with data of
inestimable value," and this in particular
was what he proposed to do. M. Fabre's
restless mind is for ever haunted by the most
abstruse problems, which, indicated here and
there, enable us to understand the motives
that urge him on. With reference to these
the insect is no longer an end: it becomes a
means. Above all, M. Fabre wishes to
define instinct; to establish the line of de-
313

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

marcation which divides it from intelligence,
and to demonstrate whether human reason
is an irreducible faculty or whether it is only
a degree higher on a scale whose base de-
scends into the depths of animality. More
generally he propounds the question of the
identity or the difference between the animal
mind and the human. He also seeks to
examine the problem of evolution; finally,
to discover whether geometry rules over all
things, and whether it tells us of a Universal
Geometer, or whether " the strictly beauti-
ful, the domain of reason, that is, order, is
the inevitable result of a blind mechanism." *

And to tell the whole story in a few
words, the essential object, the general
impulse of this curious and powerful
m nd, which refuses to divide science from
philosophy, is to consider the insect, how it
lives; to note its actions and its movements;
to reach its inner from its outer life; its in-
ward impulse from its external action; and
then to climb upwards from the insect to
man and from man to God.

Fabre never attempts to solve the prob-
lems which he propounds a priori. Before
thinking as a philosopher he observes as a
scientist. His method is strictly experimen-

1F. Marguet, op. cit.

314

Fabre's Writings

tal. " To observe the crude fact, to record
it, then to ask what conclusion may be based
upon this solid foundation, such is M.
Fabre's only rule; and if we oppose him with
arguments he demands observations." x

"See first; you can argue afterwards."
"The precise facts are alone worthy of
science. They cast premature theories into
oblivion."

He always makes direct for the facts as
Nature presents them. The books fail him
or are not to his liking. Most of them dis-
sect the insect; he wants it alive and acting.
The best contain but the shadow of life; he
prefers life itself. If he happens to quote
them, it is usually to deplore their deficien-
cies or to correct their errors, or perhaps
to do homage to a precursor or a rival, but
not to borrow from them the history of an
insect.

This history he wishes to take from life,
and he refuses to write except according to
Nature and the data provided by the living
subject. His narratives are always the re-
sult of strictly conscientious and objective
inquiries: he records nothing that he has not
seen, and if he has sometimes heightened
his pictures by somewhat vivid hues, he has

1 F. Marguet, op. cit.

315

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

only given his style the relief and the colour
of his subject. The danger of such scien-
tific records when they are written by a man
of letters and a poet like Fabre into the
bargain is that there is a danger of their
being written with more art than exactitude.
And it is apparently this that causes so many
scientists to distrust science that also claims
to be literature. Fabre> was not always im-
mune from this species of discredit which the
writer may so easily cast upon the scientist.
But this unjust accusation was long ago with-
drawn, and to-day all are agreed as to the
absolute truthfulness of his portraits and his
records. He has talent and imagination, it
is true, but he has applied his talent to the
sincere investigation of the facts, and his
imagination only to achieve the more com-
plete and faithful expression of the reality.
A great thinker once uttered this profound
saying: " Things are perceived in their truth
only when they are perceived in their
poetry." This saying might serve as a motto
for the whole of Fabre's entomological
work.

To collect the data which he requires for
the foundation of his philosophical struc-
tures, Fabre is not content with observing
the insect as it lives and labours when left to

Fabre's Writings

itself, writing down, so to speak, at its dic-
tation the data which it deigns to give him
as it would give them to any one who pos-
sessed the same patience and the same gift
for observation. After these first over-
tures, he seeks more confidential informa-
tion; to obtain this he inverts the parts played
by observer and insect; from being passive
he becomes active; he provokes and interro-
gates, and by different experiments, often of
wonderful ingenuity, he enables and even com-
pels the insect to confide to him what it would
never have divulged in the normal course of
its life and occupations. Fabre is the first
to think of introducing this kind of artificial
observation, which he calls experiment, into
the study of the animal " soul."

To practise it more readily, he needs the
insect close within his reach; more than that,
he needs it under his hand, at his discretion,
so to say. Neither the great museum of the
fields nor the place of observation where the
insects " roam at will amid the thyme and
lavender " quite answers the requirements of
this part of his programme. So at various
points of the harmas all those appliances
which we have already described were set up,
" rustic achievements, clumsy combinations
of trivial things." In addition to these ap-
317

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

pliances in the open air, there are those inside
the house: some are installed in the study,
so that the experimenter " can see his insects
working on the very table upon which he is
writing their history " ; * others are arranged
in a separate room known as the " animal
laboratory."

It is a great, silent, isolated room, brilliantly
lighted by two windows facing south, upon the
garden, one of which at least is always open that
the insects may come and go at liberty. . . . The
middle of the room is entirely occupied by a great
table of walnut-wood, on which are arranged bot-
tles, test-tubes, and old sardine boxes, which Fabre
employs in order to watch the evolution of a thou-
sand nameless or doubtful eggs, to observe the la-
bours of their larvae, the creation and hatching of
cocoons, and the little miracles of metamorphosis,
after a germination more wonderful than that of
the acorn which makes the oak.

Covers of metallic gauze resting on earthenware
saucers full of sand, a few carboys and flower-pots
or sweetmeat jars closed with a square of glass;
these serve for observation or experimental cages in
which the progress and the actions of these tiny,
living machines can be investigated.2

Fabre reveals a consummate skill in this
difficult and delicate art of experimentation

1 Souvenirs, iv., p. 222.

2 Fabre, Poet of Science, G. V. Legros, pp. 147, 149.

318

Fabre's Writings

and inducing the insect to speak. The
smallest incident, insignificant to a mind less
alert than his, suggests further questions or
gives rise to sudden intuitions and precon-
ceived ideas which are immediately sub-
jected to the test of experiment. But it is
not enough to question the insect; one must
understand its replies; it is not enough to
collect or even to provoke data. One must
know how to interpret them.

And here truly we come to the prodigy; for his
sympathy for animals gives M. Fabre a sort of
special sense, which enables him to grasp the mean-
ing of its actions, as though there were between
it and himself some actual means of communica-
tion, something in the nature of a language.1

But there is something even more remark-
able than this1 penetration and certainty of
analysis; it is the prudence with which he
goes forward step by step, without leaving
anything vague or doubtful; the reserve with
which he pronounces upon all that goes
beyond the obvious meaning of the facts; the
frankness and modesty with which he ad-
mits that he hesitates or does not know. It
often happens that this scrupulous spirit leads

1 F. Marguet, op. cit.

319

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

to doubt. " The more 1 observe and experi-
ment, the more I feel rising before me, in the
cloudy blackness of the possible, a vast note
of interrogation." We might even find that
on certain occasions the fear of going astray
has caused him to limit to excess the range
of his interpretation. But this is done only
to give greater weight to his assertions,
wherever they are expressed firmly and with
quiet assurance. In short, there is reason
to subscribe to the flattering judgment of
his first biographer, who sees in the Souve-
nirs not only the most wonderful entomo-
logical repertory, but a true " essay upon
method," which should be read by every
naturalist, and the most interesting, instruc-
tive, familiar, and delightful course of train-
ing that has ever been known." 1

The most interesting, instructive, and de-
lightful course of training: his books are
this, not only in virtue of the writer's
method and point of view, but in virtue of
his language. For the living scenes of the
Souvenirs, as well as the interpretations in-
terspersed between them, are expressed in
words so simple and so well chosen that

1 Fabre, Poet of Science, G. V. Legros, translated by
Bernard Miall, pp. 159-160.

320

Fabre's Writings

they are realised without effort and in the
most striking relief in the reader's mind and
imagination.

Fabre hates to see science make use of
pedantic and pseudo-scholastic terminology.
Apart from the fact that it may repel the
reader, all this idle apparatus of obscurity
serves only too often to mask error or vague-
ness of thought.

By seasoning the matter with indigestible terms,
useful for dissimulating vagueness of thought, one
might represent the Cione as a superb example of
the change brought about by the centuries in the
habits of an insect. It would be very scientific,
but would it- be very clear? I doubt it. When
my eyes fall upon a page bristling with barbarous
locutions, supposedly scientific, I say to myself:
" Take care ! The author does not properly un-
derstand what he is saying, or he would have found,
in the vocabulary which so many clever minds have
hammered out, some means of clearly stating his
thought."

Boileau, who is denied the poetic afflatus, but
who certainly possessed common sense, and plenty
of it, informs us:

" Ce que Von confoit blen s'enonce clairement."
(That which is clearly grasped is plainly said.)

" Just so, Nicolas ! Yes, clearness, always clear-
ness. He calls a cat a cat. Let us do the same : let
321

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

us call gibberish a most learned prose, to afford a
pretext for repeating Voltaire's witty remark :
' When the listener does not understand and the
speaker himself does not know what he is saying,
that is metaphysics.' Let us add : ' And abstruse
science.' "

My conviction is that we can say excellent things
without using a barbarous vocabulary. Lucidity
is the sovereign politeness of the writer. I do my
best to achieve it.1

Thanks to his love of lucidity and sim-
plicity, as much as to his frank and modest
spirit, he had a horror of verbal snobbery
and juggling with pretentious words. Offi-
cial science itself, and, as he says bluntly,
" official jargon," 2 find no more favour in
his eyes than the sins of incidental writers.

As a boy [writes Fabre] I was always an ardent
reader ; but the refinements of a well-balanced style
hardly interested me: I did not understand them.
A good deal later, when close upon fifteen, I began
vaguely to see that words have a physiognomy of
their own. Some pleased me better than others
by the distinctness of their meaning and the reso-
nance of their rhythm; they produced a clearer
image in my mind ; after their fashion, they gave
me a picture of the objects described. Coloured

1 Souvenirs, x., pp. 100, 101.
? Souvenirs, VI., p. 296.

322

Fabre's Writings

by its adjective and vivified by its verb, the name
became a living reality: what it said I saw. And
thus, gradually, was the magic of words revealed
to me, when the chances of my undirected reading
placed a few easy standard pages in my way.1

The magic of words! He has done more
than discover it in the pages of other writers.
He has illustrated it on every page of his
own writings, adapting it so exactly to the
magic of things that it delights the scientist
as Nature herself would, and enchants the
poet and the man of letters as only the mas-
terpieces of art and literature have power
to do.

1 Souvenirs, ix., pp. 176-178. The Mason Beet, chap, xi.,
" The Jeucoopes."

.323

CHAPTER XX

FABRE'S WRITINGS (CONTINUED)

TN attempting to define the point of view,
the method, and the style of the author of
the Souvenirs, we have broadly sketched the
general characteristics of his work. In order
to complete our task, and to give a clear and
comprehensive ideu. of his art, we will now
venture upon a rapid analysis not of the
author's attitude but of the content of his
works.

The Souvenirs entomologiqucs bear a
sub-title which perfectly describes their es-
sential and characteristic elements. They
are offered as u Studies in the Instincts and
Habits of the Insects," which promise us both
theoretical considerations and records of
facts :

At the very outset, and to judge only very super-
ficially, it seems that these latter are the essential
part of the work, and the author must be consid-
ered before all as an admirable anecdotist, or, if you
will, a chronicler of animal life. But we very

324

Fabre's Writings

soon perceive, on reading him, how much method,
selection, and persevering determination have pre-
sided over all these investigations, which may ap-
pear almost incoherent, and are, on the contrary,
profoundly systematic and definitely ordered.1

Francois Coppee, in a delightful story, shows us
an austere landscape gardener fiercely destroying
all the sparrows and, above all, the blackbirds,
which disturb and dishonour the magnificent sym-
metry of his paths, which were clipped straight with
the aid of a taut cord. Our gentleman does not
leave a single one alive. . . . But on the other
side of the party wall is a true poet, who, not hav-
ing the same aesthetic, buys every day a quantity of
birds in the market, and indefatigably " puts back
the blackbirds " into his neighbour's shrubberies.2

Fabre's work is that of a conscientious
architect who has sought to keep the shrub-
beries and alleys of his garden in strict or-
der, but the racial poet lurking behind the
architect has released so many blackbirds
that he seems to have destroyed the tidiness
of the garden. Just at first, the Souvenirs
produce somewhat the same impression as
the harmas, where the thousand actors of
the rural stage follow one another, appear
and reappear, at varied intervals, at the will

ij. P. Lafitte, La Nature, March 26, 1910.
2 Jean Aicard, Eloge de F. Coppee.

325

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

of opportunity or caprice, without premedi-
tated order. But the observer is not always
master of his encounters and discoveries, and
Fabre wished to give us, in his books, the
faithful record of his observations, and
afford us the pleasure in our turn of those
unexpected encounters, those marvellous dis-
coveries which made his life an enchant-
ment, and which lend his narrative an in-
terest equal to that of the most dramatic
romance.

Yet there has been a selection, a definite
arrangement of the vast collection of data
collected in the ten volumes of the Souvenirs.

But this arrangement and this selection are
by no means inspired by the official classifi-
cations. We may attempt, as many eminent
naturalists have done, to class his various
monographs in the classic manner. We shall
then say, with M. Perrier, that he is not
greatly occupied with the Lepidoptera, that
he studies more particularly the Hymenop-
tera, Coleoptera, and Orthoptera, without
neglecting the Arachnoids, which are Ar-
thropods, not insects properly so called. It
is a fact that this singular entomologist pre-
fers the horrible Spiders, to whom all the
good text-books refuse the name of insect,
to the most beautiful Butterflies. It is true
326

Fabre's Writings

that he is especially attracted by the four-
winged flies, the Wasps and wild Bees, the
Dung-Beetles and Necrophori, the Mantes,
Grasshoppers, and Scorpions; but this is not
because of any particular affection for this
group or on account of their quality of Hy-
menoptera, Coleoptera, and Orthoptera ; for
many of their congeners are neglected and
many insects are selected out of their order.
This is bound to be the case, for the official
classification is conceived on totally different
lines to his own, going by the form of the
insect without heeding its actions and its
habits. It is much the same with the official
nomenclature.

" If, by chance, an amalgam of Greek or
Latin gives a meaning which alludes to its
manner of life, the reality is very often in
disagreement with the name, because the
classifier, working over a necropolis, has
outstripped the observer, whose attention is
fixed upon the community of the living." 1

So the historian of the insects takes the
greatest liberties with official science and
the official language.

A Spider is not an insect, according to the rules
of classification; and as such the Epeira seems out

1 Souvenirs, x., p. 79.

327

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

of place here. A fig for systems! It is immaterial
to the student of instinct whether the animal have
eight legs instead of six, or pulmonary sacs instead
of air-tubes.1

Above all, Fabre is interested in the study
of instinct. It is this that determines his
choice of the species and the data with which
he occupies his leisure and entertains his
readers.

Led by this purpose, allured by this vision,
he turns by preference to the most richly-
endowed species, disdaining the inept, though
they may be the most beautiful and the
most resplendent, like the Butterflies; and he
is often attracted by creatures, great or
small, which have scarcely anything in com-
mon with the insects save their habits. Thus
the ferocity of the Spiders will justify their
taking rank next to the Scorpions, the Mantes
and the Grasshoppers, the crudest and most
ancient of terrestrial creatures.

Fabre, in fact, seldom departed from the
warld of insects, because it is in this little
world that the greatest miracles of instinct
are manifested, in accordance with the en-
tomologist's motto Maxima in minimis.

1 Souvenirs, vm., p. 346. The Life of the Spider, chap.
ii., "The Banded Epeira."

328

Fabre's Writings

And, as though to increase this prodigious
contrast, it often happens that the most re-
markable instincts are allotted to the smallest
and most despised of insects:

Among the insects it is often the case that one
well known to all is a mere simpleton, while an-
other, unknown, has real capacity. Endowed with
talents worthy of attention, it remains misunder-
stood; rich in costume and imposing in deportment,
it is familiar to us. We judge it by its coat and
its size, as we judge our neighbour by the fineness
of his clothes and the place which he occupies. The
rest does not count.

Certainly, in order to deserve historical honours,
it is as well that the insect should possess a popu-
lar reputation. It reassures the reader, who is at
once precisely informed ; further, it shortens the
narrative, rids it of long and tedious descriptions.
On the other hand, if size facilitates observation,
if grace of form and brilliance of costume captivate
the eye, we should do wrong not to take this out-
ward show into account.

But far more important are the habits, the in-
genious operations, which give entomological
studies their serious attraction. Now it will be
found that among the insects the largest, the most
splendid, are usually inept creatures: a contradic-
tion which is reproduced elsewhere. What can
we expect from a Carabas, all glittering with metal-
lic lights? Nothing but feasting in the slime of

329

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

murdered snail. What of the Cetonia, escaped,
one would think, from a jeweller's show-case?
Nothing but drowsing in the heart of a rose. These
splendid creatures do nothing; they have no art or
craft.

But, on the other hand, if we are seeking original
inventions, artistic masterpieces and ingenious con-
trivance, let us apply to the humblest, more often
than not unknown to all. And let us not be re-
pulsed by appearances. Ordure reserves for us
beautiful and curious things of which we should
not find the like upon the rose. So far the Mino-
taur has enlightened us by her family habits. Long
live modesty arid littleness ! J

The small and modest, provided they are
valiant and ingenious, and more generally all
those that commend themselves by unusual
habits or singular technical aptitudes: such
are the insects investigated by the author
of the Souvenirs. These he follows up for
years, sometimes in their natural environ-
ment, sometimes in his laboratory. He in-
quires into their manner of assuring them-
selves and their race of a livelihood, their
fashion of behaviour toward their congeners
and their offspring; their industry and their
habits are his two chief preoccupations, those
which are brought into prominence by the

1 Souvenirs, X, pp. 78-79.

330

Fabre's Writings

sub-title of his book: " Studies in the Instincts
and Habits of the Insects," and the titles of
the two volumes of selections which have
been published for the general reader:
La Vie des Insectes and Les Maeurs des
Insectes.

It is, therefore, about these two principal
themes, which are, for that matter, very
closely connected and very subject to mutual
interpenetration, that the data amassed in
the ten volumes of the Souvenirs must be
grouped and distributed, if we wish to at-
tempt a classification in harmony with the
character of the books and the nature of
their contents.

By thus assuming the point of view of the
author himself and adopting the principle
and the form of his classifications and de-
nominations, we shall discover, in this little
entomological world, which seems to have
been staged a little at random, a society as
rich and varied as our own, in which almost
all trades and all characters are represented,
all the industries and habits of humanity.

Here, as among us, are honest toilers and
free-booters, producers and parasites; good
and bad husbands and wives; examples of
beautiful devotion and hideous egoism; de-
lightful amenities and ferocious cruelties, ex-
331

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

tending even to cannibalism; workers of
every class and manufacturers of every kind,
and, in a higher order of capacities, engineers
and surgeons, chemists and physicists, natu-
ralists and physiologists, topographers and
meteorologists, geometricians and logicians,
and many more, whose enumeration we will
leave to the reader.

11 Let us assemble facts in order to ob-
tain ideas," said Buffon. In this process may
be summed up the whole of the great Pro-
vengal naturalist's scientific work. If he
notes the least circumstances of the little
lives that unfold themselves before his eyes,
he does so not merely as an observer and an
artist who would not miss the smallest ele-
ment of knowledge or beauty, but also as a
philosopher who wishes to understand all
that he sees, and for that reason neglects
nothing. In entomology the smallest facts
are not only the most curious and pictur-
esque, they are often the most significant:
maxima in minimis. Those minute details
which are in danger of being regarded as
" puerilities are connected with the most
solemn questions which it is possible for man
to consider." x

1 Souvenirs, x., p. 92.

332

Fabre's Writings

There are philosophical meditations in
Fabre's work, evoked by his observations,
and, like his observations, they are not pre-
sented in a preconceived order. His argu-
ments are scattered throughout his work.
Nowhere in the Souvenirs is there any body
of doctrine. They contain only studies of
the habits of individual insects; and it is only
when he has gathered certain data or made
certain experiments that the author gives us
his conclusions or explanations or attacks the
errors of the theories in vogue.

Yet it is not difficult, such is their degree
of prominence and continuity, to disengage
and synthetise the general ideas scattered
throughout this vast collection of facts. We
shall make the attempt in order to give the
reader at least a glimpse of the writer's at-
titude toward the problems of science and of
life.

From the achievements and actions of the
insects, the philosophic mind of the naturalist
first of all deduces, very clearly, the general
laws of their activity.

What strikes us at once is the wonderful
degree of knowledge presupposed by cer-
tain of their actions: for all that instinct im-
pels the insect to do is marked by perfect
wisdom, comparable and even superior to
. 333

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

human wisdom. This first law of instinct is
brought into especial prominence by the
author of the Souvenirs in his study of the
Hunting Wasps.

These Wasps, which are themselves purely
vegetarian, know that their larvae must have
animal food; fresh succulent flesh still quiv-
ering with life.

Some, like the Common Wasp, which
watches over the growth of its offspring,
feed the larvae from day to day, as the bird
brings beakfuls of food to its nestlings, and
these kill their prey, which they are thus able
to serve to their larvae perfectly fresh.

But the majority do not watch over the
hatching or the growth of their larvae. They
are forced therefore to lay up a store of food
beforehand. They know this, and are not
found wanting. But here they are confronted
by a most difficult problem. If the prey car-
ried to the nest is dead, it will quickly
putrefy; it cannot possibly keep fresh, as it
must, for the weeks and months of the
larva's growth. If it is alive it cannot easily
be seized by the larvae, and will represent a
menace or even a deadly danger. The Wasp
must discover the secret of producing, in her
victims, the immobility of death together
with the incorruptibility of life. And the
334

Fabre's Writings

Wasps have discovered this secret, for the
prey which they provide for their larvae re-
main at their disposal to the end without
movement and without deterioration. Do
these tiny creatures know intuitively the se-
crets of asepsis which Pasteur discovered
with so much difficulty? Such was the con-
clusion with which Dufour was forced to con-
tent himself. He presumed the existence, in
the Hunting Wasps, of a virus which was at
once a weapon of the chase and a liquid pre-
servative, for the immolation and conserva-
tion of the victims. But even if aseptic a
dead insect would shrivel up into a mummy.
Now this must not occur, and as a matter of
fact the Wasp's victims remain moist indefi-
nitely, just as if alive. And in reality they
are not dead; they are still alive. Fabre has
demonstrated this by proving the persistence
of the organic functions, and by feeding some
of them by hand. In short, it is incontest-
able that the victims are not put to death but
merely deprived of movement, smitten with
paralysis. How has this result, more miracu-
lous even than asepsis, been obtained by the
insect? By the procedure that the most skil-
ful physiologist would employ. By plunging
its sting into the victim's body, not at ran-
dom, which might kill it, but at certain defi-
335

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

nite points, exactly where the invisible
nervous ganglia are located which control
the various movements.

For the rest, the operative method varies
according to the species and anatomy of the
victim.

In his investigation of the paralysers,
Dufour was unable to imagine any other
weapon of the chase than the mere inocula-
tion of a deadly virus; the Hymenopteron
has invented a means of immobilising her
victim without killing it, of abolishing its
movements without destroying its organic
functions, of dissociating the nervous sys-
tem of the vegetative life from that of the
life of reaction; to spare the first while an-
nihilating the second, by the precise adapta-
tion of this delicate surgery to the victim's
anatomy and physiology. Dufour was un-
able to provide anything better for the
larva's larder than mummified victims,
shrivelled and more or less flavourless; the
Hymenopteron provided them with living
prey, endowed with the strange prerogative
of keeping fresh indefinitely without food
and without movement, thanks to paralysis,
far superior in this connection to asepsis.

u He, the master, skilled among the skil-
ful, trained in the finest operations of
336

Fabre's Writings

anatomy; he who, with lens and scalpel, had
examined the whole entomological series,
leaving not a corner unexplored; he, finally,
who has nothing more to learn of the or-
ganisation of the insect, can think of nothing
better than an antiseptic fluid which gives at
least an appearance of an explanation of a
fact that leaves him confounded," and of
which he has not discovered the full miracle.
The author of this immortal discovery rightly
insists on " this comparison between the in-
sect's instinct and the scientist's reason, the
better to reveal in its true light the crushing
superiority of the insect."

As though to give yet another verification
of the words so justly applied to entomology
— maxime miranda in minimis — the larva's
science is perhaps even more disconcerting
than that of the perfect insect.

The Scolia's larva stupefies us by the order
in which it proceeds to devour its victim.

" It proceeds from the less essential to
the more essential, in order to preserve a
remnant of life to the very last. In the first
place it absorbs the blood which issues from
the wound which it has made in the skin;
then it proceeds to the fatty matter en-
veloping the internal organs; then the mus-
cular layer lining the skin; and then, in the
337

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

last place, the essential organs and the nerve-
centres." x " We thus have the spectacle of
an insect which is eaten alive, morsel by mor-
sel, during a period of nearly a fortnight, be-
coming empty and emaciated and collapsing
upon itself," while preserving its succulence
and moisture to the end.

Starting with these typical facts, which tes-
tify to an infallible foresight and a perfect
adaptation of the means to the end, the list
might be indefinitely prolonged with the aid
of Fabre's memoirs. But these are enough
to show us that " what instinct tells the ani-
mal is marvellously like what reason tells
us," so that we find nothing unnatural in
Fabre's exclamation when he is confronted
by the profound knowledge of the Hymenop-
teron and " the sublime logic of her stings."
"Proud Science, humble yourself! " All this
presumes, in short, in the microscopic little
creatures an astonishingly rational inspira-
tion which adapts means to the end with a
logic that confounds us.

And all this would be very much to the
credit of the insect and to the disadvantage
of man if there were not a reverse side to
the medal. But the same insect that con-
founds us by its knowledge and wisdom also

1 Revue des Deux-Mondes, Dec. 1910, p. 875.
338

Fabre's Writings

disconcerts us by its ignorance and stupidity.

The best-endowed insect cannot do any-
thing " outside the narrow circle of its at-
tributions. Every insect displays, in its call-
ing, in which it excels, its series of logically
co-ordinated actions. There it is truly a
master." x Apart from this it is utterly in-
capable. And even within the cycle of its
attributions, apart from the customary con-
ditions under which it exercises them, the
ineptness of the insect surpasses imagination.
* Let us consider the facts.

One of these Hymenoptera whose impec-
cable science we were admiring just now, a
Languedocian Sphex, is busy closing the bur-
row in which she has laid her egg with its
store of game. We brush her aside, and
plunder her nest before her eyes. Directly
the passage is free, she enters and remains
for a few moments. Then she emerges and
proceeds to stop up the cell, as though noth-
ing were the matter, as though she had not
found her burrow empty, as though the work
of closing the cell had still a motive.2

The Mason-Bee, excellently endowed in
the matter of boring, emerges from her nest

1 Souvenirs, I., pp. 265, 314.; v., p. 99; vn., p. 48.

2 Ibid., i., 171-175. The Hunting Wasps, chap, x., " The
Ignorance of Instinct."

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

of mortar by piercing the earthen dome which
covers it. Let us cover the nest from which
the Bee is about to emerge with a little paper
bag. If the bag is placed in contact with the
nest so as to make one piece with it, so to
speak, the Bee perforates it and liberates
herself. If it is not in contact with the nest,
she remains imprisoned and will let herself
die without perforating the bag.

"Here, then, are sturdy insects for whom
boring tufa is mere child's play, which will
stupidly let themselves perish imprisoned by
a paper bag," 1 to which it does not even
occur to bite a second time through the frail
envelope through which they have already
bitten once when it was, so to speak, part of
the earthen enclosure.

The Wasp, which is such a marvellous
architect, and so skilful a digger, is no better
able to employ her talents. During the night
we place a bell-glass over a Wasp's nest. In
the morning the Wasps issue forth and
struggle against the glass wall, but not one
of them dreams of digging at the foot of
the treacherous circle. But one Wasp, of
several which have strayed from the com-
munity, coming from outside, opens up a way

1 Souvenirs, i., pp. 297-298. The Mason-Bees, chap, ii.,
" Experiments."

340

Fabre's Writings

to the nest under the edge of the bell-glass,
which is a natural enough proceeding for an
insect returning from the fields, who may
have to gain her nest through falls of earth
in the entry. But even this particular Wasp
cannot repeat the operation in order to
emerge from the bell-glass, and the whole
community eventually die prisoners after a
week of futile agitation. The entomologist
finds this ineptness of the Wasp repeated in
the Necrophori, who nevertheless have a
great reputation for intelligence, and, in
general, in all the insects which he has had oc-
casion to rear under a bell-glass.

The larva is subject to the same absurdi-
ties as the adult insect. The Scolia's larva,
which eats in such a scientific manner, is
quite unable to apply its remarkable talents
the moment it is off the beaten track. Placed
on the victim's back at a spot which is not
the normal point of attack, placed on a
Cetonia-grub that is immobilised without
being paralysed, or merely removed for a
moment from its position, it is no longer able
to do anything right.

By a strange contradiction, characteristic of the
instinctive faculties, profound knowledge is asso-
ciated with an ignorance no less profound. . . .

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

For instinct nothing is difficult, so long as the ac-
tion does not diverge from the immutable cycle
laid down for the insect; for instinct, again, noth-
ing is easy if the action has to diverge from the
paths habitually followed. The instinct which
amazes us, which terrifies us by its supreme lucid-
ity, astonishes us by its stupidity a moment later,
when confronted with the simplest situation which
is alien to its ordinary practice. . . . Instinct
knows everything in the invariable tracks which
have been laid down for it; nothing when off this
track.

Sublime inspirations of science and amazing in-
consequences of stupidity are both its heritage, ac-
cordingly as it is acting under normal or accidental
conditions.1

It would be interesting to pursue this in-
quiry into the general laws of instinct, and to
give, as a pendant to the antithesis of its wis-
dom and stupidity, the no less singular
antithesis of its automatism and its varia-
tions. But that we may not beyond all
measure enlarge the proportions of this
monograph we will pass on at once to the
determination of the causes of instinct, as
related by our naturalist philosopher.

1 Souvenirs, I., p. 165. The Hunting Wasps, chap, x.,
" The Ignorance of Instinct." Ibid., IV., p. 238 ; v., p. 90.
The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap, vii., " The Broad-
necked Scarabaeus."

342

Fabre's Writings

The laudator temporis acti is untimely, for the
world progresses. Yes, but backwards at times.
In my young days, in the twopenny classics, we
were taught that man is a reasoning animal ; to-day,
in learned volumes, it is demonstrated that human
reason is only a higher degree upon a scale whose
base descends into the depths of animality. There
is the more and the less, and all the intermediate
degrees, but nowhere a sudden solution of con-
tinuity. It begins at zero in the albumen of a cell,
and rises to the mighty brain of a Newton. The
noble faculty of which we were so proud is a
zoological attribute.

This is an assertion of grave significance. . . .
Assuredly we have need of ingenuousness in en-
tomology. Without a good dose of this quality,
sheer \\rongheadedness in the eyes of practical folk,
who could trouble himself about insects? Yes, let
us be naive, without being childishly credulous.
Before making the animal reason, let us reason a
little ourselves. Above all, let us consult the ex-
perimental test. Facts gathered at random, with-
out a critical selection, cannot constitute a law.1

And the prudent naturalist sifts all the
anecdotes and records of habits, all the ra-
tional or sentimental achievements which the

1 Souvenirs, II., p. 157. The Mason-Bees, chap, vii.,
"Reflections upon Insect Psychology." Ibid., vi., pp. 116,
131, 148. The Gloiu-Worm and Other Beetles, chap, xii.,
"The Burying Beetles: Experiments;" also Wonders
of Instinct, chap. vi.

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

writers of books and the " glorifiers of the
animal " pass from hand to hand, showing
clearly that all the facts alleged in proof
of the intelligence of animals are ill-observed
or wrongly interpreted.

Having shown in its true light one of these
fabricated facts related by Clairville, he
cries:

Yet one more of the fine arguments in support
of the animal's reasoning powers that takes to flight
in the light of experiment. ... I admire your
candid faith, my masters, you who take seriously
the statements of chance observers richer in imag-
ination than in veracity. I admire your credulous
enthusiasm, when, without criticism, you support
your theories on such stupidities.1

Fabre has no greater faith in the virtue of
animals than in their reason, since one can-
not exist without the other. It is true that
the Copris, the most richly endowed of in-
sects in respect of the maternal instinct,
does not differentiate between the care which
she lavishes on strangers and that which she
gives to the children of her household; but
the pitiless observer shows that this is be-
cause she cannot distinguish between them.

1 Souvenirs, vi., pp. 130, 143. The Glow-Worm and
Other Beetles, chap, xii., "The Burying Beetles: Ex-
periments."

344

Fabre's Writings

It is not the function of impartial history to main-
tain a given thesis; it follows where the facts lead
it.1

The historian of the insects simply con-
fronts the facts of the entomological world
which he has explored under all its aspects:

To speak with certainty, we must not depart
from what we really know. I am beginning to
know the insect passably well after forty years of
intercourse with it. Let us question the insect: not
the first comer, but the best endowed, the Hymen-
opteron. I am generous to my opponents. Where
will you find a creature richer in talents? . . .
Well, does this refined and privileged member of
the animal kingdom reason?

And, first of all, what is reason ? Philosophy will
give us learned definitions. Let us be modest ; let
us stick to the simplest; we are only dealing with
animals. Reason is the faculty which refers the
effect to the cause, the means to the end, and di-
rects the action by making it conform to the re-
quirements of the accidental. Within these limits
is the animal able to reason? Does it understand
how to associate a because with a why, and behave
in accordance? Can it, confronted with an acci-
dent, alter its line of conduct?2

1 Souvenirs, v., pp. 141, 142, 150. The Sacred Beetle
and others, chap, xvi., " The Lunary Copris." The
Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap, xi., " The Bury-
ing Beetles."

2 Souvenirs, u., p. 159. The Mason-Bees, chap. vii.

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To all these questions the facts already
cited have replied. It is evident that the
Hymenopteron which provisions or closes
the nest found empty under the conditions
which we have seen imposed upon the Sphex
or the Pelopaeus, is ignorant of the why of
her work and does not in any case connect it
with its natural aim, which is the rearing of
the larvae.

These expert surgeons, these marvellous anatom-
ists know nothing whatever, not even what their
victims are intended for. Their talent, which
confounds our reason, is devoid of a shadow of
consciousness of the work accomplished, a shadow
of foresight concerning the egg.1

Fabre, then, has vainly sought for
u proofs " of the intervention of reason in the
actions of the insect. He has not found them.
He has even found the very contrary; the
insect, interrogated as to its powers of rea-
son and " the logic attributed to it," has
plainly replied that it is entirely lacking in
reason and that logic is not its strong point.

" Reflections upon Insect Psychology." Souvenirs, vi.,
n6. The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xi.
" The Burying Beetles " ; see also Wonders of Instinct,
chap. vi.

1 Souvenirs, iv., p. 238.

346

Fabre's Writings

Yet he is far from wishing to " belittle the
merits " or " diminish the reputation " of his
beloved insects. No one can be less suspected
of prejudice against them, since none has
"glorified" them more abundantly; no one
has spoken of them with greater admiration
and sympathy; no one has more fully de-
scribed their high achievements, and no one
has revealed such unknown and incredible
marvels on their behalf. It is enough to re-
call the " miracles " of the science and wis-
dom of the paralysers.

But far from invalidating the conclusion
drawn from the obvious stupidity of the in-
sect even in the actions which are its specialty,
the science and wisdom of instinct afford it
a striking confirmation. The very " slightest
glimmer of intelligence " would suffice to
make the insect do what it does not and leave
undone what it does even within the circum-
ference of its attributions. If it is plainly
devoid of this glimmer, how much more
plainly is it devoid of that " splendour of in-
telligence " which the " miracles " of instinct
would require ! 1 To sum up, the insect sins
too greatly by excess and by defect in its in-
stinctive actions to justify our attributing to
it an understanding of these actions; we are

i Souvenirs, n., p. 138; vi., pp. 98, 117.

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indeed compelled absolutely to deny it any
such understanding. It does at once too
much and too little; too much for an insect's
intelligence and too little for any intelligence
whatever. Everything is against it; its
knowledge as much as its ignorance ; its logic
as much as its inconsequences.

So long as its circumstances are normal, the in-
sect's actions are calculated most rationally in view
of the object to be attained. What could be more
logical, for instance, than the devices employed by
the Hunting Wasp when paralysing her prey so
that it may keep fresh for her larva, while in no
wise imperilling that larva's safety? It is pre-
eminently rational; we ourselves could think of
nothing better; and yet the Wasp's action is not
prompted by reason. If she thought out her surg-
ery, she would be our superior. It will never oc-
cur to anybody that the creature is able, in the
smallest degree, to account for its skilful vivi-
sections. Therefore, so long as it does not depart
from the path mapped out for it, the insect can
perform the most sagacious actions without entitling
us in the least to attribute these to the dictates of
reason.1

These acts of instinct, so scientifically de-
vised and so rationally performed by works

1 Souvenirs, I., p. 220. The Hunting Wasps, chap, xiii,
"The Araraophila."

348

Fabre's Writings

devoid of either judgment or reason, must
be explained by referring them to a propor-
tionate cause, whence proceed the logic and
the science which evidently do not proceed
from the insect itself.

I consign to the meditations of philosophy these
five makers of spherical conserves — [he is speaking
of the Scarabaei] — and their numerous rivals. I
consign to them these inventors of the spherical box,
of greater volume and smaller surface, for provi-
sions liable to dry up, and I ask them how such
logical inspirations, such rational provisions, could
unfold themselves in the murky intellect of the in-
sect. . . . The work of the pill-makers propounds
a grave problem to him who is capable of reflection.
It confronts us with this alternative : either we must
attribute to the flat cranium of the Dung-beetle
the notable honour of having solved for itself the
geometrical problem of its conserve, or we must
refer it to a harmony ruling all things beneath the
eye of an Intelligence that, knowing all, has fore-
seen all. ... If the Rhynchites and its emulators
in defensive means against the perils of asphyxia
have taught themselves their trade ; if they are really
the children of their works, do not let us hesitate
. . . let us recognise them as engineers capable of
winning our diplomas and degrees; let us proclaim
the microcephalic Weevil a powerful thinker, a
wonderful inventor. You dare not go to these
lengths; you prefer to have recourse to the chances
349

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

of hazard. Ah, but what a wretched resource is
hazard, when such rational contrivances are in
question ! One might as well throw into the air the
characters of the alphabet and expect to see them,
on falling, form certain lines selected from a poem!
Instead of loading our minds with such tortuous
ideas, how much simpler and more truthful to say:
" A sovereign Order rules over matter." This is
what the Sloe Weevil tells us in its humility ! 1

We heard the same language, uttered per-
haps even more persuasively, from the Hairy
Ammophila, among many others, one day
when, as a beginner in entomology, he con-
sidered her performing her delicate and ex-
pert operations, bending over a bank on the
table-land of Les Angles, in company with a
friend :

The Wasp acts with a precision of which science
would be jealous; she knows what man hardly ever
knows; she understands the complex nervous sys-
tem of her victim. ... I say, she knows and un-
derstands; I ought to say, she acts as though she
knew and understood. Her act is all inspiration.
The insect, without having any conception of what
it is doing, obeys the instinct that impels it. But

1 Souvenirs, v., p. 130. The Sacred Beetle and Others,
chap, xvi., " The Lunary Copris." Souvenirs, vi., p. 97.
The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap, x., " Insect
Colouring." Souvenirs, VH., p. 193.
350

Fabre's Writings

whence comes this sublime inspiration? . . . For
me and my friend, this was and has remained one
of the most eloquent revelations of the ineffable
logic that rules the world and guides the uncon-
scious by the laws of its inspiration. Moved to
the depths by this flash of truth, we felt, forming
upon our eyelids, tears of indefinable emotion." *

The more he sees, the more he reflects,
the more radiantly clear does the meaning of
these facts appear to him:

Can the insect have acquired its skill gradually,
from generation to generation, by a long series
of casual experiments, of blind gropings? Can
such order be born of chaos ; such foresight of haz-
ard; such wisdom of stupidity? Is the world sub-
ject to the fatalities of evolution, from the first
albuminous atom which coagulated into a cell, or
is it ruled by an Intelligence? The more I see and
the more I observe, the more does this Intelligence
shine behind the mystery of things. I know that I
shall not fail to be treated as an abominable " final
causer." Little do I care! A sure sign of being
right in the future is to be out of fashion in the
present.

A long time ago [says a contemporary apologist],
I was discussing matters with an astronome* who

1 Souvenirs, I., p. 220. The Hunting Wasps, chap,

xiii., " The Ammophila." Souvenirs, v., p. 322. The

Life of the Grasshopper, chap viii., "The Mantis: The

Nest."

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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

was possessed of knowledge, a certain penetration
and a certain courage. He pushed this penetra-
tion and this courage to the length of declaring,
before the Academy of Sciences, that the laws of
nature form a harmony and reveal a plan.

I had an opportunity of congratulating him, and
he was good enough to express his satisfaction. I
profited by this to suggest that he was doubtless
ready to develop his conclusions yet further, and
that since he recognised the existence of a plan he
admitted, at the origin of things, a Mind: in short,
an intelligent Being.

Suddenly my astronomer turned up his nose,
without offering me any argument capable of any
sort of analysis.

In vain did I explain that to deduce the exist-
ence of an intelligent Being because one has dis-
covered the existence of a plan is, after all, to con-
tinue the train of reasoning which deduces the ex-
istence of a plan after observing that there is a
system of laws. In vain I pointed out that I was
merely making use of his own argument. My
astronomer refused to go any further along the path
upon which he had entered. There he would have
met God, and that was what he was unwilling to
do.1

J. H. Fabre does not stop half-way to the
truth for fear of meeting God. He is logical,
loyal, and courageous to the end. He argues
from the facts to laws and from laws to

1 E. Tavernier.

352

Fabre's Writings

causes, and from them to the " Cause of
causes," the " Reason of reasons," x concern-
ing which, says M. Perrier, he has not " the
pedantic feebleness of grudging it the name
of God." 2

If Fabre so briskly attacks the theory of
evolution, it is not so much because of the
biological results which it attributes to the
animal far niente as because it offers such a
convenient pretext for that sort of intellectual
laziness that willingly relies upon an explana-
tion provided beforehand and readily exon-
erates itself from the difficult task of search-
ing more deeply into the domain of facts as
well as that of causes.3 If the explanation
were not notoriously insufficient one might
overlook the abuses which it covers, inno-
cently enough, but, to speak only of the
insect, all its analyses, were they admissible,
leave the problem of instinct untouched:
u How did the insect acquire so discerning an
art? An eternal problem if we do not rise
above the dust to dust " 4 of evolution. At
all events, as it is presented it is merely, we

1 Souvenirs, X., pp. 92, 214.

2 Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.

3 La Nature, March 26, 1910. " It will be to M. Fabre's
lasting honour that he has never known any idleness of
this kind or, indeed, any kind of idleness."

* Souvenirs, vi., p. 75.

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repeat, " a convenient pillow for the man
who has not the courage to investigate more
deeply." 1 For him, he has this courage and
this power of ascension, and he readily
spreads his wings to rise above matter and
the night of this world and soar to those
radiant heights where Divinity reveals itself,
together with the supreme explanation of the
light which lightens this darkness and the life
that inspires this matter.2

1 Fabre denies " by the light of the facts " almost all
the ideas which evolution invokes to explain the forma-
tion of species. (Revue des Deux Mondes, p. 891.) He
says: "The facts as I see them lead me away from
Darwin's theories. Whenever I try to apply selection
to the facts observed, it leaves me whirling in the void.
It is majestic, but sterile: evolution asserts as regards the
past; it asserts as regards the future; but it tells us as
little as possible about the present. Of the three terms
of duration one only escapes it, and that is the very one
which is free from the fantastic imaginings of hypothe-
sis."

2 Fabre appears to conceive a relation between instinct
and the organ analogous to that which obtains between
the soul and the body; for him the first element of in-
stinct is an incorporeal element which he does not other-
wise define, which he characterises merely as a native
impulse, irresistible, infallible and superior to the organ-
ism as well as to the sensibility of the insect, although
it is not separated from nor completely independent of
these.

For the rest, instinct remains a mystery. What it is
at bottom, " I do not know, I shall never know. It is
an inviolable secret." Like all true scientists, Fabre rec-
ognised the narrow limits of human knowledge and did
not fear to admit them. According to him, neither life
nor instinct results from matter; we must seek for an

354

Fabre's Writings

We have said enough to show that Fabre
is decidedly of the race of those great men
who soar high above the vulgar prejudices,
pedantries, and weaknesses, and whose won-
derful discoveries bring them nearer to God
as they uplift them above the common level
of humanity.

Having written The Harmony of the
World, and casting a final glance at the
charts of the heavens and also at the long
labour of his life, Kepler offered his God
this homage :

O Thou, who by the light of Nature hast caused
us to sigh after the light of grace, in order to reveal
unto us the light of Thy glory, I thank Thee, my
Creator and my God, that Thou hast permitted me
to admire and to love Thy works. I have now fin-
ished the work of my life with the strength of the
understanding which Thou hast vouchsafed me; I

explanation not below but above it, and of all the mar-
vels created that compel us to look upward and pro-
claim the Supreme Intelligence whence they are de-
rived, this is one of the most striking and persuasive:
" The more I see, the more I observe, the more this In-
telligence shines forth behind the mystery of things."

Fabre thus joins hands with Pasteur, and may fitly
be mentioned in the same breath with him, as one of the
most distinguished defenders of spiritual science and
belief against materialistic science and atheism. This
is all the more remarkable in that Fabre has never
attempted to make any apologia, but simply stated
whither all his observations and reflections tended.

355

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

have recounted to men the glory of Thy works, in
so far as my mind has been able to comprehend
their infinite majesty. . . . Praise the Creator, O
my soul! It is by Him and in Him that all exists,
the material world as well as the spiritual world, all
that we know and all that we do not know as yet,
for there remains much for us to do that we leave
unfinished. . . .

Uniting the point of view of exegesis with
that of natural science, one of the greatest
and broadest minds of antiquity, Origen, has
written these noble words :

The providential action of God manifests itself
in the minute corpuscles of the animals as well as
in the superior beings; it directs with the same fore-
sight the step of an ant and the courses of the sun
and the moon. It is the same in the supernatural
domain. The Holy Spirit which has inspired our
sacred Scriptures has penetrated them with its in-
spiration to the last letter: Divina sapientia omnem
Scripturam divitus datam vel adunam usque lit-
terulam attigit. . . .*

The reader will doubtless pardon a pro-
fessor of exegesis, whose admiration for the
prince of entomologists has made him his
biographer, for terminating this analysis of

1 Quoted from Mgr. Mignot, Lettres sur les Etudes ec-
clesieutiques, p. 248.

356

Fabre's Writings

the naturalist's philosophical and religious
ideas by a synthetic view which brings him
into closer communion with his hero : " all
things are linked together," as he himself
has said,1 and the study of the Holy Scrip-
tures, if he could have devoted himself
thereto, would certainly have led this noble
and penetrating mind to render the same tes-
timony to the truth of Christ and the Church
as that which it has rendered to the truth of
the soul and God.

1 Souvenirs, Hi., p. 91.

357

CHAPTER XXI

A GREAT PREPARATION

THE title which we have given this chap-
ter is that which M. Perrier, the emi-
nent Director of the Museum of Natural
History, lately inscribed at the head of a
remarkable article in the Revue hebdoma-
daire. In this the author showed how just
and how far inferior to his deserts are the
honours so tardily accorded to the man
whose life and labours we have sketched.

We assuredly cannot say that Fabre's
name and his work have until lately remained
unknown or even undervalued. At an early
period he was honoured by the admiration
and friendship of such men as Dufour and
Duruy. On several occasions his works have
been crowned by the highest awards of the
Institute. Not content with belonging to the
Zoological Society and the Entomological
Society of France, and with being elected in
1887 corresponding member of the Academy
of Sciences, he has also been granted, as
though in emulation, the title of honorary
member by the most famous foreign acad-
emies, the Scientific Societies of Brussels,
358

A Great Preparation

Geneva, etc., and the Entomological So-
cieties of London, Stockholm, and St. Peters-
burg. ^

If it is true, as some one has said, that
posterity begins at the frontier, these numer-
ous and flattering distinctions, coming from
all points of the horizon, are full of promise
for the immortality of his work. It is un-
doubtedly the case that foreigners benefit by
a degree of remoteness which is favourable
to sane judgment. For that matter, as far as
Fabre is concerned, the favourable verdict of
his peers is surrounded by hardly fewer
guarantees of impartiality in France than
abroad, for this worthy son of the Rouergue
has never been of those who seek to obtain
honours by any of the means that achieve
success through intrigue or influence, and we
may without paradox say that it is farther
from his village to Paris than from Paris to
London ; from obscurity in his village to
fame in Paris than from fame in Paris to
fame in London and other capitals.

Nevertheless, legitimately acquired and
well founded though it might be, Fabre's
great scientific reputation had hardly extended
beyond the limits of the academies and the
somewhat restricted circle of professional
biologists and naturalists, or that of a few
359

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

amateurs who were better informed than
their fellows, or more perspicacious in the
choice of their reading.

Was it not just to exhibit, beyond this
circle of initiates, achievements that be-
longed to all and had all the qualities
requisite for popularity? Was it not right
to draw this great man out of the obscurity
in which he had so long shut himself up, and
at last to place this distinguished figure on
the magnificent pedestal built up by half a
century's work of the highest value, and the
greater part of a century of a poor and
laborious life? So thought the friends and
admirers of the hermit of Serignan, who or-
ganised, last year, the celebration of his
jubilee, and, in the Press, cited him in the
order of the day.

These celebrations took place in the fa-
miliar rustic setting so dear to the aged scien-
tist. It was a morning of April, in the little
village of Vaucluse which we need not name,
at the edge of the enclosure where for more
than forty years he has kept rendezvous
with his insects, on the threshold of the house
that shelters his studious retirement. The
venerable naturalist was there, surrounded
by the members of his beloved family, his
constant collaborators, with whose names he

360

A Great Preparation

loved to sprinkle the pages of his books. To
greet him came the worthy folk of Serignan,
justly proud of him, his friends from far and
near, and the delegates of the learned so-
cieties of France and foreign countries, with
whom the representatives of the State, the
Sub-prefect of Orange and the Prefect of
Avignon, had the good taste to associate
themselves.

At the moment when an unexpected ray of
sunlight filtered through the clouds like a
caress and a benediction from Heaven upon
the head of the old scientist, ever faithful to
the call of the Power on high, France and
Sweden, to mention only the most eager,
joined in crowning him with laurels; France
offering him a magnificent gold plaque in the
name of the Academy of Sciences, and
Sweden the Linnaean Medal in the name of
the Royal Academy of Stockholm. France —
or rather, the Academic Franchise — has
since then offered a further evidence of her
admiration by granting him the largest of
its money prizes and unanimously recom-
mending him to the jury entrusted with the
award of the Nobel Prize.

There are seldom fetes without banquets
or banquets without speeches. Among the
speeches delivered at Serignan at the banquet

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

of April 3rd, we must at least mention M.
Perrier's, from which we give an extract on
the first page of this book. It may be found
in extenso in the Revue scientifique for the
7th of May, 1910. The series of toasts was
followed by the reading of numerous tele-
grams of congratulation, the most loudly
applauded of these being that of M. Edmond
Rostand, which ran as follows:

Prevented from being in your midst, I am never-
theless in spirit with those who are to-day honour-
ing a man worthy of all admiration, one of the
purest glories of France, the great scientist whose
work I admire, the profound and racy poet, the
Virgil of the insects, who has brought us to our
knees in the grass, the hermit whose life is the most
wonderful example of wisdom, the noble figure
that, under its black felt hat, makes Serignan the
complement of Maillane.

It must be recorded that Maillane had
cordially united with Serignan, and that
poetry and science were at one in celebrating
the fame of the man who has justly been
called the poet of entomology.

Such, in its most salient features, was the
festival which consecrated, a little late in the
day, one of our purest national glories.

This homage had not the ephemeral char-
acter of most jubilees, even scientific ones. It
362

A Great Preparation

found more than one echo, and had an after-
math throughout the country. We will not
insist further upon the eager, enthusiastic
interest extended by the public to the new
edition of the Souvenirs, and the publication
of La Vie des Insectes and Les Maeurs des
Insectes, which are volumes of selected ex-
tracts from the Souvenirs, nor even on the
decoration of the Legion of Honour which
so justly raised to the rank of officer him who
had been a simple chevalier for forty years.

But we must refer at somewhat greater
length to the three proofs of admiration
which must have found their way most surely
to his heart.

The first, to which we have already
alluded, came from the highest literary au-
thority of France, and, we might say, of the
world. In his report on the literary prizes
awarded by the Academic Franchise, M.
Thureau-Dangui devoted the following pas-
sage to our friend:

I have reserved to the last the largest of our
direct prizes, the Nee prize, awarded to the author
of the Souvenirs entomologiques, M. Jean-Henri
Fabre. He cannot, at all events, be accused of in-
discreet solicitation. In his hermitage at Serignan,
where he has pursued a long life of toil, a life so
modest that despite the most wonderful discov-
363

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

cries it was for a long time a life of obscurity, M.
Fabre gave not a thought to the Academic Fran-
c.aise, which is all the better pleased to show that it
was thinking of him.

M. Fabre has, indeed, too clear a vision and too
sane a mind not to perceive the problems of a
philosophical order which arise from the wonder-
ful data of his discoveries. At every step, in the
mysterious domain of instinct, reason cannot fail
to divine, beyond the little kingdom explored by
observation, the unfathomable secrets of creation.

To all, even to those who believe themselves
least interested in matters of natural history, I can-
not refrain from saying: "Read these narratives;
you will appreciate their charm, their geniality,
their simplicity, their life; you will fall in love
with this delightful science, which is pursued day
after day in the beautiful summer weather, " to the
song of the Cicadae;" this science which is truly
Latin, Virgilian at times, which goes hand in hand
with poetry, which is so imbued with love that it
sometimes seems as though there arose, from these
humble entomological souvenirs, a strophe of the
canticle of created things.1

A mark of homage, which, indeed, adds
nothing to the fame of the celebrated laureate
of the Institute and so many other learned
Academies, but which deserves mention here
because it certainly touched a fibre of the old
scientist's heart which all the rest might have

1 Session of the 8th December 1910.
364

A Great Preparation

failed to stir, is that which was accorded him
by the little Society which gathers about the
belfry of Rodez the intellectual elite of his
own country-side.

The records of the Socle te des lettres, sci-
ences et arts de I'Aveyron contain, in the min-
utes of the session of the zyth October 1910,
a communication from the president of the
Society which closes with the words :

In order to associate ourselves in some fashion
with the unanimous bestowal of honours and eulogy
of which this venerable old man is at present the
recipient, we propose to accord him the title of
honorary member. It is the highest distinction at
our disposal, and we think he will accept it with
sympathy.

Needless to say that the whole assembly
accepted their president's proposal with en-
thusiasm and by acclamation. Some time
later the famous naturalist wrote to the So-
ciety, through his present biographer, a
touching letter of thanks, in which he said,
among other things, that, coming from his
own country, this distinction had been very
precious to him. The delicate feeling ex-
pressed in these words gives us to hope that
the contribution to the work of reparation
which we have sought to make will not be
without some value in his eyes.
365

I

CHAPTER XXII

THE LAST HEIGHTS * (1910-1915)
I

N the year 1910 Fame flung the gate of

the harmas wide open. Coming late, she
seemed anxious to repair her long neglect.

The process of reparation continued. It
grew fuller, more marked, and burst into a
splendid apotheosis during the following
years.

Scientists as a class had accused Fabre of
mixing up Horace and Virgil with his en-
tomological adventures. He was despised
for quoting these authors; he was placed
upon the Index for introducing grace and pas-
sion into studies which officially were dry
and cold as statistics. But in joining the
Academie Francaise on the occasion of the
jubilee of 1910, the Academie des Sciences
gloriously avenged this unjust and Phari-
saical disdain.

But there were yet some of " time's re-

1This chapter was written by the Abbe Fabre espe-
cially for the English edition.— B. M.
366

The Last Heights

venges " to be taken for the injustice which
Fabre had suffered.

We have spoken of his early struggles in
the University, of his career, first hampered,
then shattered, of the jealousies and persecu-
tions evoked by this " irregular " self-taught
pioneer; no doubt the work of a triumphant
clique, which eventually drove him from the
house and slammed the door. This was, as
the reader may remember, on the occa-
sion of his lecture to young girls at Saint-
Martial.

But now, on the 23rd of April 1911, a
fresh invasion of young girls, almost all
pupils of the University, burst into the
harmas.1 And what had they to say? That
they came from Paris to visit the glories of
Provence, and that next to Mistral they had
wished to see Fabre, after the " emperor of
poetry," the " king of science," and they made
it clear that it was not only to the scientist,
but still more to the pioneer, the initiator —
or why not say, with them, to the most
illustrious of " cronies " 2 — that the girl
" cronies," as they called one another in their
group, had come to present their heart-felt

1 This was the pilgrimage of the young girls of the
Universite des Annales politiques et litleraires.

- The French words are " Cousins,"" Cousines." Cousin
trcousin, good friend, crony. — B. M.

367

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

homage. Who to-day would dare to contest
their right to become his pupils, to seek with
him " the freshest honey and the most poeti-
cal observations of the insects that people
the boughs and the flowers," to enter with
him into the secret of all these little lives,
" which are, like ourselves," they said,
" creatures of the good God " ?

And serious personages l from the pre-
cincts of the Academic and the Universite de
France lent voice and gesture to the ingenu-
ous utterance of radiant youth, which de-
lightfully made amends for the past.

There was another official authority, the
highest of all, to which Fabre had not much
reason to be grateful. Long and brilliant
services in the cause of public instruction,
scientific works of the highest order, need
of leisure and resources for his investiga-
tions, family responsibilities, and the struggle
for life — what claims did not these represent
to distinction and to the generosity of the
public authorities ! But what part or lot had
he in these in reality? One might almost
say none. One day, as though by chance, the
perspicacity of a Minister of the Empire had
all but rescued him from poverty and ob-
livion. A mere accident without sequence:

1 Jules Claretie, Jean Richepin, Adolphe Brisson, etc.
368

The Last Heights

for it was immediately followed by the total
collapse of the Empire and the institution of
the Republic. Fabre was not even among
the number of the pensioned!

It needed the trumpet-blast of the jubilee
(1910) to remind the authorities to com-
plete the beau geste of Victor Duruy, and
after forty years to replace the rosette of the
Legion of the Cross. And it took the loud
outcry of indignation uttered by Mistral and
the strong feeling aroused by the report,
which was echoed by the whole Press, of
their involuntary debt to the ex-professor, to
obtain for the nonagenarian a pension of two
thousand francs (£80) a year, which was
nearly fifty years in arrears !

The reparation was far from adequate;
but it could not be made by means of money.

" Come at once, or I will have my gen-
darmes bring you." In summoning him thus
to the Court in order to see and decorate this
fine but timid genius, the Emperor, in 1869,
had performed a generous action. The
President of the Republic did still better,
when, in 1913, in the course of his tour
through Provence, he sought to honour by his
visit him who had so greatly honoured his
mother-country and his native and adopted
provinces.

369

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

Fabre, who was then in his ninetieth year,
and could no longer stand upright, awaited
M. Poincare sitting in a chair before the
threshold of his house, surrounded by his
family; on his right hand stood the Sister
who was watching over his welfare.

A week before the President's visit, 1 went
to Serignan to see my distinguished relative
and to bless the marriage of his son Paul
Henri.

In the familiar intimacy of this family
celebration he told me, as a piece of good
news: "It is possible that I shall soon re-
ceive a visit from Monseigneur the Arch-
bishop of Avignon." He said this with a
marked satisfaction which was very unlike
his usual detachment.

I understood at once that his mind was
harking back to the evil days of 1 870 and con-
trasting them with the present. What did
not happen in that disastrous year? Victor
Duruy had just instituted courses of lectures
for adults in order to make up for the de-
ficiencies of popular education. Young girls
were especially invited to these lectures. On
the pretext of opening the golden doors of
science to them it was hoped — no mystery
has been made of the matter since — to
emanicipate them from the tutelage of the
370

The Last Heights

clergy," 1 to remove them from, or to dis-
pute, the influence of the Church. The
scientist, enamoured of the beauty of natural
history, saw in this venture merely an oppor-
tunity for diffusing the knowledge and appre-
ciation of his science among the people. Ac-
cordingly he opened a course of evening
lectures in the old Abbey of Saint-Martial.
And in the crowd that flocked eagerly to hear
him beneath the vaulted roof of the old dis-
affected church were squads of young girls,
more numerous at every lecture, enchanted by
the magic of his teaching, by its lucidity and
vitality. Who could object to such a suc-
cess? Yet there were those who objected.
A perfect cross-fire of criticism and complaint
arose from the Church and the University.
Fabre replied fearlessly, not without a touch
of offended pride. The quarrel became
embittered. Some went so far as to denounce
him publicly and to point out, from the van-
tage of the pulpit, the dangers of his teach-
ing. Shortly afterwards the municipality
dismissed him from his office as conservator
of the Musee Requien, without regard to his
family responsibilities, which were then con-
siderable.

When he visited Fabre in 1914 Monseig-

1 E. Lavisse, quoted by Dr. Legros, op. cit., p. 81.
371

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

neur Latty was fully aware of these proceed-
ings, and of the exodus which followed them,
and also of the painful impression which it
had produced upon Fabre, and the bitter-
sweet reflections to which it still at times
gave rise. Did the eminent prelate approach
the illustrious old scientist bearing an olive
branch as well as the golden laurel ? I do not
know; but the fact is that this first interview
was quickly followed by a second, which was
still more friendly, and from that moment
Fabre never again spoke of and did not seem
even to remember the privations of the past.
One reflection naturally occurs to us here,
and it is rather an attempt to be just than a
plea pro domo. Because once in his life the
great naturalist was confronted by the hos-
tility of certain persons belonging to the
world of religion, need we erase from his
carefully secularised history all that connects
him with the Church, from the motherly ca-
resses of the " holy woman " who assuaged
his first griefs to the tender care of the
worthy Sister who consoled his last suffer-
ings? Must we forget that he was admitted
as pupil-teacher to the lycee at Rodez, as
pupil to the seminary of Toulouse and the
Normal College of Avignon on the recom-
mendation of M. 1'Abbe d'Aiguillon-Pujol,
372

The Last Heights

his old Rodez headmaster? Are we to say
nothing of his articles in the Revue scien-
tifique of Brussels, one of the principal
organs of Catholic science, or of his very
important contributions to the classic series
published under the editorship of M. 1'Abbe
Combes? If we are, rightly, deeply inter-
ested in the smallest details of his life and
all that concerns him, are we to say nothing
of his friendly relations with his cure * or of
the religious practices of his family and
household, or of his generous participation
in all the works of charity in his parish, not
excepting the free school?

" Neither of Armagnac nor a Burgun-
dian"; neither secular nor clerical. The
truth is that if we consider the matter can-
didly, without bandaging our eyes and with-
out exclusive prejudice, Fabre should serve
as a bond of union rather than a bone of
contention.

The ex-Director of the Beaux-Arts, Henry
Roujon, who was a fervant apostle of na-
tional concord, used to say: "Statutes are
only lastingly beautiful if the sons of the
same mother can inaugurate them without
railing at one another."

Fabre, according to this maxim, might well

1 M. 1'Abbe Germain, ex-cure of Serignan.

373

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

have statues erected to him. And speaking
of statues, we must not, having mentioned the
orators, forget the artists. All the illus-
trated periodicals had already popularised
the original, eloquent physiognomy of our
hero. This was too ephemeral a homage for
his admirers. His features must be chiselled
in marble and exposed under the blue sky to
the delighted and affectionate eyes of his com-
patriots. Provence was the first to propose
the idea. Le Rouergue followed. Avignon,
Orange, and Serignan each wanted their
monument. Saint-Leons profited by its right
of seniority to take precedence of Rodez and
Maillane.

" Nous voulions te feter vivant
Doux patriarche et grand savant,
Et fier amant de la nature,
Et le Rouergue ou tu nacquis
Et la Provence ou tu conquis
Le laurier d'or qui toujours dure.1

(We wished to honour you living,

Gentle patriarch and great scientist,

And proud lover of Nature,

Both Le Rouergue where you were born,

And Provence where you won

The golden laurel that lasts for ever.)

1 Francois Fabie.

374

The Last Heights

The first subscription-list was opened by
the Normal College of Avignon, and a spe-
cial appeal was made to the schoolmasters of
Vaucluse and the rest of France. Other ap-
peals were addressed to all without distinc-
tion, and the subscriptions flowed in from all
sides, from scientists and men of letters,
priests and schoolmasters, bourgeois and
workers in town and country, to whom it was
explained that the statue was in honour of
one of themselves who had achieved great-
ness by his labours.

He himself, in his modesty, wished all to
regard him only as a diligent student.

" Master," ventured an intimate of the
harmas one day, " they are talking of putting
up a statue of you close by here."

" Well, well ! I shall see myself, but shall
I recognise myself? I've had so little time
for looking at myself! "

" What inscription would you prefer? "

" One word: Laboremus."

What lesson was ever more necessary than
this eloquent reminder of the great law of
labour! But this grand old man, who by
labour has achieved fame, teaches us yet an-
other lesson of even rarer quality.

Let us hear him confiding his impressions
to a friend: "The Mayor of Serignan, it
375

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

seems, proposes to erect a bust of me. At
this very moment I have, staying in the house,
the sculptor Charpentier, who is making my
statue for a monument they are going to set
up in the Normal College of Avignon. In
my opinion there's a good deal of the beauti-
ful saints about it! " x

This reminds us of a remark whispered
into a neighbour's ear on the occasion of the
jubilee celebrations, in the midst of all the
fashionable folk by whom he was sur-
rounded : " I must be very queer to look at ! "

Here is a more sober if not more weighty
remark. One day some one was reminding
him, in my presence, of all the marks of
honour lavished upon him during his last two
days. I heard him reply quickly with the fa-
mous apostrophe : Maratorrj^ ^araiorrfrcov,
nal ndvra fitaTaidrrfS.*

He had another manner, perhaps still more
expressive, of rendering the same idea: he
would puff into the air a cloud of smoke from
his pipe, which never left him, and, before

1 In Provence, as in Italy, the plaster statues sold by
itinerant Italians are known as santi belli = beautiful
saints.— B. M.

2 The text is from Ecclesiastes, i. 2 : " Vanity of van-
ities, all is vanity," but Fabre cites it according to the
Discours contre Eutrope, in which he had learnt it at
school, alluding to the appropriate reflection of Saint
John Chrysostom: "A« pev, pakinra Zevnve ^xaLP°v eiiretv:
uaraidrtif, etc. (Semper quidem, nunc vero maxime
opportunum est dicere: Vanitas, etc.

The Last Heights

the blue vanishing spiral : " That," he would
say, " is human glory ! "

Here we recognise the man whom Rostand
represented as follows in the verses inscribed
upon a bas-relief which makes his collection
of sonnets, entitled Fabre-des-Insectes, as it
were the pendant of Charpentier's monu-
ment:

" C'est un homme incline, modeste et magistral,
Pensif — car dans ses doigts il a tenu des ailes
Poursuivant les honneurs moins que les sauterelles."

(A man who stoops, modest and magisterial,
Thoughtful — for in his fingers he has held wings,
Pursuing honours less than the grasshoppers.)

II

The fine and unusual qualities of Fabre's
career consist in this; he has attained fame
while seeking nothing but truth : and what a
truth! — the truth concealed in the humblest
of created things 1

Before Fabre's time entomology was a
poor little science, with no savour of life or
freshness about it, without a ray of sunshine,
without a soul; like those poor little insects
under glass or stuck on pins, which it was its
mission to study.

In his hands and in his books, as though by
377

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

magic, entomology became truly a living sci-
ence, provided with wings — the wings of
imagination and poetry, of thought and
philosophy.

It is a far cry from the dense materialism
of the " dust-to-dust " scientists who content
themselves with dissecting poor little mur-
dered bodies to the winged spiritualism of
this open-air entomologist, interrogating with
his bright, loving glance these little insect
souls, at once so wonderful and so uncon-
scious. And they all tell him the same
thing: Ipse fecit nos et non ipsi nos.1 (It is
He that hath made us, and not we ourselves.)

Some one has said, and it is a saying worth
repeating, so just and admirable is it, and so
characteristic of the man and his work:
With Fabre we have every moment, so to
speak, the feeling, the surprise, of rising to-
ward the infinitely great while stooping over
the infinitely little.

Of this scientist, this philosopher, whose
mind soars so readily from the " little
things " to the great, to the " very great,"
from the little curiosities of observation to
the great problems that are to be encountered
in the higher domains of thought, his friends
conceived the idea of demanding a synthesis

1 Psalm too, verse 3.

378

The Last Heights

of the reflections scattered through the pages
of the Souvenirs.
This was his reply:

Because I have shifted a few grains of sand upon
the shore, am I in a position to understand the
abysmal depths of the ocean? Life has unfathom-
able secrets. Human knowledge will be erased
from the world's archives before we know the last
word concerning a gnat.

Thus the Homer, the Plato of the insects.
He is utterly unassuming. He will not allow
his admirers to impose upon him. He does
not allow himself to be snared by the lure of
vivid, brilliant language, nor by the intoxicat-
ing problems of inner truths whose surface
he grazes. According to him the sum of all
his work has been but to " shift a few grains
of sand upon the shore " of knowledge, and
it is useless for him to endeavour to sound
the mysteries of life; he has not even
learned — he does not even think it possible to
human knowledge to learn — " the last word
concerning a gnat."

Does this imply that he has relapsed into
scepticism; that finally, in despair, he re-
nounces the ambition of his whole life, vitam
impendtre vero? By no means. He has
striven to attain it even beyond his strength.
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When he considers himself incapable of
adding further volumes to his work he busies
himself with preparing a definitive edition,
and in a touching farewell to his beloved
studies he declares that they are so full of
charm and unexplored marvels that could he
live several lives he would devote them all to
them without ever succeeding in " exhausting
their interest."

There we have Fabre. After labouring all
his life without troubling about fame, plough-
ing his straight furrow like his peasant fore-
bears, like them, when the night has come, he
simply binds his sheaves with a humble and
profound realisation of the narrow limits of
his work as compared with the immensity of
the world and the infinite mystery of things.

It is a fine spectacle, that of the entomolo-
gist on the summits of science, as of fame,
raising himself, by his humility, above both,
and fully prepared, to return to Him toward
whom aspire those souls that have attained
the limit of human climbing:

O Jesu corona celsior
Et veritas sublimlor.

Ill

Neither science nor fame could prevent
him from suffering. To begin with, there is
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The Last Heights

suffering attaching to these, for all labour has
its burden, all light its shadow.

This none knew better than he whose
genius was a protracted patience and his life
a hard-fought battle. And as though it was
his destiny to suffer to the end, he did suffer
still when the tardy hour of his fame had
struck. Was it not an ordeal still to be as-
sailed by visits and speeches when " nothing
was left but rest and silence " ? How can a
man delight in the incense of his admirers
when he is broken with fatigue?

To express this contrast, to show that all
was not unmixed joy in these flattering visits
to the patriarch of Serignan, I will borrow
the delicate brush of an artist friend of
Fabre's:

Night falls upon Serignan, serene, limpid, vio-
let and amethyst. The sounds of day fade one by
one. Still a few distant hoots from the horns of
motor-cars flying along the dusty roads, or the
sound of a dog baying the new moon, which shows
its slender sickle on the horizon; sometimes, too,
as though to eclipse the first stars, a rocket roars, a
prelude to the fireworks which are about to con-
clude the apotheosis. . . . J. H. Fabre, the hero of
the fete, the lover of the Sphex, the Mantis, the
Dung-beetle, is very tired. Think of it — ninety years
of age, and almost ninety years of labour! . . . and
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

a world-wide reputation to sustain . . . and visits
to receive. Xo-day it was the visit of a Minister
and all the flies on the ministerial wheel. And he
had to return thanks, feeling upon him the eyes of
the reporters and the photographer's lens. What
an ordeal! Fabre can hold out no longer! . . .

Do you not feel that the harvest of fame at
ninety years of age and after almost ninety
years of labour is perhaps even more painful
than the harvest of science in the ardour of
youth ?

Meditating upon his history, with its full
days and hours, Fabie, in a delightful flight
of imagination, shows us the harassed en-
tomologist escaping from the past to find
himself alone with his thoughts and his be-
loved insects. " He slips silently to the gate
of his harmas. There he lies down on a bank
thickly carpeted with lavender and withered
couch-grass "... A few moments pass.
His children intervene : " he is relaxing him-
self, stretching himself, soothed, happy as a
little child. — * But, father, you aren't think-
ing! When the dew is falling!' 'Ah, my
children, why did you wake me ? I was hav-
ing such a beautiful dream ! ' For in his
sleep he had entered into conversation with
the crickets of his native country-side."

Fatigue of the body, weariness of the mind,
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and a breaking heart! Suffering pressed
closely upon him at the close of his days.

" It is better to be loved than to be cele-
brated," said Aubanel, the delicate poet of
Avignon. As long as Fabre had beside him
his beloved brother, his adored wife, and his
darling children, he was at least conscious of
a kindly atmosphere of memories, and of
tenderness that made up for what he lacked
and helped him to endure his afflictions with
serene resignation.

But now, little by little, there came a void
about him. Death has its surprises and life
its demands.

With the death of his wife, in July 1912,
half his own soul died. With that of his
brother, in 1913, his life was almost wholly
shattered, crushed, buried in the tomb.

With the marriage of the last of his sons
and his two youngest daughters almost all the
life of the house, all the caressing grace of
light, considerate footfalls, of clear tender
voices, of smiles and kisses, had forsaken the
old man, to return only in passing and at dis-
tant intervals. His isolation became more
and more complete.

Was all over? No, this was hardly the
beginning of his afflictions. In the great
silence of the harmas there burst of a sudden
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

the terrible thunderclap of war which roused
to a protest of intolerable grief the uttermost
fibres of his being.

The whole man suffered. The French-
man, to see his beloved country the victim of
the brutal and underhand aggression of a
predatory nation: the father to see his dear
children, a son and two sons-in-law, cast into
the furnace; the idealist and the great-
hearted man who had held war to be a relic
of barbarism, doomed to disappear from
the annals of the human race, to see war de-
clared, and spreading with the violence of a
conflagration, surpassing in horror all that
history tells us of the armed conflicts of the
past.

Before the bloody vision of the battle-
fields, how should he not feel shaken to the
depths of his being by the tremors of a ter-
rible anger and a vast pity, he who had
never been able to see an insect suffering
without a pang at the heart?

True, in his incomparable Iliad, the
Homer of the Insects had often described
creatures that hunt one another, kill one an-
other, devour one another with indescribable
ardour and ferocity, and he knew that he
had only written a chapter of that " struggle
for life " which is to be found on every step
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of the biological ladder, with the same dis-
regard of weakness and suffering.

But he would fain have seen man assert
his superiority over the animals by repress-
ing these instincts, which come from below,
by the free flight of the aspirations vouch-
safed from above, by the progressive subor-
dination of the brute power of force to the
spiritual power of justice and love.

While these distressing problems were
filling his mind, and while, in protest against
happenings so utterly contrary to his ideas,
he would thump his fist upon his famous little
table, a woman was moving gently to and
fro, playing the parts, alternately, with the
same calm countenance, of Martha and of
Mary; and when he asked her her secret, she
showed him her crucifix and read the Gospel
to him, as though to wring from his heart the
cry that was uttered by the poet of La Bonne
Souff ranee : 1

" Vingt siecles de bonte sont sortis de ces mysteres,
Je crois en toi, Jesus . . ."

In moments of affliction, Fabre is even
closer to the Truth than on the heights of
knowledge and fame. For we are never

1 Franchise Coppee.

385

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

nearer the God of the Gospel than when we
most feel the want of Him.

IV

More than ninety years of life and almost
as many of labour, nearly five years of over-
whelming fame, and almost as many of un-
speakable suffering: must not a man be
" built of heart of oak," as they say in
Aveyron, to survive so many trials?

Like the oaks of his native parts, the pa-
triarch of Serignan continued to brave the
assaults of time, and even when he began to
feel that his life was declining, it seemed as
though it was only withdrawing itself from
its long and manifold ramifications in the
external world to take refuge, as in an inex-
pugnable asylum, in the depths and roots of
his being. He was one of those of whom
people say with us that they " cannot die."

Fabre's work is immortal — that is agreed.
But the artisan?

Let us resume our comparison. Like the
oak that loses its boughs, one after the other,
he saw falling one by one the several factors
of his life. His life was the harmas, that
paradise of insects, that laboratory after his
own heart, where he could make his observa-
tions under the blue sky, to the song of the
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Cicadas, amid the thyme, lavender, and rose-
mary. Now he was seen there no longer;
hardly were the traces of his footsteps yet
visible through the untrimmed boughs that
crossed the paths and the grass that was
invading them.

His life: it was his study, his museum of
natural history, his laboratory, where, with
closed doors, face to face with Nature, he
repeated, in order to perfect them, to con-
sign them to writing, his open-air researches,
his observations of the to-day or yesterday.
Now he no longer sets foot in it, and now
one saw — with what respect and tenderness
i — only the marks left by his footsteps upon
the tiled floor, as he came and went about the
big observation-table, which occupies all the
middle of the room, in pursuit of the solu-
tion of the problems propounded by his
insects.

And we have a feeling that we are look-
ing upon, and handling, relics, when on this
table we still see the pocket-lenses, the micro-
scopes and modest apparatus which has
served for his experiments. And we have
the same feeling before the collections in the
glass-topped cases of polished pine which
stand against the whitewashed walls, and
before the hundred and twenty volumes of
387

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

the magnificent herbarium which stand in a
row beneath them, and before the innumer-
able portfolios of mycological plates, in
which vivid colour is blended so well with
delicacy of drawing, and before the registers
and stacks of notes in ifine, clear handwriting,
without erasures, which promised a fresh
series of Souvenirs.

Must they be left thus abandoned previous
to their being dispersed or falling into other
hands — all these precious fragments of an
incomparable life, and these venerable
premises, consecrated by such rare memo-
ries?

The great naturalist's disciples could not
resign themselves to the thought, and by a
touching inspiration of filial piety they have
found the means to secure these treasures, as
by a love stronger than death, against this
harrowing dispersal.

To keep the dead in their last dwelling, or
attract them thither, the ancient Egyptians
used to place there the image of their earthly
dwelling, offering them at least a reduced
facsimile of their life's environment, of the
objects and premises which had in some
sort made part of their life and their soul.

Fabre's friends sought to do still better.
In order to preserve it in its integrity, they
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The Last Heights

determined to acquire the Harmas, with its
plantations, its collections, and all its de-
pendencies, and in order to make their
homage as complete as possible they made,
with this object, an appeal for international
subscriptions, which were unhappily inter-
rupted by the war.

u This is the museum which we wish to
dedicate to him," said the chief promoter of
this pious undertaking,1 " so that in after
years, when the good sage who knew the
language of the innumerable little creatures
of the country-side shall rest beneath the
cypresses of his harmas, at the foot of the
laurestinus bushes, amidst the thyme and the
sage that the bees will still rifle, all those
whom he has taught, all those whom he has
charmed, may feel that something of his soul
still wanders in his garden and animates his
house."

However, the soul of the " good sage "
which they thus sought to capture and hold
here on earth — in short, to imprison in his
work and its environment — made its escape
and took flight toward loftier regions and
wider horizons.

To see him in the twilight of the dining-

1 Dr. Legros, Les Annales politiques et litteraires, April
12, 1914.

389

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

room where he silently finished his life, ma-
jestically leaning back in his arm-chair, with
his best shirt and old-fashioned necktie, his
eyes still bright in his emaciated face, his
lips fine and still mobile, but thin with age
and at moments trembling with emotion, or
moved by a sudden inspiration — to see him
thus, would you not say that he was still
observing? Yes, but his observations are
now of an invisible world, a world even
richer in mysteries and revelations than the
world below, so patiently explored for more
than fifty years.

One day, when two professors of
the Grand-Seminaire de Saint-Paul-Trois-
Chateaux * had come to see him, as the time
drew near to bid them good-bye, the old man
held out his hands and tucked them under
their arms, and, not without difficulty, rose
from his arm-chair, and arm-in-arm with
them advanced, tile by tile, to the threshold
of the house, whither he had determined to
accompany them. Suddenly, pressing their
arms more closely and alluding to their cas-
socks and their vocation, he said, energeti-
cally: "You have chosen the better part";
and, holding them back for a last word, he

iThe Abbe Joseph Betton and his friend, the Abbe
Juiot.

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added: "Life is a horrible phantasmagoria.
But it leads us to a better future."

This future the naturalist liked to con-
ceive in accordance with the images familiar
to his mind, as being a more complete under-
standing of the great book of which he had
deciphered only a few words, as a more
perfect communion with the offices of nature,
in the incense of the perfumes " that are
softly exhaled by the carven flowers from
their golden censers," amid the delightful
symphonies in which are mingled the voices
of crickets and Cicadae, chaffinches and sis-
kins, skylarks and goldfinches, " those tiny
choristers," all singing and fluttering, " trill-
ing their motets to the glory of Him who
gave them voice and wings on the fifth day
of Genesis." x

This last passage might be underlined, for
now more than ever, in our thoughts of this
scientist, of whom it has been said that " with
a taste for Nature he has given us an ap-
preciation of God," the work cannot be
divorced from the artisan without the
grossest inconsistency.

One who had the good fortune to become
intimate with Fabre during the last days
of his life tells how eagerly the naturalist

i J. H. Fabre, cited by Dr. Legros.
391

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

used to accept the wild flowers which he
brought in from his walks, how tenderly he
would caress them with his frail fingers and
brilliant eyes. Both looks and gestures ex-
pressed an infinite admiration for the pure
and simple work of Nature as God has or-
dained it:

" And when one evening," says his friend,
" I remarked that these little miracles
clearly proved the existence of a divine
Artificer: * For me, I do not believe in God,'
declared the scientist, repeating for the last
time his famous and paradoxical profession
of faith : ' I do not believe in God, because
I see Him in all things and everywhere.' "

Another day he expressed his firm and
profound conviction to the same friend, in
a slightly different form. " God is Light ! "
he said dreamily. — " And you always see
Him shining?" "No," he said suddenly,
"God does not shine; He obtrudes Him-
self."

The man who thus bows before God has
truly attained, on the heights of human
knowledge, what we may call with him the
threshold of eternal life. To him God sends
His angels to open the gates, that he may
enter by the straight paths of the Gospel
and the Church.

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After the death of Mme. Fabre in 1912, a
nursing Sister of the Congregation of Saint-
Roch de Viviers was installed at the
Harmas; her name was Sister Adrienne.

The old man appreciated her services so
greatly that he was overcome with dejection
by the very thought that she might be re-
called by her superiors, according to the rule
of her Order, after the lapse of a certain
period of time. And he would gratefully
press her hand when the good Sister sought
to relieve his anxiety and inspire him with
the hope that she would be allowed to re-
main in his service till the end of his days.

He found her simplicity, her delicacy, her
good nature, and her devotion so delightful
that he could not refrain from telling her so
plainly in the direct, forcible manner familiar
to him: " You are invaluable, Sister; you are
admirable. I love religion as you practise
it."

" He has often told me," she writes,
" that when he could not sleep at night, he
used to pray, to think of God, and address to
Him a prayer which he would himself com-
pose."

In the spring of 1914 the aged naturalist,
who was more than ninety years of age, felt
that his strength was failing more per-
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

ceptibly, so that the doctors diagnosed a fatal
outcome in the near future.

On receiving the news of this alarming
condition, Monseigneur the Archbishop of
Avignon hastened to the Harmas. The in-
valid expressed his delight and gratitude for
the visit. Their relations were so cordial
that the prelate decided to continue them by
a series of admirable letters which have for-
tunately been published.

In these letters, with great delicacy, Mon-
seigneur Latty avoided all that might run
contrary to the naturalist's opinions, and very
gently endeavoured to induce him to die as
a Christian.

To draw him more surely to the light that
shines from the Cross and the grace which
raises the soul above itself, he asks him to
recite every evening, in unison with him, the
beautiful prayer of the dying Saviour, which
he calls " the prayer of the heights," the
height of Golgotha, the height of life: In
manus tuus Domine commendo spiritum
meum. (Into Thy hands, O Lord, I com-
mend my spirit.)

However, Fabre was not yet at the end of

his Calvary. Contrary to the expectation of

the doctors, a return of strength enabled him

to live to see another Spring, and it needed

394

The Last Heights

nothing less than the terrible shocks of the
tempest unloosed upon Europe to overcome
the powers of resistance that had braved so
many storms.

During the summer of 1915 his weakness
grew more marked, so that there was no
hope of many more days of life. The cure
of Serignan having been mobilised, the ab-
sence of the priest at this time was a cause
of great anxiety to Sister Adrienne — always
on the watch for the soul ready to escape
her.

Providence happily came to her assistance;
and a Breton priest, who had come to the
South to recover his health, and had for some
time been acquainted with the master, was
admitted to terms of intimacy. After some
hesitation he decided to speak to the scientist
of the Sacrament of Penitence. With that
beautiful simplicity of his, and to the
astonishment of the priest, Fabre, who
seemed expecting the invitation, replied:

" Whenever you will."

" Purified by absolution, fortified by the
Extreme Unction, received, in full conscious-
ness, into the Church, Fabre displayed a won-
derful serenity. Pressing the hand of the
priest who was officiating, he listened to the
recommendation of the soul. And when he
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The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

heard the sacred words that were familiar
to him — In mantis tuust Domine — his lips
moved as though to pronounce the Amen of
supreme acceptance, while his gaze, which
was beginning to grow dim, settled upon the
Sister's crucifix."

It was the nth October 1915, at six
o'clock of the evening, that the great scientist
so gently surrendered his soul to God.

The obsequies, celebrated on the i6th
October, " were simple and affecting, as he
would have liked them to be. For a few
moments before leaving the church, the
old naturalist's fine face was again exposed.
It reflected an immense serenity. On his
peaceful features one divined the satisfaction
of the man who is departing with his work
accomplished. In his parchment-like hands
he clasped a wooden crucifix with ivory tips.
Beside his head was a wreath of laurestinus.
Beside one arm was his great black felt hat."

The service was celebrated by the Arch-
priest of Orange, in the little church; and
then the harsh, rocky soil received the body
of him who had so often stooped over it.

This " life of J. H. Fabre told by him-
self " would not be complete if we did not
give here the text of the epitaph which he
himself had composed beforehand. It is
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The Last Heights

magnificent: it gives one the impression of an
unfurling of wings :

" Quos periisse putamus

Przemissi sunt.
Minima finis, sed limen
Vitze excelsioris."

Fabre was preceded to the tomb by several
months by Mistral, who was seven years his
junior. " Very different in an equal fame,
these two men are inseparable. Mistral and
Fabre both represented Provence; one was
born there and never left it, and to some
extent created it; the other adopted and was
adopted by it, and, like his illustrious com-
patriot, covered it with glory." x

But while Fabre represented Provence,
which saw the unfolding of his rich and vital
nature, and while it lavished upon him all
the beauty of its sky, all the brilliance of its
Latin soul, all the savour of its musical and
picturesque language, and all the entomo-
logical wealth of its sunny hills, he none the
less represents the Rouergue, whence he de-
rived his innate qualities and his earliest
habits, his love of nature and the insects, his

1 E. Laguet, Annales politiques et litteraires, April t.
1914.

397

The Life of Jean Henri Fabre

thirst for God and the Beyond, his indefatig-
able love of work, his tenacious enthusiasm
for study, his irresistible craving for soli-
tude, the strange, powerful, striking and pic-
turesque grace of his language, his almost
rustic simplicity, his blunt frankness, his
proud timidity, his no less proud inde-
pendence, and with all these the ingenuous
and unusual sensitiveness and sincere modesty
of his character.

THE END

398