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Title: The life of Jean Henri Fabre, the entomologist, 1823-1910
Author: Augustin Fabre
Translator: Bernard Miall
Release date: February 12, 2024 [eBook #72936]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1921
Credits: Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net/ for Project Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF JEAN HENRI FABRE, THE ENTOMOLOGIST, 1823-1910 ***
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
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 acquainted with Jean-Henri Fabre’s
delightful Souvenirs Entomologiques will find them, arranged in a
different order, in the admirable 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, translated 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 necessary 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.
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 famous namesake of mine, whose family, nevertheless, 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 doctor’s degree, I was teaching
philosophy, not in the University, but in the Grand Seminaire [1] of
Lyons. The problem of instinct, which enters into the province of
psychology, led me to consult the works of J. H. Fabre, which were
recommended to me by the professor of Science. My worthy colleague
regarded the author of the Souvenirs Entomologiques 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 I 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 at Sérignan 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 Rouergue who had perhaps too readily been
naturalised a Provençal? 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
undoubted 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 consisting
entirely of articles which appeared in the Journal d’Aveyron, it is
fitting that it should piously gather up the most trivial local
reminiscences of J. H. Fabre, and that it 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 throughout 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 volume. This is not to say that
everything in the life and work of our hero is equally perfect 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
judgment, the reader, I trust, will remember that this book comes to
him with an echo of the jubilee celebrations of Sérignan, and the
homage, still touched with enthusiasm, of a son of Aveyron and the
Vezins countryside to the most illustrious of his fellow-countrymen.
La Griffoulette, near Vezins,
August 28, 1910.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE SÉRIGNAN JUBILEE 1
II THE URCHIN OF MALAVAL 10
III THE SCHOOLBOY: SAINT-LÉONS 24
IV THE SCHOOLBOY: SAINT-LÉONS (continued) 39
V AT THE COLLEGE OF RODEZ 65
VI THE PUPIL TEACHER: AVIGNON (1841–43) 74
VII THE SCHOOLMASTER: CARPENTRAS 87
VIII THE SCHOOLMASTER: CARPENTRAS (continued) 99
IX THE PROFESSOR: AJACCO 118
X THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON (1852–1870) 128
XI THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON (continued) 143
XII THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON (continued) 166
XIII RETIREMENT: ORANGE 199
XIV THE HERMIT OF SÉRIGNAN (1879–1910) 209
XV THE HERMIT OF SÉRIGNAN (continued) 223
XVI THE HERMIT OF SÉRIGNAN (continued) 232
XVII THE COLLABORATORS 253
XVIII THE COLLABORATORS (continued) 274
XIX FABRE’S WRITINGS 293
XX FABRE’S WRITINGS (continued) 324
XXI A GREAT PREPARATION 358
XXII THE LAST HEIGHTS (1910–1915) 366
THE LIFE OF JEAN HENRI FABRE
CHAPTER I
THE SÉRIGNAN JUBILEE
In a few days’ time [2] naturalists, poets, and philosophers will
repair in company to Sérignan, 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 Provençal village? Moussu
Fabré, they would tell you yonder, in a tone of respectful sympathy.
But who is the Moussu Fabré thus cherished 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 Entomologiques or Etudes sur l’Instinct et
les Mœurs des Insectes. [3]
One might say of this achievement what the author of Lettres Persanes
said of his book: Proles sine matre. It is a child without a mother. It
is, in short, unprecedented. [4] It has not its fellow, either in the
Machal of Solomon, or the apologues of the old fabulists, or the
treatises on natural history written by our modern scientists. The
fabulists look to find man in the animal, which for them is little more
than a pretext for comparisons and moral narratives, and the scientists
commonly confine their curiosity to the dissection of the insect’s
organs, the analysis of its functions, and the classification of
species. We might even say that the insect is the least of their cares,
for, like Solomon, 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” (1 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 capacities 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 Scarabæidæ of every species,
those wonderful agents of terrestrial purification.
In this singular world, which affords him the society which he prefers,
he has gathered 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 slightest
movements, and in surprising all the secrets 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 reduplicated by a man of letters and
a poet, who “understands how to cast over the naked truth the magic
mantle of his picturesque language,” [5] making each of his humble
protagonists 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 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 century. 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 directions,
exciting his curiosity; he does not know which way to turn.
Overwhelmed by the innumerable winged army of the drinkers of
nectar who, on the fine summer days, invade his field of
observation, he calls to his aid his whole household: his
daughters, Claire, Aglaé, 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
thousand expedients, who watches his master with an incredulous yet
admiring eye, listening to him but refusing to be convinced, and
shocking him by 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 almost 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. [6]
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 Sérignan:
“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 desire to grapple
with it. Living in perpetual amazement, amid the miracles revealed by
his genius, he observes, but he does not explain.”
For the moment we can no longer subscribe to the assertions of the
learned Academician, [7] nor to his fashion of writing history, which
is decidedly too free. The truth is that Fabre, who delights in the
pageant of the living world, does not always confine himself 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 naturalist. 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 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 alternatives: either we
must grant the flattened cranium of the Dung-beetle the distinguished
honour of having solved for itself the geometrical 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?” [8]
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 respects, 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 [9] we
believe in their evolution, we cannot refrain from proclaiming the
necessity of a sovereign Mind, the creator and instigator of order and
harmony, and we are quite naturally led to repeat, to the glory of God
the Creator, the beautiful saying of Saint Augustine: “Fecit in cœlis
angelos et in terris vermiculos, nec major in illis nec minor in
istis.”
Now this venerable nonagenarian whom naturalists, poets, and
philosophers are so justly about to honour in Sérignan, because his
brow is radiant with the purest rays of science, poetry, and
philosophy: this entomologist 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 proclaimed “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 belongs to us by his birth and the whole of his youth?
CHAPTER II
THE URCHIN OF MALAVAL
Jean-Henri Fabre was born at Saint-Léons, the market-town and
administrative centre of the canton of Vezins. In witness of which
behold this extract from the register of baptisms, a certified copy
transcribed by the Abbé Lafon, curé of Saint-Léons:
In the year 1823, on the 22nd September, was baptised
Jean-Henri-Casimir Fabre, of the aforesaid Saint-Léons, 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. [10]
Jean-Henri Casimir’s mother, by birth Victoire Salgues, was the
daughter of the bailiff of Saint-Léons. 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 which since then
has passed to the head of the Vaissière family.
It was thus at Malaval that the future entomologist “passed his
earliest childhood,” as he told me when writing to me ten years ago.
[11] There was no wallowing in abundance at Saint-Léons. 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 darkness.”
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-Rodié, just as one has almost reached the
crest of the height which by reason of its rocky helmet is called the
puech del Roucas, on the line of the watershed dividing the limestone
basin of the Aveyron from the granitic basin 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 enlivened a little on the other side by the tiny hamlet of
Malaval, which consists, to-day, of two farm-houses; one whiter, more
cheerful-looking, and on lower ground; the other standing higher,
greyer in hue, and more difficult 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 unconsciousness as to leave him a lasting memory.”
Nothing could take the place of the picturesqueness and sincerity of
the narrative in which he has related these earliest impressions of his
childhood:
My grandparents [12] 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 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 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 summer, 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 neighbouring 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 farmyard
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 husbandry the same chances.
In a propitious season they would set fire to a stretch of moorland
bristling 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
furnished the distaffs and spindles of the house with the material for
cloth, and was looked upon as grandmother’s private crop.
Grandfather, therefore, was, before all, a herdsman versed in the love
of cows and sheep, but completely 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 nonsense!” he would have
thundered.
For the patriarch was not given to joking. I can still see his serious
face, his unclipped 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 eccentric 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 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, unweariedly,
attending to the order and the welfare of the house. I see her in my
mind’s eye, particularly on winter evenings, which were more favourable
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 cartwheel,
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, grandmother 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 translucent, 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. 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,
perhaps, 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
notwithstanding 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 awakened 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 unconsciousness 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 of 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 glorious radiance: with my mouth or my eyes? That is the question
put by my budding scientific curiosity. Reader, do not smile! the
future observer is already practising and experimenting. I open my
mouth wide and close my eyes: the glory disappears. 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 neighbouring bushes, a sort of
jingle attracted my attention, 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 movement in the brushwood, the jingle
ceases. I try 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 recompense 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 Grasshopper 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.
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 harmonica,” 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 limpid note in the neighbourhood of the solitary
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 untutored hand striking at random upon this key-board, with
the most riotous unexpectedness of octaves, discords, and inverted
harmonies”: 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 radiance of his spontaneous childhood, this little scrap of a
fellow who was beginning to play his part in the great concert of the
world, 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! [13]
CHAPTER III
THE SCHOOLBOY: SAINT-LÉONS
With his seventh year the time came for him to go to school. The
schoolmaster of Saint-Léons was the child’s godfather. 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-Léons and attend the local school, which was kept by his
godfather, Pierre Ricard. He could not have done better 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. 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 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 Geneviève 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, however, 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 according 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
attractive 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 my grandmother’s. Its arched cornice
occupies the whole width of the room, for the enormous redoubt
fulfils more than one purpose. In the middle 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 sliding boards serve as shutters and
close the chest if the sleeper would be alone. This dormitory,
sheltered 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, similar 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 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 semicircle 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 eating. 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 comfort 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 communicated
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 privilege which we abused, for
the sly ones among us were careful not to close it on returning.
Forthwith the porkers would come running in, one after the other,
attracted by the smell of the boiled potatoes. 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 rubbed
against our 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 happened 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 calling them to us and tickling with our
fingers their soft and downy backs. No, there was certainly no lack
of distraction. [14]
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 supposed 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 order. When we turned over, our eyes
encountered 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 interest 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 neighbours, 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 cardboard 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 inexperienced fingers—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 finger, 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 properly. The more advanced pupils tried to decipher
manuscript, a deed of sale, the hieroglyphics of some scrivener.
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 anything.
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 writing, 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 coming 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 general 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
measures, 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. 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 problem, 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
deficiencies 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 devoted 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
become so many pigeon-houses; he directed the getting-in of the
hay, the walnuts, the apples, and the oats. We used to help him
during the summer, when the school, which was well attended in
winter, was almost deserted. The few who remained, 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.
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 animals 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 zealously 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 office as exterminator. My heel sometimes hesitates
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 indulgence in this quest always
brings a headache; but this discomfort in no way impairs my
admiration 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 interest in things.
But while the love of plants and animals developed automatically,
without guide or example, in the child predestined to entomology, there
was one respect in which he did not make progress: the knowledge of the
alphabet, which was indeed neglected for the pigeon. Consequently
neither the schoolmaster 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 Master 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
undecipherable. 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 teaching me to read. I should have succeeded by
other means, I do not doubt, but not so quickly or pleasantly.
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 pictures, 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.
[15]
CHAPTER IV
THE SCHOOLBOY: SAINT-LÉONS
To 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
nature. 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 [16] with the four
turrets 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. Gardens 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 another 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 warmest 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
[17] 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 garden; 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 delight, 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 hovering 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 belongs to us. The trouble is to gather the nuts.
I creep along astride the strong branches projecting 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. Moving backwards, still straddling my branch, I recover
terra firma. O wondrous days of litheness and assurance, when, for
a few filberts, on a perilous perch we braved the abyss! [18]
I confess I love this little sketch of the garden, which gives evidence
of a singular 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 household, 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 cabbages,
turnips, and even a few hives in a sheltered 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 resources 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 woodcutter’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 valley, an enterprising
man, back from the war, [19] has set up a small tallow-factory. He
sells the scrapings 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 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 Shellfish 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 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 indeed
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 château 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 delectable 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 painful blister on the heel. Had I wanted to
put on the shoes stowed away in the cupboard for Sundays and
holidays, I could not. There was nothing for it but to go barefoot
over the broken stones, dragging my leg and carrying high the
injured 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, interspersed with muddy knolls and
green eyots. The diversions of the bath begin forthwith. The
ducklings 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 contents. 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:
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, pulling 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 flapping 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
distractions summon me away.
The spring that feeds the pond trickles from the rock, cold and
clear. The water first collects 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 playmates, 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 collecting 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 gathered 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 hanging 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 underground. 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 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 something 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, youngsters, let’s go home. My blistered heel is forgotten 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 damage. “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 admit 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 Beetle
a Hoplia! We poor men would do better to mistrust the joys of
knowledge: let us dig our furrow 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
unknown 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 denying the best of all our gifts.
Let us strive, on the contrary, within the measure 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-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 return to the pond,
notwithstanding the wise admonitions 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 distant time, ponds very
much richer and, moreover, explored with the ripened eye of
experience. Enthusiastically 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. [20]
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-Léons. 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 curiosity leads him, and the favourite
scene of his childish rambles. It is really delightful to watch him
taking possession of these unknown territories and making the first
inventory of the wealth that he will explore later on.
On that day, wealthy and leisured, with an apple 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 writhing 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 close-cropped by the
sheep. It has no bushes, fertile 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.
Overpowered 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 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.”
I promise; and the curate continues his walk. I come home with two
good seeds cast on the fallows 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 Saxicola 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, [21] because, in the
ploughing season, she flies from clod to clod, inspecting the
furrows rich in unearthed grub-worms. Lastly, I came upon the
Provençal expression 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 content myself with remembering the Saxicola, or
Wheat-ear.
On the west, my village crumbles into an avalanche of
garden-patches, in which plums and apples ripen. Low, bulging
walls, blackened with the stains of lichens and mosses, support the
terraces. 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, which used to flow
so gaily through the fields, to work. Halfway up the slope, a
watercourse, economising 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 shoulders, I looked
over the melancholy wall, all bearded with ferns. I saw bottomless,
stagnant waters covered 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 prolonged
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 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 disappeared.
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 replaced 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 looking 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, inquiring 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,
hollowed into funnels, rounded into hemispheres. I come upon some
that are broken and are weeping milky tears; I step on some that,
instantly, become 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 underside
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.
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 papillæ 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 certain 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 ancient language which the rector
used in saying his mass, the mushroom rose in my esteem. To deserve
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 denomination: Lycoperdon; but this was only so in
appearance, for Greek roots sooner or later taught me that
Lycoperdon means Vesse-de-loup and nothing 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 imperceptible slopes; to-day, they are the torrent swirling a
thousand straws along as it rushes towards the abyss. [22]
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 reveal 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 profound 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 attraction, 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 something new, those magic pictures of our dreams. With age
come regrets; and the close of life is spent in stirring up old
memories. Then, in our dreamy moods, the beloved village reappears,
embellished, 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 Crayfish. 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 unparalleled 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 towns to which the vicissitudes of
life have brought me. An exquisitely sweet link binds us to our
native 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. [23]
CHAPTER V
AT THE COLLEGE OF RODEZ
We have learned what we may of the schoolboy of Saint-Léons. Let us
follow him to the Lycée 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
intone 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 translation. In that classical
atmosphere there was talk of Procas, King of Alba, and of his two
sons, Numitor and Amulius. We heard of Cynægirus, 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 Phœnician, 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, presumably 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 Cynægirus, 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 juniper-bushes, if the
Cockchafers were plopping down from the wind-shaken poplars. Thus
was the sacred spark kept aglow, ever brighter than before. [24]
At Rodez, as at Saint-Léons, natural objects 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 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 exploited,
artless fishermen that we were, the peaceful 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 expected 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 disappeared!
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 forbidden fruit.
Another distraction awaited us. Flocks of Turkeys 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 moment 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 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 certainly not in our books. Coming from no
one knows where, indestructible as everything that enters into
children’s games, it was handed down, from time immemorial, from
one initiate to another.
Things are just the same to-day in my village of Sérignan, 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 knowledge of hypnosis. [25]
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, he would have played truant. But he was,
happily, from an early age, a worker; because industry was for him both
a family inheritance 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 wearing themselves out in order to
supply the needs of their family? Moreover, as he rose from class to
class, the love of learning increased within him. Latin ceased to be
repulsive, and became even wholly sympathetic, when he found, in the
fifth class, thanks to the genius of Virgil, that it dignified the
humble joys of rural life by the emphasis of skilfully chosen words and
brilliant colours of the poet:
By easy stages I came to Virgil, and was much smitten with
Melibœus, Corydon, Menalcas, Damœtas, and the rest of them. The
scandals of the ancient shepherds fortunately passed unnoticed; and
within the frame in which the characters 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 stories of the fields, sung in sonorous verse; and the Latin
poet left a lasting impression on my classical recollections. [26]
Traces of Virgil are often visible—more often than those of the other
classical writers—in the work of Fabre. He loves to embellish his
narratives with quotations borrowed 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 lycée with literary exercises.
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 toward the things of Nature and Life.
In its free, palpitating flight his thought kindled his imagination,
and with indescribable 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 obsession, soon forgotten by the mercurial spirits of
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 making 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 struggles; 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 beast gives a shiver and drops, as though struck by
lightning: procumbit humi bos, as we used to say in those days.
I fled from the place like one possessed. Afterwards I wondered how
it was possible, with a knife almost identical with that which I
used for prizing 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 finger, 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 operated in the manner
of the Wasps, whose lancet plunges into the nerve-centres. [27]
This gloomy picture of a sudden, terrifying, violent death may be
compared with another which, in some respects, is even more tragic:
that of the ruined home and the shattered life of the little Rodez
schoolboy, who was to leave the town somewhat as he left the
slaughter-house, bewildered by the catastrophe 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 insect 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 antennæ, her pretty pattern of white
spots on a dark-brown ground were as a ray of sunshine in the
gloomy wretchedness of the day. [28]
CHAPTER VI
THE PUPIL TEACHER: AVIGNON (1841–43)
The stroke of misfortune which suddenly interrupted Jean-Henri’s
studies at the Rodez lycée 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 surprise in
store for him.
Who can fail to be moved by pity and admiration, beholding him set
forth upon the broad, white highroads, a wandering child, all but lost,
seeking his way, seeking his livelihood even, without other relief, in
his extremity of distress, and almost without other food than his love
of Nature and his passion for learning? See him, for example, on the
day when, between Beaucaire and Nîmes, 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 Réboul’s poems; soothing his hunger by intoxicating himself
with the verses of the workman poet,” [29] whose inspiration 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 examination 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 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. René 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 recollections 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 attempt 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 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
better 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 exercises of the future
schoolmasters were mere play to the ex-Latinist of the Rodez lycée. And
“while all around him dictated passages were being minutely scanned
with much searching of the dictionary, he examined, in the secrecy of
his desk, the fruit of the oleander, the flower of the snapdragon, the
sting of a Wasp, the wing-cover of a gardener-beetle.” Thus he treated
himself to a lecture 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 in love than ever with insects
and flowers, and thoroughly determined to fill what he considered to be
one of the most serious deficiencies 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 lycée 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 lesson in chemistry, to see how poor he
was in acquired knowledge and how rich in the desire 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 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 rambles, nor about insects, with their curious habits, nor
about stones, so instructive with their fossil records. That
entrancing glance through the windows 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 chemistry is
concerned with the shuffle of matter, uniting 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.
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 compound?
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 outhouse where the learned implements and
crockery are washed. Leaden pipes with taps run down the walls;
wooden vats occupy the corners. Sometimes 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 simmering 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 summers? No, I will
spend them at the school which, for two years past, has provided me
with an untroubled 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 kindness, 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 making 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 second and thus increase the small vocabulary which I
acquired in the days when I was translating Æsop’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
laboratory 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 yonder, 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 entered 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 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 pneumatic
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 filled, 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 apparatus, 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 experiment.
They straighten the retort, which is leaning to one side; the blow
with their mouths on the coals in the stove. I do not care for
these familiarities 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 ablution 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 divests himself of
a portion of his dangerous raiment. 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 ammonia, 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 matters 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 awaking 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, he can rely only
on perseverance, the sole compass of the poor. [30]
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
industry and application.
CHAPTER VII
THE SCHOOLMASTER: CARPENTRAS
Only eighteen years old, he left the Normal College with his diploma,
his brevet supérieur, 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 picture which the ex-schoolmaster has given us of his
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 simple 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
permitted, and a narrow prison-window, with iron bars and lozenge
panes set in lead. By way of benches there 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. Children and strapping lads were there, mixed up together,
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 dictation 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 dullness from the gloomy room, whose walls dripped
melancholy 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 increasing in
numbers, it ended by being divided into two. As soon as I had an
assistant to look after the younger boys, things assumed a
different aspect.
A weeding-out takes place in my crowd of scatterbrains. I keep the
older, the more intelligent ones; the others are to have a term in
the preparatory 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 scholastic 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 laboratory, containing
just what is strictly indispensable: a receiver, a dozen glass
balloons, a few tubes and a niggardly assortment of chemicals. That
will 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 rightful 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 material 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 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, hurries over
his dinner and comes to lend me a hand an hour or two before the
class begins. We effect 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 sulphuric 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: fortune 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 profound silence, reverent towards the unknown.
Soon the bubbles come “gloo-glooing” through the water in the
bell-jar. Can it be my gas? My 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. Capital! 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 success than at the relighted candle. A puff of
vainglory 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 corda! 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 and embeds itself in the glass which has
suddenly grown soft. This metallic tear, with its indomitable 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 fingers. 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 complete 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
continue. 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, 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
metamorphoses 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. [31]
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 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 honour 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
untilled, flinty plain, a harmas, as we call it in the district.
Here, no curtain of green hedges or shrubs prevented me from
keeping 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 ample
elbow-room; and there was even an old ruin, once a pigeon-house,
that lent its perpendicular to the graphometer’s performances.
These exercises in open-air geometry, which had their charm, discounted
beforehand, 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 Réaumur’s Mason Bee, [32] 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
impression 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 gorgeous
work on insects for sale. It was called Histoire naturelle des
animaux articulés, by de Castelnau, E. Blanchard, and Lucas, and
boasted a multitude 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? Anything 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 livelihood. The purchase was effected.
That day my 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 Réaumur, Huber, and Léon
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!” [33]
CHAPTER VIII
THE SCHOOLMASTER: CARPENTRAS (CONTINUED)
If 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, 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
industry.
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. I did violence to myself. My books on natural history
were condemned 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 legitimate
ambition will find useful and comforting to contemplate:
“Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam
Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit;
Abstinuit venere et vino.” [34]
But this matter must be expounded in greater detail, were it only to
confirm the courage of other students disinherited by fortune, reduced
as was Fabre to shaping themselves in the “harsh school of isolation.”
They will witness miracles of perseverance; and they will realise that
opportunities of exercising 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 knowledge 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 without 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 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 preparing 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, thinking 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 difference: 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.”
This twenty-four hours’ delay concealed a plan. It secured me the
respite of a day, the blessed Thursday, 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 necessary, 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: sufficient 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
argument 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, has
nevertheless, like ourselves, his own two cells, in addition to a
balcony, or leads, where the chemical 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-holiday. The science-master will not put
in an appearance 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! 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 symbols 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 diverting 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 in struggling. What a
delightful afternoon that was, before my fire, amid my permutations
and combinations! By the evening, I had nearly mastered my subject.
When the bell rang, at seven, to summon 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 garlands.
Next day, my pupil is there. Blackboard and chalk, everything is
ready. Not quite so ready is the master. I bravely broach my
binomial theorem. My hearer becomes interested in the combinations
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 triumphs; so do I, but silently, in my inner
consciousness, which says:
“You understand, because you succeed in making 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 binomial 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 retained 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 understand, they
never advise you, never suggest an attempt 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 phraseology, 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.
“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 success. I have
struck home, I have found the joint in the armour. The product of
minus multiplied by minus surrenders its mysteries to us. [35]
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 schoolmaster who was so venturesome as to act as a professor of
the higher mathematics. Audaces fortuna juvat. The young schoolmaster
had not too greatly presumed on his powers. His pupil was accepted upon
examination, and he himself was able to return the book to its place,
having completely assimilated 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 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 already 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 superb intellectual gymnastic. By forcing the mind
to proceed from the known to the unknown, always explaining what
follows in the light of what has gone before, it exercises 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 manner. Fabre tells us:
At that time, the College in which, two years before, I had made my
first appearance as a teacher 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 common at the
principal’s table. I had as a neighbour, in the next cell to mine,
a retired quartermaster 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 retailers 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 vegetables
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, meditating 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 without any grammatical sense. The letters x and y often
recurred, intermingled with figures. Every row ended with the sign
of equality and a naught. 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 winding up with 0.
“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, however, 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
particularly with combinations of letters in which x and y played a
prominent part. How would the alphabetical 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 determination.
No matter: we struck a bargain that same evening. We would together
break up the stubble of algebra and analytical geometry, the
foundation of the mathematical degree; we would make common stock:
he would bring long hours of calculation, 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 abscissæ and
ordinates very clearly. I make bold to take the chalk in hand
myself, to seize the rudder 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 remembering
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,
suggests 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.
[36]
The quartermaster declared himself satisfied with this achievement.
Analytic geometry did not precisely strike him as a recreation. 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. [37]
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 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 little 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 mediæval educational
system. To the gaiety and activity of boyhood, which were
considered unwholesome, it applied the remedy 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 to celebrate on the eve the joys of the morrow, that
blessed Thursday [38] which I considered so well employed in
solving difficult equations, experimenting 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 coming
expedition [39] 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 blackboard, the learned hieroglyphics! [40]
Fabre has somewhere written, lamenting the dearth of family
reminiscences which does not enable him to go back beyond the second
generation of his ancestry, this touching passage, full of modesty and
filial feeling: “The populace has no history. Strangled 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 schoolmaster who seeks to uplift himself, not as so
many have done, by futile political agitation or the criminal fatuities
of irreligion, but solely by virtue of knowledge and personal 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
Christian faith, thereby leading society toward the most terrible
catastrophes. For the moment 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
nature 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 Poésie des Bêtes, of Voix rustiques, of La Bonne Terre,
of Le Clocher, etc.—François Fabié, 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 compared with Jean-Henri Fabre.
[41] Of such, too, and among the most eminent writers of the language
d’oc, is Antonin Perbosc, [42] 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 Abbé Besson, [43] in
the first rank of the Occitanian Félibrige.
CHAPTER IX
THE PROFESSOR: AJACCIO
Virgil 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,
accordingly, could not fail to befall the intrepid virtuosity of the
youthful Carpentras schoolmaster. The degree of licentiate in the
mathematical sciences was won, like the rest, at the point of the
sword, and the valiant champion of the cosine and the laboratory was
appointed Professor of Physics and Chemistry in the lycée of Ajaccio.
Here, by a happy concatenation of circumstances, and under the inward
impulsion of the providential vocation, the destiny of the famous
entomologist was to be finally determined.
In this novel environment, in “this paradise of glorious Nature,”
everything stimulated 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 lentisk!... This
time the temptation was too great! He surrendered. His leisure was
divided 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 investigations 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 famous Avignon botanist,
Requien [44] by name, who, with a box crammed with paper under his
arm, had long been botanising all over Corsica, pressing and drying
specimens and distributing them to his friends. We soon became
acquainted. I accompanied him in my free time on his explorations,
and never did the master have a more attentive disciple. To tell
the truth, Requien was not a man of learning so much as an
enthusiastic collector. Very few would have felt capable of
competing 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 classification amid the enormous mass of
things observed! 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, [45] with whom, thanks
to Requien, I had already exchanged 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 reserved 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 cordial proposal
tempted him; he yielded to my blandishments; and there we were for
a fortnight, chatting 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 nomenclator with an infallible memory; he was
a naturalist 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 glowing 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 formulæ. 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,
[46] with which I was extremely 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
(Armeria 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-Tandon was jubilant. I, on my side, was much more
attracted and overcome by his words and his enthusiasm 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 something, 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 makeshift 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
received in my life. [47]
Fabre was a wonderful and indefatigable self-teacher; a truly self-made
man. The impulse 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 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 feeble
vestiges.
Not only do these reflections, which spontaneously 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 epitome 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 conversation. We know, in
short, that God and the activities of God in the world were questions
which he was fond of considering, without regarding the world’s
opinion. His essays are full of the subject. But we will quote only one
passage, which has the advantage of bringing us an echo of the jubilee
celebrations which were celebrated at Sérignan while this volume was
being written: When the venerable nonogenarian was being fêted, 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 retained this
conviction; I have ... aggravated or ameliorated it, whichever you
please. Every period has its manias. I regard 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 revelation 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 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.
Before 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 wonderful 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 acting 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 brightest and most joyful periods of his
life, rather than to localise observations or circumstantial
experiences.
There is, however, one of these reminiscences which, despite the
extreme sobriety of the characteristics recorded, denotes, in the
youthful entomologist, a mind peculiarly attentive to the slightest
indications and the least movements of his future clients of the animal
world. It deals with the Spider, [48] 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 interesting characteristics. The
author has just explained, 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 natural history.
But while he was not injured by the spiders, 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 persistently than was wise.
This unfortunate incident persuaded him to apply for an appointment in
France.
CHAPTER X
THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON (1852–1870)
In 1852 the Professor of Physics and Chemistry in the lycée of Ajaccio
was transferred to the lycée 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 pupils: “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
imaginations, overflowing with that springtide sap of life which makes
us so expansive, so desirous 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.
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. Mathematics were dropped, as Moquin-Tandon
had advised. Physics and chemistry were put in their proper place, in
the teaching of the lycée, and the whole of the young professor’s free
energies were expended upon the research work of the naturalist.
Necessarily limited by his occupation as a teacher, his investigations
could not at ordinary 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 Rhône. 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 Petræa.”
Presently his Thursdays and holidays were devoted to more distant and
more prolonged observations. His steps took him, by preference,
down-stream from Avignon, along the right bank of the Rhône, opposite
the embouchure of the Durance, to a spot known as the Bois des Issarts.
Not that he was 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 flourished know nothing
of these delightful retreats, 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 suitable 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 Bembex, one of his favourite insects. “A
blazing sun, a sky magnificently blue, sandy slopes to dig in, game in
abundance to feed the larvæ, 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 surrounded 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 practical joker have
come to disturb my solitude and fling acorns or little pebbles at
my umbrella? I leave my tent and inspect the neighbourhood:
nothing! 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 penetrating my shelter
to seize the flies on the ceiling. 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
distinguish 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.
[49]
With ever-increasing accuracy, by the combined 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 monuments of contemporary science.
We should form but a very incomplete idea of the sort of work to which
the future author 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 umbrella in the
Bois des Issarts.
Apart from this favourite field of observation, the enthusiastic
curiosity of the naturalist found scope for its exercise on every hand.
Whether at home or abroad, whether passing 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 Pelopæus,
that is, a Potter-wasp (πηλοποίος) 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 coming and going of
the Pelopæus, and the progress of her nest-building. This was in the
early days of his Avignon professorship. [50]
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 dinner from their work in the fields, the farm 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 Pelopæi 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
Pelopæi to work their will, in order to learn the fate of a nest built
upon the shifting surface of a smock-frock. [51]
The unavoidable limitations imposed by observations 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 quietly strolling along a narrow footpath on the
banks of the Rhône:
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
Locust! 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 innocently
whittling a willow-switch with his knife. I am seized with a sudden
apprehension. I therefore 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 impress
of the hobnailed sole. [52]
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 unfortunate 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, sitting 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:
“Un paouré inoucént, pécaïre!”
And all three made the sign of the Cross. [53]
This last scene was enacted on one of the deeply-sunken roads on the
outskirts of Carpentras, whither Fabre was fond of repairing 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. [54]
Among the Hymenoptera that frequent the slopes and embankments of the
“Sunken Road,” in addition to the Hunting-wasps, which feed their larvæ
on living flesh, there are other species which provide them with 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 endeavouring
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 Anthophoræ, 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 Anthophoræ are incessantly flying off
and scattering 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 regards 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 dwellings under construction! Forthwith surrounded by the
furious host, he would expiate his rash attempt, 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 observe 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 fearsome swarm; I must stand for whole
hours, perhaps 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 extreme
dexterity of the fingers 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
recognition, 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 Anthophoræ,
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 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 permanently in front of the
work in progress, continually removing lumps of earth filled with
cells, spilling the liquid honey on the ground, eviscerating larvæ
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 investigations 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, happening 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:
“Mé, moun bel ami, li-z-avé doun escounjurado què vous pougnioun
pas, canèu 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.
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 individual vengeance.
But we would not leave the banks of the “Sunken Road,” which have been
made classic 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 endeavours and his first achievements as an
entomologist, 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 possible 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, which I see on
yonder bank busied with warehousing 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 overhead, 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 Eumenes ... the
Philanthus ... the Tachytes....
At last we are there! [55]
This last exclamation, a cry from the heart, which reveals the object
of this latest visit, is addressed to the murmuring city of the
Anthophoræ, 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.
CHAPTER XI
THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON (CONTINUED)
In sketching for the reader’s benefit, the characteristic features of
the Avignon naturalist, 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 accomplished and attractive
types of that harmonious synthesis of industry and genius, which alone
is capable of engendering great achievements, and which was so ably
defined by the Latin poet in the words:
“... Ego nec studium sine divite venâ,
Nec rude quid possit video ingenium. Alterius sic
Altera poscit opem res et conjurat amice.” [56]
It will be no less interesting to see by what varied and concurrent
circumstances, by what personal interventions, a virtuosity and an
activity so well co-ordinated were stimulated, directed and controlled,
sustained and protected against all causes of deviation or
discouragement.
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 Lévézou mountains to the Provençal plains, should calm
his brain, burning with the stress of study, by gazing at Mont Ventoux,
and anticipating his approaching expedition to the mountain of his
dreams. [57] 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 satiety, whereas many
another found his courage and his interest evaporate almost at the
outset. [58] 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 purposes. 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
accumulation of rubbish—sometimes small chips, sometimes huge
blocks—rises from the plain without preliminary slopes or
successive terraces that would render 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, babbling brooks, the spacious shade of venerable trees, all
the things, in short, that lend such charm to other mountains, are
here unknown and are replaced 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. [59]
But the unsatisfied eagerness that draws the exile from our cool green
hills to repeat, again and again, the ascent of the rocky Provençal
height, is based on something more than sensitiveness to impressions
and a pre-established harmony; he is also strongly attracted 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 influences; 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 Provençal 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. [60]
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 [61] and five others.
Let us join them if we wish to make the acquaintance of the botanist of
Mont Ventoux as well as the botany; 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 vegetation 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
somebody cries:
“Quick, let’s look at the barometer!”
And we all crowd around the gourd, the scientific 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 immediate 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 mulberry, 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 pébré d’asé, Ass’s pepper,
because of the acrid flavour of its tiny leaves, impregnated with
essential oil. Certain small cheeses forming part of our stores are
powdered with this strong spice. Already more than one of us is
biting into them in imagination and casting hungry glances at the
provision bags carried by the Mule. Our hard morning 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, trailing on the ground; soon after,
dwarf trees, clustering close together; and, finally, mighty
trunks, forming a dense and gloomy forest, whose soil is a mass of
rough limestone blocks. Bowed down in winter by the weight of the
snow, battered all the year round by the fierce gusts of the
Mistral, many of 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
paronychia, whose wide, thin bracts look like silver scales. The
food is taken out of the bags, the bottles 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 pébré d’asé cheeses, flanked by Arles 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 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. [62]
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 them. My memory recalls, all streaming with the
morning dew, those elegant tufts of Androsace villosa, 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 globularia, 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. [63]
Our naturalist is evidently fascinated by so many beauties, of such
delicate quality. Will he not be tempted to forsake his insects for the
flowers? Will not the botanical 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 insects are given their due; and now
from time to time they claim his attention and seduce him from the
spectacle of the vegetable curiosities which form the principal motive
of the expedition; it is now the Ammophila and now the Decticus [64]
that crosses the path of the naturalist in search of plants and
flowers, 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 creatures destined to be his most
intimate companions through life was seconded, at an opportune moment,
by the more expressive language of human speech. Here we have one of
those events that were landmarks in Fabre’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 household 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 receiving for himself and his family a stipend of
sixteen hundred francs, or less than the wages of a groom in a
decent establishment. Such was the disgraceful parsimony of the day
where education was concerned; such was the edict of our government
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 entomology, the venerable
scientist Léon Dufour, on the habits of a Wasp that hunted
Buprestis beetles. Certainly, I had not waited till then to
interest myself in insects; from my early childhood I had delighted
in Beetles, Bees, and Butterflies; as far back as I can remember, I
see myself in ecstasy before 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 absent. Léon Dufour’s
essay provided that spark. [65]
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
excitement as I did so. Some time after, aided by those lucky
circumstances which he who seeks them eagerly is always able to
find, I myself published an entomological article, a supplement to
Léon 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? [66]
Moquin-Tandon converted Fabre to the study of animals and plants.
Dufour converted 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 the awakening of his genius. We are speaking 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 specific characters of certain crystals that Pasteur
became interested in those investigations of the subject of molecular
dissymmetry which were the starting-point of so many wonderful
discoveries.” [67]
Does it not seem that there must be a special 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
beetles of the Buprestis family, which, although apparently dead,
remained as fresh as though alive during the period occupied by the
rearing of the larvæ 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 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 preserve anatomical specimens. This liquid could only be the venom
of the Hymenopteron inoculated into the victim’s body. The tiny drop of
poisonous humour that accompanies 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
nourishment of the larvæ.”
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.
[68] 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 enabled 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 “with the supposition of an animal absolutely 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 immobility.
Fascinated and intrigued by Dufour’s discovery, Fabre wished to see the
process for himself, and as a result he made the first and the finest
of his own entomological discoveries, which he was later on to enrich
by more precise and more remarkable details.
But at the same time he was forced to realise how incomplete and
superficial were the observations of the man whom he nevertheless
revered as the first among his masters.
How often was he to find occasion for revising the statements of his
predecessors! 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 inheritance of the centuries and the scientists of the
past? Heaven preserve us from such stupidity! But while it would not be
reasonable or even possible to make a clean sweep of all that has been
acquired by our predecessors, it is none the less prudent not to
accept, in blind confidence, the whole heritage of the past, but to
subject to the control of facts the statements even of the masters when
these appear at all extravagant. Otherwise we run the risk, if not of
perpetrating error by repeating it on our own responsibility, 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 escaped the most
learned authors and erroneous methods suggested by the best books. And
the persuasive effect of the highly symptomatic example afforded by an
absolutely unrivalled master was even more eloquent.
Unexpectedly, one fine day [writes Fabre], Pasteur 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 his glass bulbs, made sterile or
fertile at will, by his experiments, magnificent in their rigorous
simplicity, Pasteur exploded for ever the insanity which professed
to see life arising from a chemical conflict 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 silkworms,
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 preamble:
“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.”
A few long strides and I had reached my neighbour’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 himself at leisure concerning this
great novelty, the chrysalis. This magnificent assurance impressed
me. Knowing nothing of caterpillar, cocoon, chrysalis, or
metamorphosis, Pasteur had come to regenerate 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 battle wholly naked: that is,
devoid of the simplest notions of the insect he was to save from
danger. I was astounded; more, I was filled with wonder. [69]
The fact is indeed so extraordinary that it may well appear incredible,
but it receives authentic confirmation from the wholly concordant
account of Duclaux, Pasteur’s pupil and historiographer, as well as
from the honesty of the naturalist, who is assuredly incapable 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 happening
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 unknown, 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 confronted him
with a plague that had to be conquered and obliged him to render an
account of the attempts 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! [70]
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 regenerate sericulture, 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,
Pasteur knew nothing when he began his researches.” More—and this was
what astonished Fabre—he knew nothing of the physiology or the rearing
of the silk-worm. “For 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 hygiene in the same way, [71] by showing that the maladies of
silk-worms and most of our human 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 humanity. Decidedly
ignorance may have its advantages.
Encouraged by the magnificent example of Pasteur (continues the
entomologist), I have made it a rule to adopt the method of
ignorance in my investigations of the instincts. I read very
little. Instead of turning over the leaves of books, an expensive
method which is not within my means, instead 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 another, according to the information
acquired. And if by chance I do open a book, I am careful to leave
a section of my mind wide open to doubt. [72]
Beginning with that arising out of Dufour’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 masters. To go still further, Pasteur’s example made
him appreciate the advantage of coming fresh to the facts, of
confronting them in a state of ignorance, of receiving impressions from
them alone, and of having no ideas but those that truly emanate from
the reality.
Without going to extremes, Fabre benefited 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; [73] but no one was ever more independent 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 amica veritas.
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 direct 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: Amicus liber, magis amica 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. [74] Thus it was that,
having obtained the needed information respecting the silk-worm from
the Avignon naturalist, he suddenly asked him to show him his cellar.
Fabre found the request extremely embarrassing:
To show him my cellar! My private cellar! And I, poor wretch, but a
while ago, with my preposterous 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 placing 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 bottles, labelled
according to age and vintage! My cellar!
Completely confused, I tried to evade his request, to change the
subject. But he was tenacious.
“Show me your cellar, I beg you.”
There was no possibility of resisting such insistence.
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!”
“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 enragée. 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 subject, which my illustrious visitor did not
appear to understand. One microbe evaded him, and it was one of the
most terrible; the microbe of misfortune strangling good will.”
[75]
It is told of one of our most famous dramatists 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
difficulties 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 enragée is excellent;
to help you would be to spoil you.”
No doubt the vache enragée, like the method d’ignorance, may have its
virtues. The story of Fabre’s career, and of Brieux’, goes to prove as
much. But of this sort of discipline, like that which extols the
advantages of ignorance, we may remark that one may have too much of
it; that it succeeds only on condition of being applied with moderation
and discretion.
A robust child of the Rouergat peasantry, such as Fabre, is capable of
enduring an abnormal dose with unusual results. But under too great
strain steel of the toughest temper is in danger of being broken or
fatigued. In hours of difficulty and suffering, if they are unduly
prolonged, the most resolute and courageous feel the need of an
encouraging voice, and a hand outstretched to give the moral or even
the material help with which one cannot always dispense with impunity.
This friendly voice, this helping hand, which Fabre failed to find in
the great benefactor 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 appearance 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 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
administrative favours.
The chief inspectors visited our grammar-school. These personages
travel in pairs: one attends to literature, the other to science.
When the inspection was over and the books checked, the staff was
summoned to the principal’s drawing-room, to receive 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
professional 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 imageful; 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 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,
unexpectedly, 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
Instruction. 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’ minister, 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 scraping.”
Overcome by the honour paid me, I apologised for my costume—I was
in my short-sleeves—and 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 under 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 evaporating 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, nothing! With a little
application, the plant I have is ample.”
“What, nothing! You are unique there! The others overwhelm me with
requests; their laboratories 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 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 chemist,” 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 presently.
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, talking 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 couple of
sous as my contribution, but my pockets were 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 windfall!
“Que lou bou Diéu ié done longo vido e santa, pécaïre!” 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 pécaïre?”
“Pécaïre 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 foreseen 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 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, [76] 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 presence 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 exchanged, 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 secretary. “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 city. Skilled as they are in chemical work, they are
equally capable of wielding the pen, the pencil, 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 canvassers 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 summoning me to call
upon the minister at his office. I suspected a proposal to promote
me to a more important 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:
“Read that,” he said. “You refused my chemical 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 private, 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 happens, 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.
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 minister. “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 anything 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; besides, his embrace and his bit of ribbon were of
inestimable 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 Emperor with me to-morrow, to the
reception of the learned societies.”
Seeing me greatly perplexed, and as though demoralised by the
prospect of an imperial interview:
“Don’t try to escape me,” he said, “or look out for the gendarmes
of my letter! You saw the fellows 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 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 included geographical explorers,
botanists, geologists, antiquaries, archæologists, collectors of
prehistoric flints, in short, the usual representatives of
provincial 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 Spitsbergen to the dunes of Gascony, from a
Carlovingian charter to the flora of the Sahara, from the progress
in beetroot-growing to Cæsar’s trenches before Alesia. When my turn
came, he questioned me upon the hypermetamorphosis of the Meloidæ,
my last essay 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 through the dread straits, and others succeeded me. My
five minutes’ conversation with an imperial 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 exchanged, 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, including even Avignon Bridge. Duruy’s son,
sitting opposite me, chaffed me pleasantly about the famous bridge
on which everybody dances; [77] he smiled at my impatience to get
back to the thyme-scented hills and the grey olive-yards rich in
Grasshoppers.
“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 incomparable 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 immense whirl of humanity. To get
away, to get away was my one idea. [78]
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.
[79]
Like the author of the Souvenirs entomologiques, the writer of the
Poésie des Bêtes 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, faithful to the
environment in which he was born, confines itself, with jealous care,
like that of the naturalist, to the “incomparable museum of the
fields,” which he describes with the same clearness of vision and the
same sincerity of feeling.
Like Fabre, Fabié 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
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 intervention 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 Poésie des Bêtes and Bonne
Terre has friends who admire the poet as greatly as they esteem the
man, and if M. François Fabié cannot make up his mind to emerge from
the obscurity 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 illustrious Forty.” [80]
One might say the same of Fabre. Some one should have taken him, too,
by the shoulders 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 Duruy 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 factitious 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 activity.
Dufour’s essays furnished the spark that made the inward flame burst
into a magnificent 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 influence of the external life, which in some men is more
potent and more active; it is determined 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:
“L’homme est un apprenti, la douleur est son maître.”
(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 persecution,
yet these were to him so many stepping-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 Académie, he was
ambitious where the University was concerned. Absolutely careless of
titles and dignities, he was particularly 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 lycée, as
it had not been enough to qualify for a primary schoolmaster. He wanted
to attain that rare degree of knowledge which the higher education
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 wonderful
natural sciences in which he glimpsed, not only a vitality and
inspiration that appealed 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 licentiate in the natural sciences
before the Faculty of Toulouse.
It is an eloquent fact that instead of being, 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 success 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 degree of Doctor of Science.
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 mathematician of the name of Rollier
who undertook to inform him of this. Here is the incident 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 geometrical 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, without respite, another two hours’ lesson, in which
I taught the boys how to make a projection in descriptive 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, 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 gentler 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 compass, and the drawing-pen: a deft-fingered
numskull, in short.
With the aid of a system of tangents of which I first showed him
the rule and the method of construction, my artist has obtained the
ordinary cycloid, followed by the interior and the exterior
epicycloid, and, lastly, the same curves both lengthened 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 calculus.
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 deductions
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!”
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
l’inspecteur général. I frankly admit, I possess nothing; my means
are limited to my modest salary.”
A frown greets my answer; and I hear, spoken in an undertone, as
though my confessor were talking 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.”
The great obstacle stands revealed to me: woe to the poor in
pocket! University teaching demands a private income. Be as
ordinary, as commonplace 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 describes 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 at least enable us to live. If she
can’t do that, then let her leave us to break stones on the
highway. 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 distant past. Since then things have improved
considerably; but, when the pear was properly ripened, I was no
longer of an age to pick it.
However, notwithstanding Rollier’s confidences, Fabre had deferred
rather than definitely 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 direction than to remain for ever sunk in the material
anxieties and ungrateful tasks of the lycée?
The question as to how to free and simultaneously 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 inspector and confirmed by my personal experience?
I would take up industrial chemistry. The municipal lectures at
Saint-Martial placed a spacious and fairly well-equipped laboratory
at my disposal. Why not make the most of it?
The chief manufacture of Avignon was madder. The farmer supplied
the raw material to the factories, 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 proposed 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 obscure 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 disappointment
when experiment spoke the last word and upset the scaffolding of my
plans! Stubborn as the slave of old amassing a peculium for his
enfranchisement, I used to reply to the check of yesterday 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 myself free.
Should I succeed? Perhaps so. I at last had a satisfactory answer.
I obtained, in a cheap and practical fashion, the pure
colouring-matter, concentrated 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.
[81]
To these delights of industrial chemistry, the mistress of her problems
and rich in future promise, were added, by an additional stroke of good
fortune, the flattering congratulations and encouragement of the
Minister Duruy and the Emperor Napoleon. [82] 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, where rang a peal of bells proclaiming the
delights of my approaching emancipation. Little by little, the
factory that was to set me free rose skywards, 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 artificial means;
thanks to a laboratory concoction, it was utterly overthrowing the
agriculture and industries of my district. This result, while
destroying my work and my hopes, did not surprise me unduly. 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. [83]
It was only a step from the Capitol to the Tarpeian Rock. He who but
now had discovered Peru was about to feel more keenly than ever the
sharp pangs of poverty; he whom science and fortune had lately
conspired to raise to one of the highest chairs in the University was
to be forced to descend from the modest desk of a lycée professor; he
whom the friendship and admiration of Duruy had dreamed, it is said, of
promoting to the high dignity of tutor to the Prince Imperial [84] was
now to be forbidden to teach the schoolgirls of his own Provence!
For it was about this time that “he attempted to found at Avignon a
sort of system 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 Roumanille, the friend of Mistral, who knew the
exquisite secret of weaving into his melodies “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.
And he had the power of communicating to his hearers his own
conviction, his profound 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 novelty 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 manœuvring 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, [85] had instituted classes for the secondary
education of girls. This was the beginning, as far as was then
possible, of the burning question of 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, especially
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 lightning comes and the thunder; by what device our thoughts
are transmitted across the seas and continents 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 Orange. Thus was my exodus from Avignon
effected. [86]
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 overthrow 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
originality, the scientific edifice of which you may say, with the
ancient poet: Exegi monumentum aere perennis. [87]
M. Edmond Perrier very judiciously remarked, in his speech at Sérignan:
“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 regards his destiny, that Fabre
suffered, at this juncture of his history, this accumulation of trials,
so grievous to experience, yet so fortunate 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.)
CHAPTER XIII
RETIREMENT: ORANGE
It is commonly enough thought that a professor 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 lycée, 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 intercourse with the world of Nature.
At the same time he found himself compelled to look to his pen for that
assurance of material life which his retorts had refused him, and which
his meagre professor’s pension afforded but insufficiently. “What is to
be done now?” he cried, after the collapse 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
madder-vat and the Alma Mater refuses us. Laboremus!”
Laboremus! 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 numerous handbooks, now classic, and it
was then that he began to write and to publish his Souvenirs
entomologiques, without ceasing 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 talents 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 physiognomy.
But he could not have had the illusion that in thus taking refuge from
the tribulations of which the world is the source, he was placing
himself beyond the reach of any trials. Is it not written that the life
of man upon earth is a perpetual struggle against suffering? And if it
were not for the cruel wounds which it inflicts upon the poor human
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 under 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 scientist, in discovering whether the bite of the Black-bellied
Tarantula, deadly to insects, was dangerous to other animals, and to
man, or whether it was not, in the latter case, a negligible accident.
He therefore experimented 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, apricot-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 nourishment 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 proclaims that all is over. The bird is dead.
There was a certain coolness among us at the evening meal. I read
mute reproaches, because 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 result 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. [88]
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 possessed 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 bonté, c’est le fond de tout âme française.”
(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 emotion, an intimate reprobation, that ascends from the
depths of his being to oppose all ideas of violence and hatred.
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, Aglaé, 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 intellectuals, whose thoughts and
life remain almost strangers to the home which they establish one day
as though in a moment of distraction, and who divide their lives into
two parts—one being devoted to their professional labours and the other
reserved for the exigencies of family life.
Like the pagès 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 persuaded 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 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 flowing 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. Aglaé, 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 entomological
honours, which a father’s gratitude piously laid, with regretful tears,
upon his untimely grave.
Not content with dedicating to him the first volume of his Souvenirs,
Fabre again 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 continue 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 studies,
fortified as I am by my indomitable faith in a reawakening in the
Beyond. [89]
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.
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. [90] 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 began to wander about my bed, where I
followed them vaguely with my failing eyes. [91]
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 career had not yet begun—but the regret
with which he left Orange was soon dissipated by the wealth of
observations and the facilities 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 Sérignan, 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 conformity with his
tastes and most favourable to his genius.
CHAPTER XIV
THE HERMIT OF SÉRIGNAN (1879–1910)
Starting from Orange and crossing the Aygues, a torrent whose muddy
waters are lost in the Rhône, 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 Sérignaise 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 Ventoux 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 little 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 unexpected curves of a loggia. At a distance the façade of the
church has the harmonious lines of a little antique temple; close
at hand is the graceful 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 flowering 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 Thebaïd, so far from the atmosphere of cities,
the vain agitations and storms of the world, that his life has been
passed, in unchanging uniformity; and here he has been able to
pursue, with resolute labour and incredible patience, that
prodigious series of marvellous observations which for nearly fifty
years he has never ceased to accumulate.
François 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 Provence;
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 corners 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; singularly wide and deeply
set, as though gazing always upon the mystery of things, as though
made expressly to scrutinise Nature and decipher her enigmas? 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, has retained an indelible fold of continual
attention; the other, on the contrary, always updrawn, has the look
of defying the interlocutor, of foreseeing his objections, of
waiting with an ever-ready return-thrust. [92]
Is not the reader dazzled by the brilliant colours, the warm tones of
this picture? The Provençal light shines upon his face, splendidly
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 introduce us to the home of the
Hermit of Sérignan, 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 abandoned, barren, sun-scorched bit of land,
favoured 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 contrive 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
laboratory 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 entomology, the bit of land which I have at last obtained in
the solitude of a little village. It is a harmas, the name given,
in this district, [93] to an untilled, pebbly expanse abandoned to
the vegetation 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.
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 reinstate them in the ground
whence they were driven by the fork.
What abounds without my mediation is the invaders 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 execrable weed
which three years of stubborn warfare 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
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
smarting in the calves. As long as the ground retains some traces
of the vernal rains, this rude vegetation does not lack a certain
charm. But let the droughts 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 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, workers 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 Pérez, 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. [94]
What has become of the days when the entomologist lived far from his
beloved insects, when he had to seek them in all directions, 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-champêtre? 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 garden
and even into his house.
All Fabre’s preferences are for the insect, 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 condensed even as suns are condensed in the nebulæ 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 accuracy.
I should have brought back a few ideas from my frequent visits to
the pond. Fate decided otherwise: 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 jeopardising 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 occasion—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 supplies 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 serve to let
me watch some wretched animals kicking about in the water? [95]
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 Sérignan to the pond of Saint-Léons, “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!” [96]
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
deserving work.
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 philosophising 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 workshops in
mid-air, whither none but genuine corruption-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, because of their bare skins, which
enable me better to follow the first attack and the work of the
invaders. I ring the changes with furred and feathered 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 mutual satisfaction of sellers and buyer.
No such trade had ever been known before in the village, nor ever
will be again. [97]
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 basin and life
has peopled it with her marvels.” [98]
Who but he could have found such a pearl in this clay?
CHAPTER XV
THE HERMIT OF SÉRIGNAN (CONTINUED)
While 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 beyond 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 Sérignan landscape gently forces itself upon the
spectator’s attention. And if the spirit moved him, Fabre had only to
raise his head from his apparatus to find all about him something to
soothe the eye and refresh the mind.
But however keen his feeling for the beauties of Nature, it is not so
much as artist or dilettante but as the insect historiographer that he
appreciates the value of the landscape, and the wealth of the plains
and hills outspread before him.
From this point of view the whole surroundings 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 [99] 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 Sérignan
hermit:
The geographers define the Aygues as a watercourse. 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.
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
Rhône. 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 botanical garden. You may find there numbers of vegetable
species swept down from the higher regions, some temporary, dying
without offspring in a season, 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” 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. [100] 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 continued to pursue his aim,
and finally he pierced the husk and emerged from the shell, to give
his activity free scope, as soon as he was able to free himself and
establish his lot in a favourable environment.
However, contrary to what occurs in the case of the Apoderus, the
conditions of his life seem 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. [101]
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. [102] 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 attention to the insect; at
most, if he met it, he would crush it under foot. The unknown
animal, suspected of evil-doing, deserved no further inquiry.
Grandmother, on her side, apart from her house-keeping and her
beads, knew still less about anything. She looked on the alphabet
as a set of hieroglyphics only fit to spoil your sight for nothing,
unless you were scribbling on paper bearing 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 interest whatever and almost always a
repulsive object, which one dared not touch with the tip of one’s
finger. Beyond a doubt, my taste for animals 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 opposite of what my tastes required
for their development. My peculiarity must seek its origin
elsewhere; that I will swear.
Nor shall I find it in my father. The excellent 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 God knows what shifts to pick up a livelihood,
[103] 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 observation. [104]
Between the parents and the son, what a difference, what a change of
life and of destiny! Quantum mutatus ab illis! 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 intelligence; this
almost infinite possibility of transformation and progress, which forms
such a striking contrast with the rigid immutability of instinct which
is barely susceptible 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 pagès of the banks of the Viaur,
were they to descend to the banks of the Aygues to visit the hermit of
Sérignan, would recognise by more than one characteristic the child of
their native soil and their own race. Under his wide felt hat, “in his
linen jacket” [105] and his heavy shoes, with a face like theirs in its
simplicity and good nature, he would see almost one of themselves. 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 Scarabæi, or assembling a few thick planks to contrive some new
entomological apparatus, 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 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
Sérignan resembles the urchin of Malaval.
We have attempted to show the hermit of Sérignan 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
always been has done more for science than the most elegantly dressed
and profusely decorated savants.
CHAPTER XVI
THE HERMIT OF SÉRIGNAN (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 questionable 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 watching Flies. You will be lucky
indeed if the troublesome 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 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
madman. 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 landlords, 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 perplexing 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 household, 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 resolved
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 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.” [106]
We must recall these adventures and tribulations 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 researches and
observations. He could station himself where he pleased; he had room to
turn round. He had leisure to await the opportunity 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
disclosures 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 was
theirs from morning to night, from night to morning. He was always
watching, always listening; his mind was always on the alert where they
were concerned. And the veils were lifted, secrets were revealed,
confidences 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 earliest dawn, they are at the windows, greatly troubled
by the glass barricade. In order to open the window to the
afflicted parents, I have to rise hurriedly 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 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 drinking; 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. [107]
His “prayer is an Oh! of admiration,” addressed 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.
Ἀεὶ ὀ Θεος γεωμετρεῖ. [108]
The contemplation of the living world that is stirring all about him
gives him yet further cause to marvel at the wisdom of Him “who has
made the plans on which life is working.” [109] It is easy to
understand that, for Fabre, the harmas assumed the colours and the
charms of Eden, and that his solitary 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
Sérignan 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 unsuitable 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 observation; 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 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 foliage; see how comfortable I am!
“That is what I seem to read in my companion’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. [110]
Yet from his expeditions into the countryside, 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 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 arrivals, the master parts from his children with regret,
dismissing them with the most kindly speeches, embellished by the most
salutary 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 transformations 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
yourselves: 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 beloved of the Cicadæ; go, but beware of the Praying
Mantis, who is plotting your ruin on the flowering 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 one day for
others what you have given me: the few moments of happiness in my
life! [111]
One of the great joys of the Sérignan hermit 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. Nothing
will succeed in distracting him from this entomological concert, which
is one of his delights. It makes him forget even the rejoicings of the
national festival which is being celebrated close at hand, and the
splendours of the starry sky that glitters above his head.
This evening in the village they are celebrating the National
Festival. [112] 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 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 Cicadæ are silent. Glutted with light and heat,
they have indulged in symphonies 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 membranes
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 concert, 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 reputation you have been made to
usurp in the countries 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 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 wandered 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 disturbed in the midst of his pilgrimage. He hurriedly
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
exquisite 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
repeated 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. [113]
“A little animated clay, capable of pleasure and pain.” To the scrutiny
of this miracle, with its infinity of forms, Fabre devotes himself with
touching sympathy and indefatigable activity. He dedicates his day to
it; and at night he is still working. And in this work, which seems to
admit of no relaxation, 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 insect, but he discovers
something very different. 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 darkness 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 observation, 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 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 will perhaps give better
results, and in any case will facilitate nocturnal observations which
alone may shed a little light on the obscure habits of this unsociable
hermit.
Interrogated by lantern-light, the Arachnoid 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 would rightly 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 becomes a
cheerful scene. Hardly is supper finished when the whole household
hastens thither. A lantern 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 interesting 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. Indifferent 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, having mixed with their comrades a little, suddenly make
off distractedly; they recover themselves in the darkness and
return. At moments there is a violent tumult; a confused mass of
swarming legs, snapping pincers and coiling, clashing tails,
threatening 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. [114]
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 betrothal and espousal.
Now the fugitives are once more assembled beneath 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 encountering
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, 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 release 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. [115]
This reconnaissance and these first advances are followed by a
sentimental promenade.
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, encountering no resistance. The
female follows obediently, 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 conjunction; 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 Sunday, 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 gracefully 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 describe 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 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 naïveté are superb. The dove, they say, invented the kiss. I
know of a precursor: the Scorpion....
For a good hour I watch, unwearied, these interminable wanderings
to and fro. Part of the household lends me the assistance of its
eyes. Despite the lateness of the hour, our combined attention
allows nothing essential to escape us. We admire 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 exaggerated.
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
holding 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 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 beginning 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! [116]
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 entomologist’s private life.
When wearing his last costume, the Pine Processionary 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 redness for twenty-four hours, and afflicted with an itching
even more painful and persistent than that 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 unrecognisable, 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
spreading the irritating dust. [117]
What would to another have been merely an annoying accident without
other bearing than a commonplace lesson of prudence, became 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 impecuniosity for the rest of his days, at the same time
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!
[118]
CHAPTER XVII
THE COLLABORATORS
“M. Fabre’s life-story is one of the finest 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 struggle for life, and on the other the
power of a vocation, as though riveted to his being, which urged him
despite everything to observation, study, and an understanding of the
world of living creatures, and in particular of the insects.” [119]
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 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 allurements 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 Lilliput, 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.” [120]
Fabre is the first of writers to be conquered by the spectacle that
unfolds itself before his eyes; conquered in the whole of his
activities, in his imagination and sensibility, 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 poetical feeling, of the wonders
of which it is full; no one had identified himself, as did Fabre, with
the creatures that he studied.
“The insect is no longer, for him, the lowest 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 contemplated them “in the blessed season” under the brilliance
and the ardours of noon. “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 Scarabæi, on
the blazing fans that the Butterflies wave voluptuously, intoxicating
themselves with the nectar of the flowers.
“Nothing in all this is far-fetched or deliberate. 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 observer, a mind
open to every emotion,” [121] 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 reflected 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 recognising 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 benefits? 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, Fabre was fortunate enough to see a like fascination
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 [122] rivalling one another in their eagerness 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 their father’s entomological
desires. For example, his son Emile sends him from the neighbourhood of
Marseilles a nest of resin-working Hymenoptera. [123] 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 favourite 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’ distance from our
party. “An animal,” she said, “two, three, four—and pretty ones!
Come and see, papa, come and see!” [124]
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 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, [125]
Marie Pauline, [126] and Anna enliven the narrative by their delightful
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 collaborator:
I speak of my son Paul, a little chap of seven. My assiduous
companion on my hunting expeditions, 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
Grasshopper’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 handfuls 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 observation 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 disgusting task.
Little Paul is always equal to the circumstances. If he is cool he is
no less enthusiastic, 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 pupil and a variegated iris containing successive
black, white, chestnut, and purple arcs.
Well, on the morning of the 6th of May, a female emerges from her
cocoon in my presence, on 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 always 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. I 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 numerous, are fluttering on the ceiling.
At this sight, the prisoner of the morning is recalled 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 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 shoulders, 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. [127]
How could the news of the joyful event have reached them? No doubt by
some mysterious 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 importance and value of his services had only increased as
his capacities increased, and as the vigour and muscular activity of
his beloved 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 grown blind, studied bees through the
meditation of a sharp-sighted and devoted servant. I am better 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!” [128]
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 treated them so
graciously, that he was assured beforehand of their enthusiastic
support of 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 of his
enterprises, all the juvenile unemployed of Sérignan vie with one
another as purveyors to the entomological laboratory. They zealously
keep the larder of the Scarabæi supplied, without neglecting 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 always a well-spread table, although this is not always easy
to ensure. One has to allow for the thoughtlessness of children and the
hazards of the chase.
But in spite of their heedlessness, and because of their very
ingenuousness, there are connections in which the child is an
incomparable helper, difficult or even impossible to replace. This
Fabre was often to prove.
To continue an investigation into the olfactory faculties of insects a
moth is required which is rather rare and difficult to capture. Can he
obtain this moth?
Yes, I shall find him; indeed I have him already. A little chap of
seven, with a wide-awake 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 Sunday. Meanwhile, my lad, here’s a penny for you. Don’t make a
mistake when you give in your accounts; put it somewhere where you
won’t mix it up with the turnip-money.” [129]
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 Sérignan.
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 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 catching the pill-rolling beetles, [130] so
greatly does he excel in profiting by the truly exceptional advantages
which the pastoral calling offers from this point of view.
In such company insect-hunting is so engaging and profitable that our
naturalist decides to accompany him. Among these memorable mornings
there is one which deserves particular mention, for it was truly a
historic 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 latter part of June, to say that he thought the time had
come to begin our investigations. He had detected 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 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 serviceable 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 splendid 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 archæologist digging among the ancient relics
of Egypt and lighting upon the sacred insect of the dead, carved in
emerald, in some Pharaonic crypt. O ineffable moment, when truth
suddenly shines forth! What other joys can compare with that holy
rapture! The shepherd was in the seventh heaven; he laughed in
response to my smile and was happy in my gladness. [131]
There was truly good reason for the naturalist 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 Sacred
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 assistant. 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 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 naïve 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 capable 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 carpenter, 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 Sérignan wondering at the
naturalist’s questions, and ostensibly flattering themselves that they
know more than he does of worm-eaten vegetables. On the other hand,
they often consult him, thereby making amends and affording a practical
recognition 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 commotion in the
neighbouring farm-houses; the silkworms were hatched, and suddenly
there was no food for them. They must wait until the sun repaired
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
expeditions had won me the reputation of a medical herbalist. With
the flower of the poppy I prepared an elixir which strengthened the
sight; with borage I made a syrup sovereign against whooping-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 directions; 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 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 creatures were swarming:
“Regardas, Moussu; venoun espeli, et ren per lour douna! Ah!
pecaïré!”
Poor people, what a hard life is yours: honourable 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. [132]
One and all, the newly-born larvæ 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-worm’s, too faithful to its
mulberry-leaf.... Larvæ 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. [133]
Science as this great naturalist understands it is amiable and by no
means pedantic; full of sympathy with the humble, since he himself has
never ceased to be one of them, he does not disdain to consider their
least preoccupations, and to become, by turns, their master and their
disciple.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE COLLABORATORS: (CONTINUED)
Not 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 occasion, 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
comment upon what would be regarded as a depraved mania.
One of these is the schoolmaster. Since he permits it and does not
fear the comments of the foolish, 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 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 wonders of colour. As a compensation for
perpetual darkness he has acquired a gentle philosophy, always
smiling; an ardent desire to fill, as far as possible, the gaps in
his meagre primary education; a sensitiveness of hearing able to
seize the subtle delicacies of music; and a fineness of touch most
extraordinary in fingers calloused by the labours 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 translate 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
Athenæum, the Rural Institute, where we speak of everything except
hateful politics.... At such a meeting, the delight of my solitude,
to-day’s dinner 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 nations, the Roman,
brutalised by excess of luxury, began to eat worms. Pliny tells us:
“Romanis in hoc luxuria esse cœpit, prægrandesque roborum vermes
delicatiore sunt in cibo: Cossos vocant.” (The Romans have reached
such a degree of luxury at the table that they esteem as delicious
tit-bits the great worm from the oak-tree known as Cossus.)
I do not know with what sauce the Cossus was eaten in the days of
the Cæsars, the Apicius of the period having left us no information
on this point. Ortolans are roasted on a spit; it would be
profaning them to add the relish of complicated preparation. 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 condiment 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 specimens, 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 enhanced by a vague aroma of vanilla. In short,
the vermicular dish is found to be highly acceptable, 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 certainly 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 becoming 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 cherries pleases me better than the preparations of our
kitchens. My only desire was to elucidate a point of natural
history. [134]
I certainly admire this zeal for science and this absence of prejudice
even in the choice of food; yet I 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 surpassed 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; 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 thinking of it for many a long hour; but he has abstained, for
tobacco is expensive. The privation has doubled the charm; and not
one of the puffs recurring 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
barrack-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 popular? 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.
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 reconnoitre 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 evening is.
Favier first attracted my notice by a master-stroke. One of my
friends had sent me from Marseilles 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
animals, 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 skilfully 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 people.”
Favier knows many things; and he knows them more particularly
through having eaten them. He knows the virtues of a Badger’s back,
the toothsome 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 during 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 asking questions as a child; but his curiosity is flavoured
with a spice of malice and in all his questions there is an
undercurrent of chaff. What he fails to understand 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. [135]
Favier has other qualities: he does not hesitate in the face of
difficulties, and it is a point of honour with him to acquit himself
manfully, however arduous the task.
Favier is not content with faithfully executing his master’s orders.
Like all intelligent and devoted servants, he divines and anticipates
his desires. He has happy ideas of initiative.
On the 14th 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 discovery, and of a
kind to fill me with delight, reawakening all my old memories of
the Bois des Issarts. [136]
There swarmed a whole population of Scarabæi, in the form of larvæ,
nymphs, and adult insects. There, too, were crowds of Rose-beetles
(Cetoniæ), all stages being represented. There, too, were great numbers
of Scoliæ, the Two-striped Scoliæ having recently emerged from their
cocoons, which still had beside them the skins of the game served to
the larvæ; and there, before the naturalist’s eyes, was the solution of
the problem of the Scolia’s food, which “his painful researches in the
Bois des Issarts had not enabled him to solve.” [137] 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 researches? 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
opinions 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 advancing age, has lost its shell; the night-jar,
the etraoucho-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 evolutionist. Nothing
gives him pause in tracing the descent of animals. He has a reply
for everything: 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 present condition of science it is
absolutely proved that man is descended from some vaguely sketched
monkey? Of the two transformations Favier’s seems to me the more
admissible. A painter, a friend of mine, the brother of the great
musician, Félicien David, imparted to me one day his reflections
concerning the human structure. “Vé, moun bel ami,” he said, “vé:
l’homé a lou dintré d’un por et lou déforo 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 confirmed by internal resemblances: “L’homé a lou dintré 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 generaliser.
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,
simplifying in his inability to see the complex. Later on he will
learn that the Sparrow is not the Bullfinch, 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 resemblances, now he sees differences,
but not yet so clearly as to avoid incongruous comparisons and
zoological solecisms like those which my gardener utters. [138]
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 correspondence: 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: [139] after searching the mighty
question of origins, he was now grappling with the last and darkest
problem of the hereafter. [140]
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
attitude toward those very thinkers whose ideas he opposes most keenly
than could any number 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: but God preserve me from ever doing
so upon those who maintain them.” [141]
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
sympathy, gladly referring to him as “the master,” “the illustrious
master,” “the venerated 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 observer” which he gives him in his
work on the Origin of Species. In a letter dated the 16th of April
1881, he wrote to Mr. Romanes, who was preparing a book on Animal
Intelligence: “I do not know whether you would care to discuss in your
book some of the more complicated and marvellous instincts. It is an
ungrateful task.... But if you discuss some of these instincts, it
seems to me that you could not take a more interesting 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 Souvenirs.”
When he wrote this Darwin was acquainted only with the first volume of
the Souvenirs. [142] 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 irrefutable observations of the French entomologist, but he did
not despair of finding a solution in conformity with his system. Fabre,
on his side, believed that his position 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 results 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 arguments.
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 relations with Moquin-Tandon, Dufour,
Pasteur, and Duruy. Other names might be added to complete the list of
his friends, or the correspondents whom he succeeded in interesting in
entomology and admitting more or less to participation in his
researches. [143] We 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 voyages, were soon succeeded by dull,
stay-at-home reality. The jungles of India, the virgin forests of
Brazil, the towering crests of the Andes, beloved 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 distant expeditions. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
herborised 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 accident 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.
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 Praying 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 exhaust 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 happens under our eyes
with that which happens elsewhere; 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 carpet 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 fortune 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
Sérignan Dung-beetles and that of their rivals in the western
hemisphere. [144]
To close the history of the Sérignan hermit 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 Provençal recluse was beginning to be drawn out of it
by the intelligent zeal of certain friends, who forced him to make a
triumphant 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.
CHAPTER XIX
FABRE’S WRITINGS
My study-table, the size of a pocket-handkerchief, 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 formulæ of algebra
and the formulæ of thought. I cannot boast this placidity; 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 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 smelling so good with your beeswax! Like
your master, 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 solidity. 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 writing 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 children, on the contrary, agree among
themselves and say:
“Let us preserve the relic. It was where he toiled so hard to teach
himself and 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. [145]
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 flatters
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 a support for these pages destined to
recapitulate 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 trembling before
the audacious and strenuous toil of the beginning, and all the
exercise-books stuffed with figures and formulæ, 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 reproductive
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 naturelles. 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 rather uneasy
admiration. Léon 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 emphatically 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 unknown, to describe which Fabre hit
upon the very happy term hypermetamorphosis. To the ordinary series of
transformations through which the insect passes in proceeding 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 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 observer’s part enables him to believe
the testimony of his eyes.
All these revelations keenly stimulated the curiosity and emulation of
the specialists, and set them “on the track of the history, hitherto
mysterious, of the Cantharides and all the insects resembling them....
A number of naturalists, Beauregard, Riley, Valéry-Mayet, Künckel
d’Herculais, Lichtenstein, and others began to study the insects more
or less adapted to the preparation of blisters: the Mylabres, the
Meloës, the Cantharides. Lichtenstein even carried the larvæ 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 [146] made the acquaintance 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 Sérignan jubilee:
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
metamorphoses and its ruses for making its way into the nest of the
solitary Bee. [147]
These early essays were followed by many others, also published in the
Annales des sciences naturelles, and were always received with the same
favour by all the notable scientists of the time.
While he was soaring toward the heights, and making his way into
unexplored regions, under the astounded gaze of the most eminent
authorities, who saw themselves suddenly equalled and even surpassed,
his scientific 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 help of masters: the assistance of luminous, living books,
capable of teaching without fatigue 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 language;
no idle excess of erudition, but the most perfect lucidity of text as
of diagram; no dryness, nothing commonplace, but everywhere 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 science and from these to such of their applications 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.”
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-Léons, so he told us, and had graduated from the
Normal College of Avignon.
Such is the information recently given us by M. François Fabié, as “a
detail that might perhaps give us pleasure, and which proves, in any
case, that not all the inhabitants of the Rouergue, as was mistakenly
said of late, were ignorant of the name, origin, and talent of J. H.
Fabre.” [148]
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
compiled. Would to heaven our public schoolmasters had always been as
happily inspired or as well advised in the choice of their textbooks!
Would to heaven that, instead of the dismal and misleading suggestions
of materialism 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 knowledge: in that by giving us a knowledge of the created
universe they uplift the soul and nourish the mind with noble and
salutary thoughts.” [149]
The study of the heavenly bodies in particular 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 marvels, the God whose
unlimited power has peopled the abysses of space with immeasurable
heaps of suns.” [150] But the divine work “perhaps appears more
marvellous still in the infinity of littleness than in the infinity of
magnitude: Magnus in magnis, it has been said of God, maximus in
minimis.” [151] 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 elements 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.
In his favourite domain of the natural sciences, as in that of the
other sciences, the practical tendency of his teaching was by
preference directed toward agricultural applications, as is shown by
the very titles of many of his books: Eléments usuels des sciences
physiques et naturelles, avec applications à l’hygiène et a
l’agriculture—Le Livre des Champs—Les Auxiliaires—Les
Ravageurs—Arithmétique agricole—Chimie agricole: indeed it was with the
last volume that he inaugurated his series of initiatory textbooks. For
the use of young girls and future housewives, he published books on Le
Ménage, Hygiène and Economie domestique.
And all these little books are presented in a picturesque and
attractive form. The very titles have nothing austere about them:
Entretien de l’oncle Paul avec ses neveux sur les choses
d’agriculture—Chimie de l’oncle Paul. There is also The Livre de Maître
Paul, the Histoire des Bêtes, the Leçons 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.
Evidently Fabre was not one of these whose “life was strangled,” and
his initiative 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 abstract formulæ; but he considers them rather as
they are in themselves and in their relations with human life. And
while others speak of them as dead objects or as indifferent 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.
A time will come, let us hope, when the schools will be less artificial
and removed from real life, and will no longer systematically 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 furrows 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 independence 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 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
popularisation 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 observations, 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 delight 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 naïve emotions seem to have
found their way into his own heart, into his style; but he owes them
still 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 impressing 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 immortal collection of Souvenirs entomologiques.
From this same year dates the acquisition, so greatly desired, of the
open-air laboratory and his installation in the cherished solitude of
Sérignan, 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 investigator 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 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 miseries 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 offered 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 experience of things, we ask ourselves if
life be worth the living. [152]
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 the blow dealt him
by the death of his beloved 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” [153] a the
courage to overcome 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, indeed, did I forsake you so long? Friends
have reproached 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. Before philosophising, one had to live. Tell them that;
and they will pardon me. [154]
From the very beginning of his great entomological 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 dryness of the schools. They fear lest
a page that is read without fatigue should not always be the
expression 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 favour. 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 formulæ nor learned smatterings, 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-chamber and dissecting-room, I make my
observations under the blue sky, to the song of the Cicadas; [155]
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 revealed 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 fascinated by morphology
and anatomy.” [156] 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
happens that writers “forget to take performance into their reckoning
when they are describing life.” [157]
To study living entomology, that is, to study the insect living its
life and in the highest manifestations of its life, in its instincts
and its habits, in its aptitudes and its passions, in a word, in its
psychic faculties; to replace the dominant standpoint of morphology and
physiology by the standpoint of biology and psychology; such is the
essential 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
importance 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
sericulture; 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 demarcation 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
descends 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 beautiful,
the domain of reason, that is, order, is the inevitable result of a
blind mechanism.” [158]
And to tell the whole story in a few words, the essential object, the
general impulse of this curious and powerful mind, 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 inward 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 problems which he propounds a priori.
Before thinking as a philosopher he observes as a scientist. His method
is strictly experimental. “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.” [159]
“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 dissect 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 deficiencies 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 result 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
only given his style the relief and the colour of his subject. The
danger of such scientific 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 immune from this
species of discredit which the writer may so easily cast upon the
scientist. But this unjust accusation was long ago withdrawn, 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 complete 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 structures, Fabre is not content with observing the
insect as it lives and labours when left to itself, writing down, so to
speak, at its dictation the data which it deigns to give him as it
would give them to any one who possessed the same patience and the same
gift for observation. After these first overtures, he seeks more
confidential information; to obtain this he inverts the parts played by
observer and insect; from being passive he becomes active; he provokes
and interrogates, and by different experiments, often of wonderful
ingenuity, he enables and even compels 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 appliances 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”; [160] 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 bottles, test-tubes, and old
sardine boxes, which Fabre employs in order to watch the evolution
of a thousand nameless or doubtful eggs, to observe the labours of
their larvæ, 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. [161]
Fabre reveals a consummate skill in this difficult and delicate art of
experimentation 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 preconceived ideas
which are immediately subjected 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 meaning of its actions, as though there were between it and
himself some actual means of communication, something in the nature
of a language. [162]
But there is something even more remarkable than this 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 admits that he
hesitates or does not know. It often happens that this scrupulous
spirit leads to doubt. “The more I observe and experiment, 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 Souvenirs not only
the most wonderful entomological repertory, but a true “essay upon
method,” which should be read by every naturalist, and the most
interesting, instructive, familiar, and delightful course of training
that has ever been known. [163]
The most interesting, instructive, and delightful 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 interspersed between them,
are expressed in words so simple and so well chosen that 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
vagueness 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 understand 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 l’on conçoit bien s’énonce clairement.”
(That which is clearly grasped is plainly said.)
“Just so, Nicolas! Yes, clearness, always clearness. He calls a cat
a cat. Let us do the same: let 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. [164]
Thanks to his love of lucidity and simplicity, as much as to his frank
and modest spirit, he had a horror of verbal snobbery and juggling with
pretentious words. Official science itself, and, as he says bluntly,
“official jargon,” [165] 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 resonance of their rhythm; they produced a clearer
image in my mind; after their fashion, they gave me a picture of
the objects described. Coloured 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. [166]
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 masterpieces of art and literature have power to
do.
CHAPTER XX
FABRE’S WRITINGS (CONTINUED)
In 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 idea 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 entomologiques bear a sub-title which perfectly describes
their essential and characteristic elements. They are offered as
“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 superficially, it seems
that these latter are the essential part of the work, and the
author must be considered before all as an admirable anecdotist,
or, if you will, a chronicler of animal life. But we very soon
perceive, on reading him, how much method, selection, and
persevering determination have presided over all these
investigations, which may appear almost incoherent, and are, on the
contrary, profoundly systematic and definitely ordered. [167]
François Coppée, 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
symmetry 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
having the same æsthetic, buys every day a quantity of birds in the
market, and indefatigably “puts back the blackbirds” into his
neighbour’s shrubberies. [168]
Fabre’s work is that of a conscientious architect who has sought to
keep the shrubberies and alleys of his garden in strict order, 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 of
opportunity or caprice, without premeditated 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 discoveries which made his life an enchantment, and
which lend his narrative an interest 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 classifications. 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 Hymenoptera,
Coleoptera, and Orthoptera, without neglecting the Arachnoids, which
are Arthropods, not insects properly so called. It is a fact that this
singular entomologist prefers the horrible Spiders, to whom all the
good text-books refuse the name of insect, to the most beautiful
Butterflies. It is true 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 Hymenoptera, 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.” [169]
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 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. [170]
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 common 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 cruelest and most
ancient of terrestrial creatures.
Fabre, in fact, seldom departed from the world of insects, because it
is in this little world that the greatest miracles of instinct are
manifested, in accordance with the entomologist’s motto Maxima in
minimis. And, as though to increase this prodigious contrast, it often
happens that the most remarkable 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 another, unknown, has real capacity.
Endowed with talents worthy of attention, it remains misunderstood;
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 popular 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 outward show into account.
But far more important are the habits, the ingenious 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 contradiction which is
reproduced elsewhere. What can we expect from a Carabas, all
glittering with metallic lights? Nothing but feasting in the slime
of 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 contrivance, let us apply to
the humblest, more often than not unknown to all. And let us not be
repulsed by appearances. Ordure reserves for us beautiful and
curious things of which we should not find the like upon the rose.
So far the Minotaur has enlightened us by her family habits. Long
live modesty and littleness! [171]
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 environment, sometimes in his laboratory. He inquires
into their manner of assuring themselves 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
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
Mœurs 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 attempt 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 denominations, 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; delightful amenities and ferocious
cruelties, extending 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, naturalists and
physiologists, topographers and meteorologists, geometricians and
logicians, and many more, whose enumeration we will leave to the
reader.
“Let us assemble facts in order to obtain ideas,” said Buffon. In this
process may be summed up the whole of the great Provençal 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 element 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 picturesque, 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.” [172]
There are philosophical meditations in Fabre’s work, evoked by his
observations, and, like his observations, they are not presented in a
preconceived order. His arguments 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 synthesise 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 attitude
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 certain of their actions: for all that instinct impels
the insect to do is marked by perfect wisdom, comparable and even
superior to 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
larvæ must have animal food; fresh succulent flesh still quivering with
life.
Some, like the Common Wasp, which watches over the growth of its
offspring, feed the larvæ 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 larvæ perfectly fresh.
But the majority do not watch over the hatching or the growth of their
larvæ. 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 carried 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 larvæ, 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 Wasps have discovered this secret, for the prey which
they provide for their larvæ remain at their disposal to the end
without movement and without deterioration. Do these tiny creatures
know intuitively the secrets of asepsis which Pasteur discovered with
so much difficulty? Such was the conclusion with which Dufour was
forced to content himself. He presumed the existence, in the Hunting
Wasps, of a virus which was at once a weapon of the chase and a liquid
preservative, for the immolation and conservation 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
indefinitely, 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 incontestable that the victims are not put to death but
merely deprived of movement, smitten with paralysis. How has this
result, more miraculous even than asepsis, been obtained by the insect?
By the procedure that the most skilful physiologist would employ. By
plunging its sting into the victim’s body, not at random, which might
kill it, but at certain definite 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 inoculation 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 system of the vegetative
life from that of the life of reaction; to spare the first while
annihilating the second, by the precise adaptation of this delicate
surgery to the victim’s anatomy and physiology. Dufour was unable 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.
“He, the master, skilled among the skilful, trained in the finest
operations of 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 organisation 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 insect’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 enveloping the internal
organs; then the muscular layer lining the skin; and then, in the last
place, the essential organs and the nerve-centres.” [173] “We thus have
the spectacle of an insect which is eaten alive, morsel by morsel,
during a period of nearly a fortnight, becoming empty and emaciated and
collapsing upon itself,” while preserving its succulence and moisture
to the end.
Starting with these typical facts, which testify 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 animal 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 Hymenopteron and “the sublime logic of her stings.”
“Proud Science, humble yourself!” All this presumes, in short, in the
microscopic little creatures an astonishingly rational inspiration
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 confounds us by its knowledge and wisdom also
disconcerts us by its ignorance and stupidity.
The best-endowed insect cannot do anything “outside the narrow circle
of its attributions. Every insect displays, in its calling, in which it
excels, its series of logically co-ordinated actions. There it is truly
a master.” [174] Apart from this it is utterly incapable. And even
within the cycle of its attributions, apart from the customary
conditions under which it exercises them, the ineptness of the insect
surpasses imagination.
Let us consider the facts.
One of these Hymenoptera whose impeccable science we were admiring just
now, a Languedocian Sphex, is busy closing the burrow 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 nothing were the matter, as though she had not found
her burrow empty, as though the work of closing the cell had still a
motive. [175]
The Mason-Bee, excellently endowed in the matter of boring, emerges
from her nest 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,” [176] 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 community, coming from outside,
opens up a way 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 occasion to rear under a bell-glass.
The larva is subject to the same absurdities 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 associated with an ignorance no
less profound.... For instinct nothing is difficult, so long as the
action does not diverge from the immutable cycle laid down for the
insect; for instinct, again, nothing is easy if the action has to
diverge from the paths habitually followed. The instinct which
amazes us, which terrifies us by its supreme lucidity, 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 inconsequences of
stupidity are both its heritage, accordingly as it is acting under
normal or accidental conditions. [177]
It would be interesting to pursue this inquiry into the general laws of
instinct, and to give, as a pendant to the antithesis of its wisdom and
stupidity, the no less singular antithesis of its automatism and its
variations. 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.
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 continuity. 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 entomology. Without a good dose of this
quality, sheer wrongheadedness in the eyes of practical folk, who
could trouble himself about insects? Yes, let us be naïve, without
being childishly credulous. Before making the animal reason, let us
reason a little ourselves. Above all, let us consult the
experimental test. Facts gathered at random, without a critical
selection, cannot constitute a law. [178]
And the prudent naturalist sifts all the anecdotes and records of
habits, all the rational or sentimental achievements which the 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 imagination
than in veracity. I admire your credulous enthusiasm, when, without
criticism, you support your theories on such stupidities. [179]
Fabre has no greater faith in the virtue of animals than in their
reason, since one cannot exist without the other. It is true that the
Copris, the most richly endowed of insects 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 because she cannot
distinguish between them.
It is not the function of impartial history to maintain a given
thesis; it follows where the facts lead it. [180]
The historian of the insects simply confronts 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 Hymenopteron. 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 directs the action
by making it conform to the requirements 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 accident, alter its line of conduct? [181]
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 Pelopæus, 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
larvæ.
These expert surgeons, these marvellous anatomists 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. [182]
Fabre, then, has vainly sought for “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
reason and “the logic attributed to it,” has plainly replied that it is
entirely lacking in reason and that logic is not its strong point.
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 described their high achievements, and
no one has revealed such unknown and incredible marvels on their
behalf. It is enough to recall the “miracles” of the science and wisdom
of the paralysers.
But far from invalidating the conclusion drawn from the obvious
stupidity of the insect 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 circumference of its attributions. If it is plainly devoid of this
glimmer, how much more plainly is it devoid of that “splendour of
intelligence” which the “miracles” of instinct would require! [183] To
sum up, the insect sins too greatly by excess and by defect in its
instinctive actions to justify our attributing to it an understanding
of these actions; we are 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 insect’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 surgery, she would be our superior.
It will never occur to anybody that the creature is able, in the
smallest degree, to account for its skilful vivisections.
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. [184]
These acts of instinct, so scientifically devised and so rationally
performed by works devoid of either judgment or reason, must be
explained by referring them to a proportionate 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 Scarabæi]—and their
numerous rivals. I consign to them these inventors of the spherical
box, of greater volume and smaller surface, for provisions liable
to dry up, and I ask them how such logical inspirations, such
rational provisions, could unfold themselves in the murky intellect
of the insect.... 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 foreseen 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 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! [185]
We heard the same language, uttered perhaps even more persuasively,
from the Hairy Ammophila, among many others, one day when, as a
beginner in entomology, he considered her performing her delicate and
expert 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 system of her victim.... I say, she knows and understands;
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 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 unconscious 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. [186]
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
hazard; such wisdom of stupidity? Is the world subject 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 astronomer who was possessed of knowledge, a
certain penetration and a certain courage. He pushed this
penetration 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 existence of an
intelligent Being because one has discovered the existence of a
plan is, after all, to continue the train of reasoning which
deduces the existence 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. [187]
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 causes, and from them to the “Cause
of causes,” the “Reason of reasons,” [188] concerning which, says M.
Perrier, he has not “the pedantic feebleness of grudging it the name of
God.” [189]
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 explanation
provided beforehand and readily exonerates itself from the difficult
task of searching more deeply into the domain of facts as well as that
of causes. [190] If the explanation were not notoriously insufficient
one might overlook the abuses which it covers, innocently enough, but,
to speak only of the insect, all its analyses, were they admissible,
leave the problem of instinct untouched: “How did the insect acquire so
discerning an art? An eternal problem if we do not rise above the dust
to dust” [191] of evolution. At all events, as it is presented it is
merely, we repeat, “a convenient pillow for the man who has not the
courage to investigate more deeply.” [192] 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. [193]
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 wonderful 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 finished the work of my
life with the strength of the understanding which Thou hast
vouchsafed me; I 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 foresight 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 inspiration to the last letter: Divina
sapientia omnem Scripturam divitus datam vel adunam usque
litterulam attigit.... [194]
The reader will doubtless pardon a professor of exegesis, whose
admiration for the prince of entomologists has made him his biographer,
for terminating this analysis of 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, [195] and the study of the Holy Scriptures, if he
could have devoted himself thereto, would certainly have led this noble
and penetrating mind to render the same testimony to the truth of
Christ and the Church as that which it has rendered to the truth of the
soul and God.
CHAPTER XXI
A GREAT PREPARATION
The title which we have given this chapter is that which M. Perrier,
the eminent Director of the Museum of Natural History, lately inscribed
at the head of a remarkable article in the Revue hebdomadaire. 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 academies, the Scientific Societies of
Brussels, Geneva, etc., and the Entomological Societies of London,
Stockholm, and St. Petersburg.
If it is true, as some one has said, that posterity begins at the
frontier, these numerous and flattering distinctions, coming from all
points of the horizon, are full of promise for the immortality of his
work. It is undoubtedly 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 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 belonged 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 Sérignan, who organised, 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 familiar rustic setting so dear to
the aged scientist. 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 loved
to sprinkle the pages of his books. To greet him came the worthy folk
of Sérignan, justly proud of him, his friends from far and near, and
the delegates of the learned societies 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 Linnæan Medal in the name of
the Royal Academy of Stockholm. France—or rather, the Académie
Française—has since then offered a further evidence of her admiration
by granting him the largest of its money prizes and unanimously
recommending him to the jury entrusted with the award of the Nobel
Prize.
There are seldom fêtes without banquets or banquets without speeches.
Among the speeches delivered at Sérignan at the banquet 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 telegrams 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 nevertheless in spirit
with those who are to-day honouring 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 Sérignan the complement of
Maillane.
It must be recorded that Maillane had cordially united with Sérignan,
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 character of most jubilees, even
scientific ones. It found more than one echo, and had an aftermath
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 Mœurs des
Insectes, which are volumes of selected extracts 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 authority of France, and, we might say, of the world. In his
report on the literary prizes awarded by the Académie Française, M.
Thureau-Dangui devoted the following passage to our friend:
I have reserved to the last the largest of our direct prizes, the
Neé prize, awarded to the author of the Souvenirs entomologiques,
M. Jean-Henri Fabre. He cannot, at all events, be accused of
indiscreet solicitation. In his hermitage at Sérignan, where he has
pursued a long life of toil, a life so modest that despite the most
wonderful discoveries it was for a long time a life of obscurity,
M. Fabre gave not a thought to the Académie Française, 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
wonderful 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 cannot 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 Cicadæ;” 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.” [196]
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
failed to stir, is that which was accorded him by the little Society
which gathers about the belfry of Rodez the intellectual élite of his
own country-side.
The records of the Société des lettres, sciences et arts de l’Aveyron
contain, in the minutes of the session of the 27th 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 enthusiasm and by acclamation. Some time later the famous
naturalist wrote to the Society, 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 expressed 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.
CHAPTER XXII
THE LAST HEIGHTS [197] (1910–1915)
I
In 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 entomological adventures. He was despised for quoting these
authors; he was placed upon the Index for introducing grace and passion
into studies which officially were dry and cold as statistics. But in
joining the Académie Française on the occasion of the jubilee of 1910,
the Académie des Sciences gloriously avenged this unjust and
Pharisaical disdain.
But there were yet some of “time’s revenges” 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 persecutions
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 occasion
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. [198] 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” [199]—that the girl “cronies,” as they called one another in
their group, had come to present their heart-felt homage. Who to-day
would dare to contest their right to become his pupils, to seek with
him “the freshest honey and the most poetical 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 [200] from the precincts of the Académie and the
Université de France lent voice and gesture to the ingenuous utterance
of radiant youth, which delightfully 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 investigations, 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
oblivion. A mere accident without sequence: 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 complete 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 gendarmes 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.
Fabre, who was then in his ninetieth year, and could no longer stand
upright, awaited M. Poincaré 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, I went to Sérignan 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 receive a visit
from Monseigneur the Archbishop 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
1870 and contrasting 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 deficiencies 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 emancipate them
from the tutelage of the clergy, [201] to remove them from, or to
dispute, the influence of the Church. The scientist, enamoured of the
beauty of natural history, saw in this venture merely an opportunity
for diffusing the knowledge and appreciation of his science among the
people. Accordingly 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 disaffected 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 success? 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 vantage of the pulpit, the dangers of his teaching.
Shortly afterwards the municipality dismissed him from his office as
conservator of the Musée Requien, without regard to his family
responsibilities, which were then considerable.
When he visited Fabre in 1914 Monseigneur Latty was fully aware of
these proceedings, 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 hostility 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
caresses of the “holy woman” who assuaged his first griefs to the
tender care of the worthy Sister who consoled his last sufferings? Must
we forget that he was admitted as pupil-teacher to the lycée at Rodez,
as pupil to the seminary of Toulouse and the Normal College of Avignon
on the recommendation of M. l’Abbé d’Aiguillon-Pujol, his old Rodez
headmaster? Are we to say nothing of his articles in the Revue
scientifique 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. l’Abbé Combes? If we are, rightly,
deeply interested in the smallest details of his life and all that
concerns him, are we to say nothing of his friendly relations with his
curé [202] 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 Burgundian”; neither secular nor clerical.
The truth is that if we consider the matter candidly, without bandaging
our eyes and without 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 fervent
apostle of national 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 have statues erected to him.
And speaking of statues, we must not, having mentioned the orators,
forget the artists. All the illustrated 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 compatriots. Provence was the first to propose
the idea. Le Rouergue followed. Avignon, Orange, and Sérignan each
wanted their monument. Saint-Léons profited by its right of seniority
to take precedence of Rodez and Maillane.
“Nous voulions te fêter vivant
Doux patriarche et grand savant,
Et fier amant de la nature,
Et le Rouergue où tu nacquis
Et la Provence où tu conquis
Le laurier d’or qui toujours dure.” [203]
(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.)
The first subscription-list was opened by the Normal College of
Avignon, and a special appeal was made to the schoolmasters of Vaucluse
and the rest of France. Other appeals were addressed to all without
distinction, 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 greatness 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 another lesson of even rarer quality.
Let us hear him confiding his impressions to a friend: “The Mayor of
Sérignan, it 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 beautiful saints
about it!” [204]
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 surrounded: “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 famous
apostrophe: Ματαιότης ματαιοτήτων, καὶ πάντα ματαιότης. [205]
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 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 monument:
“C’est un homme incliné, 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!
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 magic, entomology became
truly a living science, 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 murdered
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 unconscious. And they all tell him the same
thing: Ipse fecit nos et non ipsi nos. [206] (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 toward 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 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
unfathomable 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 intoxicating 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 renounces the ambition of his whole life, vitam impendere
vero? By no means. He has striven to attain it even beyond his
strength.
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, ploughing his straight furrow like his peasant forebears,
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 entomologist 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 sublimior.
III
Neither science nor fame could prevent him from suffering. To begin
with, there is 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 assailed 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 Sérignan, I will borrow the
delicate brush of an artist friend of Fabre’s:
Night falls upon Sérignan, serene, limpid, violet 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
conclude the apotheosis.... J. H. Fabre, the hero of the fête, 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 a world-wide reputation to sustain ... and visits to
receive. To-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, Fabié, in a
delightful flight of imagination, shows us the harassed entomologist
escaping from the past to find himself alone with his thoughts and his
beloved 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 himself, stretching himself, soothed, happy as a little
child.—‘But, father, you aren’t thinking! When the dew is falling!’
‘Ah, my children, why did you wake me? I was having 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, and a breaking heart!
Suffering pressed closely upon him at the close of his days.
“It is better to be loved than to be celebrated,” 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
distant 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 the terrible
thunderclap of war which roused to a protest of intolerable grief the
uttermost fibres of his being.
The whole man suffered. The Frenchman, 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 declared, 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 battlefields, how should he not feel
shaken to the depths of his being by the tremors of a terrible 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 another, 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 of the biological ladder, with the same disregard of
weakness and suffering.
But he would fain have seen man assert his superiority over the animals
by repressing these instincts, which come from below, by the free
flight of the aspirations vouchsafed from above, by the progressive
subordination 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
Souffrance: [207]
“Vingt siècles de bonté sont sortis de ces mystères,
Je crois en toi, Jésus....”
In moments of affliction, Fabre is even closer to the Truth than on the
heights of knowledge and fame. For we are never 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 overwhelming fame, and almost as many of unspeakable
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 patriarch of Sérignan 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 inexpugnable 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 observations
under the blue sky, to the song of the Cicadæ, amid the thyme,
lavender, and rosemary. 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 consign 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—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 solution of the problems
propounded by his insects.
And we have a feeling that we are looking upon, and handling, relics,
when on this table we still see the pocket-lenses, the microscopes 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 the magnificent herbarium which stand in
a row beneath them, and before the innumerable 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
fine, 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 memories?
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 determined to acquire the Harmas, with its
plantations, its collections, and all its dependencies, and in order to
make their homage as complete as possible they made, with this object,
an appeal for international subscriptions, which were unhappily
interrupted by the war.
“This is the museum which we wish to dedicate to him,” said the chief
promoter of this pious undertaking, [208] “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-room where he silently
finished his life, majestically 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-Séminaire de
Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux [209] 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
cassocks and their vocation, he said, energetically: “You have chosen
the better part”; and, holding them back for a last word, he added:
“Life is a horrible phantasmagoria. But it leads us to a better
future.”
This future the naturalist liked to conceive in accordance with the
images familiar to his mind, as being a more complete understanding 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 Cicadæ, chaffinches and siskins, skylarks
and goldfinches, “those tiny choristers,” all singing and fluttering,
“trilling their motets to the glory of Him who gave them voice and
wings on the fifth day of Genesis.” [210]
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 appreciation 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 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 expressed an infinite admiration for the pure and simple
work of Nature as God has ordained 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 Himself.”
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.
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 recalled 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 remain 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 compose.”
In the spring of 1914 the aged naturalist, who was more than ninety
years of age, felt that his strength was failing more perceptibly, 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 invalid 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 fortunately been published.
In these letters, with great delicacy, Monseigneur 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 commend 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 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 curé of Sérignan having been
mobilised, the absence 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 consciousness, into the Church, Fabre displayed a wonderful
serenity. Pressing the hand of the priest who was officiating, he
listened to the recommendation of the soul. And when he heard the
sacred words that were familiar to him—In manus tuus, 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 11th 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 16th 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 himself” would not be complete if we
did not give here the text of the epitaph which he himself had composed
beforehand. It is magnificent: it gives one the impression of an
unfurling of wings:
“Quos periisse putamus
Præmissi sunt.
Minime finis, sed limen
Vitæ 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 compatriot,
covered it with glory.” [211]
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 entomological wealth of
its sunny hills, he none the less represents the Rouergue, whence he
derived his innate qualities and his earliest habits, his love of
nature and the insects, his thirst for God and the Beyond, his
indefatigable love of work, his tenacious enthusiasm for study, his
irresistible craving for solitude, the strange, powerful, striking and
picturesque grace of his language, his almost rustic simplicity, his
blunt frankness, his proud timidity, his no less proud independence,
and with all these the ingenuous and unusual sensitiveness and sincere
modesty of his character.
THE END
NOTES
[1] The higher clerical seminary.—B. M.
[2] The great entomologist’s jubilee was celebrated on the April 3,
1910.—Author’s Note.
[3] Paris, Delagrave. The Souvenirs, translated by Alexander Teixeira
de Mattos, are in course of publication 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 English 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 Instinct,
translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos and Bernard Miall (T. Fisher
Unwin).—B. M.
[4] It must in justice be admitted that Fabre had certain precursors,
among whom mention must be made of the famous Réaumur and Léon Dufour,
a physician who lived in the Landes (died 1865), and who was the
occasion and the subject of his first entomological publication. 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.
[5] Souvenirs, Series VI., p. 65, The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My
Schooling.” This is Fabre’s verdict upon another naturalist,
Moquin-Tandon.
[6] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 76–97; The Glow-worm and Other Beetles, chap,
ix., “Dung-beetles of the Pampas.”
[7] M. E. Perrier is a Member of the Institut de France.
[8] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 76, 97; The Glow-worm, chap. ix.
[9] M. Albert Gaudry is a sometime professor of palæontology in the
Museum of Natural History, who, by virtue of his palæontological
discoveries and works, has acquired a great authority in the scientific
world. His Enchaînements du Monde Animal dans les Temps Géologiques is
especially valued and often cited. Gaudry, who is a good Catholic as
well as a scientist of the first rank, 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.
[10] Those journals which claim him as a native of Sérignan are
therefore mistaken. “At Sérignan (Vaucluse), his native countryside,
the peasants familiarly call him Moussu Fabré” (Univers, March 3,
1910).
[11] In the reminiscences of his childhood, which are intermingled 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.”
[12] 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 contract, 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 15th day of the month of February, in the
locality of Ségur, province of Aveiron, 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 Françoise Azémar, 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 husband 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 present stipulating
and accepting—have in the first place promised that the said marriage
shall be solemnised before the Church at the first demand of one of the
parties, under penalty of all expenses, damages, and interests—in the
second place, the said Fabre and Fages, husband and wife, favouring and
contemplating the present marriage have given and are giving by
donation, declared between living persons, to the aforesaid their son,
the future husband, all and each of their possessions, movable and
immovable, present and future, under the clauses, conditions, and
reserves hereafter following: firstly, to be fed at the same table of
the same victuals as the said donor; secondly, and in case of
incompatibility, they reserve to themselves the same income as Jean
Fabre and Françoise Fabre, father and mother of the donor, reserved to
themselves in the marriage 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 settlement; and in case Françoise and Anne
Fabre should not desire so to do, they shall enjoy the annual pension
... of three setiers 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 spinning-wheel; the use of their clothes-press
and the small articles of furniture necessary according to their
condition; ... the said Fages, the mother, reserves to herself 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 contemplating the present marriage, has given and
constituted 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 hundred 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 paternal parent’s money....
“Devised and rehearsed in the presence of the sieur Joseph Déjean,
burgher of Moulin-Savi, and the sieur André Bourles, practitioner of
Ségur, signed by the aforesaid 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 Ségur,
the 12th April 1807.
“Rous, notary.”
[13] 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.”
[14] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 46–68; The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My
Schooling.”
[15] Souvenirs, IV., pp. 50–60; The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My
Schooling.”
[16] The Château de Saint-Léons standing just outside and above the
village of Saint-Léons, where the author was born in 1823. Cf. The Life
of the Fly, chaps. vi. and vii.—A. T. de M.
[17] The brother whom Fabre here associates with the memories of his
childhood has also proved a credit to his name and his vocation. M.
Frédéric Fabre is to-day Director of the Crillon Canal and assistant
justice for the southern canton of Avignon.
[18] Souvenirs, VIII., pp. 126, 127; Bramble-Bees, chap. xiii, “The
Halicti.”
[19] The war of 1830 with Algiers.—A. T. de M.
[20] Souvenirs, pp. 260–270. The Life of the Fly, chap. vii., “The
Pond.”
[21] The Wheat-ear, one of the Saxicolæ, 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 Provençal
Cul-blanc. The Stonechat is a member of the same genus. B. M.
[22] Souvenirs, pp. 292–300. The Life of the Fly, chap. xvii.,
“Recollections of Childhood.”
[23] Souvenirs, VIII., pp. 125–129. Bramble-bees, chap. xiii., “The
Halicti: The Portress.”
[24] Souvenirs, VI., p. 60. The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My
Schooling.”
[25] Souvenirs, VII., pp. 29, 33. The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles,
chap. xv., “Suicide or Hypnosis?”
[26] Souvenirs, VI., p. 61. The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My
Schooling.”
[27] Souvenirs, II., pp. 41–44, 46. Hunting Wasps, chap. xx., “A Modern
Theory of Instinct.”
[28] Souvenirs, VI., p. 61. The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My
Schooling.”
[29] Fabre, Poet of Science, by G. V. Legros, translated by Bernard
Miall (T. Fisher Unwin), p. 24.
[30] Souvenirs, X., pp. 323–331. The Life of the Fly, chap. xix., “A
Memorable Lesson.”
[31] Souvenirs, X., 332–336. The Life of the Fly, chap. xix., “A
Memorable Lesson.”
[32] 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. Réaumur,
who knew nothing 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.
[33] Souvenirs, I., pp. 278–280. The Mason Bees, chap, i., “The Mason
Bee.”
[34] Horace, Ars Poetica, 412.
[35] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 164–170. The Life of the Fly, chap. xii.,
“Mathematical Memories: The Binomial Theorem.”
[36] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 172–183 passim. The Life of the Fly, chap.
xii., “Mathematical Memories: The Binomial Theorem.”
[37] Souvenirs, IX., p. 184 passim. The Life of the Fly, chap. xii.,
“Mathematical Memories: The Binomial Theorem.”
[38] The weekly half-holiday in the French schools.—A. T. de M.
[39] The Hunting Wasps, chap. xi., “An Ascent of Mont Ventoux.”
[40] Souvenirs, III., pp. 191–193. The Life of the Fly, chap. iv.,
“Larval Dimorphism.”
[41] M. Fabié was never officially a schoolmaster, but he was trained
as one, and was a pupil at the Normal College at Rodez.
[42] M. Perbosc is a schoolmaster at Lavilledien (Tarnet-Garonne). He
has published through Privat of Toulouse: Lo Got occitan, Cansous del
Got occitan, Contes populars Gascons, Guilhem de Tolosa, Remembransa,
l’Arada, etc., and has repeatedly been crowned by the Académie des Jeux
Floraux of Toulouse.
[43] M. Besson is also a laureate of the Académie des Jeux Floraux, and
is at present Canon of Rodez. He has published through Carrère of
Rodez: Dal Brès à la Tounbo, Bagateletos, Besucarietos, Countes de la
Tata Mannou, Countes de l’Ouncle Janet, etc. This last volume is
dedicated: A mon Amic Antouni Perbosc.
[44] 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.
[45] Horace Bénédict 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.
[46] A mountain 7730 feet high, about twenty-five miles from
Ajaccio.—A. T. de M.
[47] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 63–66. The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My
Schooling.”
[48] Souvenirs, I., pp. 178–180. The Life of the Spider, chap. ii.,
“The Black-bellied Tarantula.”
[49] Souvenirs, I., pp. 221, 240–241. The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiv.,
“The Bembex.”
[50] Souvenirs, IV., 3–5.
[51] 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.
[52] Souvenirs, I., p. 122. The Hunting Wasps, chap. vii., “Advanced
Theories.”
[53] Souvenirs, I., p. 136. The Hunting Wasps, chap. viii., “The
Languedocian Sphex.”
[54] Souvenirs, I., pp. 50, 52; II., p. 262 et seq.
[55] Souvenirs, II., pp. 262–303, III., 194–195. The Glow-Worm, chap.
ii., “The Sitaris;” The Life of the Fly, chap. iv., “Larval
Dimorphism.”
[56] Horace, Ars Poetica, 409 et seq.
[57] Souvenirs, III., p. 193.
[58] Ibid., I., p. 182. The Hunting Wasps, chap. xi., “An Ascent of
Mont Ventoux.”
[59] Souvenirs, I., pp. 182–3. The Hunting Wasps, chap. xi., “An Ascent
of Mont Ventoux.”
[60] Souvenirs, I., p. 180.
[61] Th. Delacour and Bernard Valot of the Jardin des Plantes.
[62] Souvenirs, I., pp. 181–186. The Hunting Wasps, chap, xi., “An
Ascent of Mont Ventoux.”
[63] Souvenirs, I., pp. 192–193.
[64] Souvenirs, VI., p. 166; I., p. 187.
[65] Léon 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.
[66] Souvenirs, I., pp. 39–41. The Hunting Wasps, chap, i., “The
Buprestis-hunting Cerceris.”
[67] Fabre, Poet of Science, p. 58.
[68] Souvenirs, I., pp. 41, 44. The Hunting Wasps, chap. I., “The
Buprestis-hunting Cerceris.”
[69] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 326–328.
[70] Duclaux, Pasteur, Histoire d’un Esprit, pp. 182–93.
[71] Souvenirs, IX., p. 330.
[72] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 330–331.
[73] Souvenirs, I., p. 40, 73; II., pp. 78, 83, 181, 214, 234, 235,
283; V., pp. 76, 188, 229, etc.
[74] Everybody knows to-day that heat kills, or so far enfeebles as to
render inoffensive, the microbes that infect 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 amphoræ of
wine, the little room with a fireplace known as the furnarium, which
was used for heating wine and drying fruit.
The heating of wines was practised also at Mèze, near Cette, before
Pasteur’s discovery.
But the ancient method of heating had nothing in common with
pasteurisation. The merchants of Hérault, 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.
[75] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 329–30.
[76] 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.
[77] 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.)
[78] Souvenirs, X., pp. 343 et seq. The Life of the Fly, chap xx.,
“Industrial Chemistry.”
[79] M. François Fabié, ex-professor in the lycée of Toulon, still
lives in the neighbourhood of the city, in the Villa des Troènes.
[80] Journal d’Aveyron, 8 November 1908.
[81] Souvenirs, X., pp. 338–43; The Life of the Fly, chap. xx.,
“Industrial Chemistry.”
[82] Cf. supra, p. 135.
[83] Souvenirs, X., p. 353. The Life of the Fly, chap. xx., “Industrial
Chemistry.”
[84] Revue scientifique, May 7, 1910, speech by M. Edmond Perrier.
[85] Jean Victor Duruy (1811–1894), author of a number of historical
works, including a well-known Histoire des Romains, and Minister of
Public Instruction under Napoleon III. from 1863 to 1869. Cf. The Life
of the Fly, chap. xx.—A. T. de M.
[86] Souvenirs, II., pp. 125–126. The Mason Bees, chap. V., “The story
of my Cats.”
[87] Horace, Ode xxx., Bk. iii.
[88] Souvenirs, II., pp. 202–203. The Life of the Spider, chap. i.,
“The Black-bellied Tarantula.”
[89] Souvenirs, II., p. 1.
[90] 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.
[91] Souvenirs, VIII., 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.
[92] Fabre, Poet of Science, G. V. Legros, pp. 108–115.
[93] The country round Sérignan, in Provence.—A. T. de M.
[94] Souvenirs, II., pp. 1–8. The Life of the Fly, chap. i., “The
Harmas.”
[95] Souvenirs, VII., pp. 270–273. The Life of the Fly, chap. vii.,
“The Pond.”
[96] Ibid., VII., 260–270.
[97] Souvenirs, VIII., 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.”
[98] Souvenirs, VIII., p. 228. The Life of the Fly, chap. ix., “The
Greenbottles.”
[99] Mont Ventoux, an outlying summit of the Alps, 6270 feet high. Cf.
Insect Life, chap. xiii.—A. T. de M.
[100] 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 Baïsso, 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 Burgundy, Helix pramatias.
[101] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 26–37, 42. The Life of the Fly, chap. v.,
“Heredity.”
[102] 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-Léons.—A.
T. de M.
[103] The author’s father kept a café at Pierrelatte and other small
towns in the south of France.—A. T. de M.
[104] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 26–37, 42. The Life of the Fly, chap. v.,
“Heredity.”
[105] Fabre had a sort of natural horror of luxury.
[106] Souvenirs, I., pp. 134–136. The Hunting Wasps, chap. viii., “The
Languedocian Sphex.”
[107] Souvenirs, p. 319, viii., p. 1.
[108] Ibid., p. 294.
[109] Souvenirs, VI., p. 295.
[110] Souvenirs, II., pp. 80, 81, 90, 91. The Mason Wasps, chap. ii.,
“The Odyneri.”
[111] Souvenirs, I., p. 115. The Hunting Wasps, chap. vi., “The Larva
and the Nymph.”
[112] The 14th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille.—A.
T. de M.
[113] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 196–203, 246–247. The Life of the
Grasshopper, chap. xiv., “The Green Grasshopper.”
[114] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 94–97, 231, 299–310. The Life and Love of the
Insect, chaps. xvii., xviii.
[115] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 300–301. The Life and Love of the Insect,
chap. xvii.
[116] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 302–312. The Life and Love of the Insect,
chap. xxii.
[117] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 377–378. The Life of the Caterpillar, chap.
v., “The Moth.”
[118] Souvenirs, III., p. 14.
[119] 26th March 1910.
[120] E. Perrier, Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.
[121] E. Perrier, loc cit.
[122] Souvenirs, I., pp. 304–306, 320; II., pp. 112, 130, 131; III., p.
16; IV., pp. 142, 167, 183; VI., p. 15; VIII., p. 159.
[123] Souvenirs, IV., pp. 167–168, 182–183. The Mason Wasps, chap.
viii., “The Nest-building Odynerus.”
[124] Ibid., VI., pp. 4, 118–119, 249, 383; VIII., p. 295; X., pp. 15,
86, 112, etc.
[125] Souvenirs, I., p. 246; VI., p. 249; VIII., p. 3; X., p. 11, etc.
[126] Ibid., VII., p. 29; VIII., pp. 5, 272; X., pp. 111, 254, etc. For
Lucie, his grand-daughter, aged six, see II., p. 149.
[127] Souvenirs, VII., pp. 139–41. The Life of the Caterpillar, chap.
xi., “The Great Peacock”; also Social Life in the Insect World, chap.
xiv.
[128] Souvenirs, X., p. 111.
[129] Souvenirs, VII., 360.
[130] Souvenirs, V., pp. 43–44. The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap.
iv., “The Sacred Beetle: The Pear.”
[131] Souvenirs, V., pp. 27–29. The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. i.,
“The Sacred Beetle.”
[132] It is exceedingly curious that neither Fabre nor the silk-growers
knew what every English schoolboy knows so 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.
[133] Souvenirs, III., pp. 297–299.
[134] Souvenirs, X., pp. 102–109.
[135] Souvenirs, II., pp. 1 to 19.
[136] Ibid., p. 104.
[137] Souvenirs, III., pp. 12–14.
[138] Souvenirs, IV., pp. 59–60.
[139] Darwin died at Down, in Kent, on the 19th of April, 1882.—A. T.
de M.
[140] Souvenirs, II., p. 99.
[141] Souvenirs, II., 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
translation due to the entomologist Lacordaire. The mistake, which is
really Lacordaire’s, not Erasmus Darwin’s, consisted in confusing the
Sphex with a common Wasp. Charles Darwin, having informed Fabre that
his grandfather had said “a wasp,” the French naturalist immediately
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.”
[142] Darwin died in 1882, and the second volume of the Souvenirs
appeared in 1883.
[143] Souvenirs, I., pp. 188, 189; II., pp. 103; VI., pp. 25, 166, 203;
VII., pp. 8, 9, 57, 161, etc.
[144] Souvenirs, VI., p. 70. The Glow-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.
[145] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 184–186. The Life of the Fly, chap. xiii.,
“Mathematical Memories: My Little Table.”
[146] E. Perrier, Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.
[147] Revue Scientifique, May 7, 1910.
[148] 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
indeed 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 affected 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 insects!’” M.
Fabié does not dispute, any more than we ourselves, that Fabre’s fame
quite legitimately belongs 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 monopolise him.
[149] Cours élémentaire d’histoire naturelle: Zoologie, p. 1, 5th
edition.
[150] Cours élémentaire d’Astronomie, p. 272, 7th edition.
[151] Op. cit., “Avertissement ou Avant-Propos du Directeur de la
collection, couronnée par l’Académie française.”
[152] Souvenirs, II., p. 3. The Life of the Fly, chap. i., “The
Harmas.”
[153] Dedication of vol. II. of the Souvenirs.
[154] Souvenirs, II., p. 4. The Life of the Fly, chap. i., “The
Harmas.”
[155] The Cicada is the Cigale, an insect akin to the Grasshopper 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.
[156] F. Marguet, Revue des Deux Mondes, December 15, 1910.
[157] Ibid.
[158] F. Marguet, op. cit.
[159] F. Marguet, op. cit.
[160] Souvenirs, IV., p. 222.
[161] Fabre, Poet of Science, G. V. Legros, pp. 147, 149.
[162] F. Marguet, op. cit.
[163] Fabre, Poet of Science, G. V. Legros, translated by Bernard
Miall, pp. 159–160.
[164] Souvenirs, X., pp. 100, 101.
[165] Souvenirs, VI., p. 296.
[166] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 176–178. The Mason Bees, chap. xi., “The
Jeucoopes.”
[167] J. P. Lafitte, La Nature, March 26, 1910.
[168] Jean Aicard, Eloge de F. Coppée.
[169] Souvenirs, X., p. 79.
[170] Souvenirs, VIII., p. 346. The Life of the Spider, chap. II., “The
Banded Epeira.”
[171] Souvenirs, X., pp. 78–79.
[172] Souvenirs, X., p. 92.
[173] Revue des Deux-Mondes, Dec. 1910, p. 875.
[174] Souvenirs, I., pp. 265, 314; V., p. 99; VII., p. 48.
[175] Ibid., I., 171–175. The Hunting Wasps, chap. X., “The Ignorance
of Instinct.”
[176] Souvenirs, I., pp. 297–298. The Mason-Bees, chap. ii.,
“Experiments.”
[177] 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 Scarabæus.”
[178] Souvenirs, II., p. 157. The Mason-Bees, chap. vii., “Reflections
upon Insect Psychology.” Ibid., VI., pp. 116, 131, 148. The Glow-Worm
and Other Beetles, chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments;” also
Wonders of Instinct, chap. vi.
[179] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 130, 143. The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles,
chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments.”
[180] 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 Burying Beetles.”
[181] Souvenirs, II., p. 159. The Mason-Bees, chap. vii. “Reflections
upon Insect Psychology.” Souvenirs, VI., 116. The Glow-Worm and Other
Beetles, chap. xi. “The Burying Beetles”; see also Wonders of Instinct,
chap. vi.
[182] Souvenirs, IV., p. 238.
[183] Souvenirs, II., p. 138; VI., pp. 98, 117.
[184] Souvenirs, I., p. 220. The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii, “The
Ammophila.”
[185] 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, VII., p. 193.
[186] 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.”
[187] E. Tavernier.
[188] Souvenirs, X., pp. 92, 214.
[189] Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.
[190] 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.”
[191] Souvenirs, VI., p. 75.
[192] Fabre denies “by the light of the facts” almost all the ideas
which evolution invokes to explain the formation 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 hypothesis.”
[193] 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 instinct is an incorporeal element which
he does not otherwise define, which he characterises merely as a native
impulse, irresistible, infallible and superior to the organism 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 recognised 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 explanation not below
but above it, and of all the marvels created that compel us to look
upward and proclaim the Supreme Intelligence whence they are derived,
this is one of the most striking and persuasive: “The more I see, the
more I observe, the more this Intelligence 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.
[194] Quoted from Mgr. Mignot, Lettres sur les Etudes ecclésiastiques,
p. 248.
[195] Souvenirs, III., p. 91.
[196] Session of the 8th December 1910.
[197] This chapter was written by the Abbé Fabre especially for the
English edition.—B. M.
[198] This was the pilgrimage of the young girls of the Université des
Annales politiques et littéraires.
[199] The French words are “Cousins,” “Cousines.” Cousin = cousin, good
friend, crony.—B. M.
[200] Jules Clarétie, Jean Richepin, Adolphe Brisson, etc.
[201] E. Lavisse, quoted by Dr. Legros, op. cit., p. 81.
[202] M. l’Abbé Germain, ex-curé of Sérignan.
[203] François Fabié.
[204] In Provence, as in Italy, the plaster statues sold by itinerant
Italians are known as santi belli = beautiful saints.—B. M.
[205] The text is from Ecclesiastes, i. 2: “Vanity of vanities, 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: Ἀεὶ ρεν, ράλιστα Σενπνε ἠχαιρον
εἰπεῖν; ματαιότης, etc. (Semper quidem, nunc vero maxime opportunum est
dicere: Vanitas, etc.)
[206] Psalm 100, verse 3.
[207] Françoise Coppée.
[208] Dr. Legros, Les Annales politiques et littéraires, April 12,
1914.
[209] The Abbé Joseph Betton and his friend, the Abbé Juiot.
[210] J. H. Fabre, cited by Dr. Legros.
[211] E. Laguet, Annales politiques et littéraires, April 6, 1914.
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