The Project Gutenberg Etext of Fabre, Poet of Science by Legros
Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!
Please take a look at the important information in this header.
We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
electronic path open for the next readers.
Please do not remove this.
This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book.
Do not change or edit it without written permission. The words
are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they
need about what they can legally do with the texts.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
further information is included below. We need your donations.
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
As of 12/12/00 contributions are only being solicited from people
in:
Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana,
Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota,
Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising
will begin in the additional states. Please feel
free to ask to check the status of your state.
International donations are accepted,
but we don't know ANYTHING about how
to make them tax-deductible, or
even if they CAN be made deductible,
and don't have the staff to handle it
even if there are ways.
These donations should be made to:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109
Title: Fabre, Poet of Science
Author: Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
Release Date: October, 2002 [Etext #3489]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
[The actual date this file first posted = 05/20/01]
Edition: 10
Language: English
The Project Gutenberg Etext of Fabre, Poet of Science by Legros
******This file should be named 3489.txt or 3489.zip*****
This etext was produced by Sue Asscher
Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after
the official publication date.
Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so.
Most people start at our sites at:
https://gutenberg.org
http://promo.net/pg
Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is
also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext02
or
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext02
Or /etext01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
as it appears in our Newsletters.
Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This
projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext
files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+
If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.
The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
manage to get some real funding.
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
We need your donations more than ever!
Presently, contributions are only being solicited from people in:
Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana,
Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota,
Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising
will begin in the additional states.
These donations should be made to:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation,
EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541,
has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal
Revenue Service (IRS). Donations are tax-deductible to the extent
permitted by law. As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in
the
additional states.
All donations should be made to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation. Mail to:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Avenue
Oxford, MS 38655-4109 [USA]
We need your donations more than ever!
You can get up to date donation information at:
https://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html
***
If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
you can always email directly to:
Michael S. Hart
[email protected] forwards to [email protected] and archive.org
if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
We would prefer to send you information by email.
***
Example command-line FTP session:
ftp ftp.ibiblio.org
login: anonymous
password: your@login
cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext02, etc.
dir [to see files]
get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g.,
GUTINDEX.99]
GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
**The Legal Small Print**
(Three Pages)
***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etexts,
is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States
copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
any commercial products without permission.
To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.
THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.
INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this etext,
[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
or [3] any Defect.
DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:
[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this
requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however,
if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
including any form resulting from conversion by word
processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
*EITHER*:
[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
does *not* contain characters other than those
intended by the author of the work, although tilde
(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
be used to convey punctuation intended by the
author, and additional characters may be used to
indicate hypertext links; OR
[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
form by the program that displays the etext (as is
the case, for instance, with most word processors);
OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
"Small Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you
don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are
payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to
let us know your plans and to work out the details.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine readable form.
The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
Money should be paid to the:
"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
[email protected]
*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END*
This etext was produced by Sue Asscher
FABRE, POET OF SCIENCE
by DR. G.-V. LEGROS.
"De fimo ad excelsa."
J.-H. Fabre.
WITH A PREFACE BY JEAN-HENRI FABRE.
TRANSLATED BY BERNARD MIALL.
PREFACE.
The good friend who has so successfully terminated the task which he felt a
vocation to undertake thought it would be of advantage to complete it by
presenting to the reader a picture both of my life as a whole and of the
work which it has been given me to accomplish.
The better to accomplish his undertaking, he abstracted from my
correspondence, as well as from the long conversations which we have so
often enjoyed together, a great number of those memories of varying
importance which serve as landmarks in life; above all in a life like mine,
not exempt from many cares, yet not very fruitful in incidents or great
vicissitudes, since it has been passed very largely, in especial during the
last thirty years, in the most absolute retirement and the completest
silence.
Moreover, it was not unimportant to warn the public against the errors,
exaggerations, and legends which have collected about my person, and thus
to set all things in their true light.
In undertaking this task my devoted disciple has to some extent been able
to replace those "Memoirs" which he suggested that I should write, and
which only my bad health has prevented me from undertaking; for I feel that
henceforth I am done with wide horizons and "far-reaching thoughts."
And yet on reading now the old letters which he has exhumed from a mass of
old yellow papers, and which he has presented and co-ordinated with so
pious a care, it seems to me that in the depths of my being I can still
feel rising in me all the fever of my early years, all the enthusiasm of
long ago, and that I should still be no less ardent a worker were not the
weakness of my eyes and the failure of my strength to-day an insurmountable
obstacle.
Thoroughly grasping the fact that one cannot write a biography without
entering into the sphere of those ideas which alone make a life
interesting, he has revived around me that world which I have so long
contemplated, and summarized in a striking epitome, and as a strict
interpreter, my methods (which are, as will be seen, within the reach of
all), my ideas, and the whole body of my works and discoveries; and despite
the obvious difficulty which such an attempt would appear to present, he
has succeeded most wonderfully in achieving the most lucid, complete, and
vital exposition of these matters that I could possibly have wished.
Jean-Henri Fabre.
Sérignan, Vaucluse,
November 12, 1911.
CONTENTS.
PREFACE.
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER 1. THE INTUITION OF NATURE.
CHAPTER 2. THE PRIMARY TEACHER.
CHAPTER 3. CORSICA.
CHAPTER 4. AT AVIGNON.
CHAPTER 5. A GREAT TEACHER.
CHAPTER 6. THE HERMITAGE.
CHAPTER 7. THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE.
CHAPTER 8. THE MIRACLE OF INSTINCT.
CHAPTER 9. EVOLUTION OR "TRANSFORMISM."
CHAPTER 10. THE ANIMAL MIND.
CHAPTER 11. HARMONIES AND DISCORDS.
CHAPTER 12. THE TRANSLATION OF NATURE.
CHAPTER 13. THE EPIC OF ANIMAL LIFE.
CHAPTER 14. PARALLEL LIVES.
CHAPTER 15. THE EVENINGS AT SÉRIGNAN.
CHAPTER 16. TWILIGHT.
NOTES.
INDEX.
INTRODUCTION.
Here I offer to the public the life of Jean-Henri Fabre; at once an
admiring commentary upon his work and an act of pious homage, such as ought
to be offered, while he lives, to the great naturalist who is even to-day
so little known.
Hitherto it was not easy to speak of Henri Fabre with exactitude. An enemy
to all advertisement, he has so discreetly held himself withdrawn that one
might almost say that he has encouraged, by his silence, many doubtful or
unfounded rumours, which in course of time would become even more
incorrect.
For example, although quite recently his material situation was presented
in the gloomiest of lights, while it had really for some time ceased to be
precarious, it is none the less true that during his whole life he has had
to labour prodigiously in order to earn a little money to feed and rear his
family, to the great detriment of his scientific inquiries; and we cannot
but regret that he was not freed from all material cares at least twenty
years earlier than was the case.
But he was not one to speak of his troubles to the first comer; and it was
only after the sixth volume of the "Souvenirs entomologiques" had appeared
that his reserve was somewhat mitigated. Yet it was necessary that he
should speak of these troubles, that he should tell everything; and, thanks
to his conversation and his letters, I have been able to revive the past.
Among the greatest of my pleasures I count the notable honour of having
known him, and intimately. As an absorbed and attentive witness I was
present at the accomplishment of his last labours; I watched his last years
of work, so critical, so touching, so forsaken, before his ultimate
resurrection. What fruitful and suggestive lessons I learned in his
company, as we paced the winding paths of his Harmas; or while I sat beside
him, at his patriarchal table, interrogating that memory of his, so rich in
remembrances that even the remotest events of his life were as near to him
as those that had only then befallen him; so that the majority of the
judgments to be found in this book, of which not a line has been written
without his approval, may be regarded as the direct emanation of his mind.
As far as possible I have allowed him to speak himself. Has he not sketched
the finest pages of his "biography of a solitary student" in those racy
chapters of his "Souvenirs": those in which he has developed his genesis as
a naturalist and the history of the evolution of his ideas?
(Introduction/1.) In all cases I have only introduced such indications as
were essential to complete the sequence of events. It would have been idle
to re-tell in the same terms what every one may read elsewhere, or to
repeat in different and less happy terms what Fabre himself has told so
well.
I have therefore applied myself more especially to filling the gaps which
he has left, by listening to his conversation, by appealing to his
memories, by questioning his contemporaries, by recording the impressions
of his sometime pupils. I have endeavoured to assemble all these data, in
order to authenticate them, and have also gleaned many facts among his
manuscripts (Introduction/2.), and have had recourse to all that portion of
his correspondence which fortunately fell into my hands.
This correspondence, to be truthful, does not appear at any time to have
been very assiduous. Fabre, as we shall see in the story of his life
(Introduction/3.), disliked writing letters, both in his studious youth and
during the later period of isolation and silence.
On the other hand, although he wrote but little, he never wrote with
difficulty or as a mere matter of duty. Among all the letters which I have
succeeded in collecting there are scarcely any that are not of interest
from one point of view or another. No frivolous narratives, no futile
acquaintances, no commonplace intimacies; everything in his life is
serious, and everything makes for a goal.
But we must set apart, as surpassing all others in interest, the letters
which Fabre addressed to his brother during the years spent as schoolmaster
at Carpentras or Ajaccio; for these are more especially instructive in
respect of the almost unknown years of his youth; these most of all reveal
his personality and are one of the finest illustrations that could be given
of his life, a true poem of energy and disinterested labour.
I have to thank M. Frédéric Fabre, who, in his fraternal piety, has
generously placed all his family records at my disposal, and also his two
sons, my dear friends Antonin Fabre, councillor at the Court of Nîmes, and
Henri Fabre, of Avignon, for these precious documents; and I take this
opportunity of expressing my profound gratitude.
Let me at the same time thank all those who have associated themselves with
my efforts by supplying me with letters in their possession and furnishing
me with personal information; and in particular Mme Henry Devillario, M.
Achard, and M. J. Belleudy, ex-prefect of Vaucluse; not forgetting M. Louis
Charrasse, teacher at Beaumont-d'Orange, and M. Vayssières, professor of
the Faculty of Sciences at Marseilles, all of whom I have to thank for
personal and intimate information.
I must also express my gratitude to M. Henri Bergson, Professor Bouvier,
and the learned M. Paul Marchal for the advice and the valuable suggestions
which they offered me during the preparation of this book.
I shall feel fully repaid for my pains if this "Life" of one of the
greatest of the world's naturalists, by enabling men to know him better,
also leads them to love him the more.
FABRE, POET OF SCIENCE.
CHAPTER 1. THE INTUITION OF NATURE.
Each thing created, says Emerson, has its painter or its poet. Like the
enchanted princess of the fairy-tales, it awaits its predestined liberator.
Every part of nature has its mystery and its beauty, its logic and its
explanation; and the epigraph given me by Fabre himself, which appears on
the title-page of this volume, is in no way deceptive. The tiny insects
buried in the soil or creeping over leaf or blade have for him been
sufficient to evoke the most important, the most fascinating problems, and
have revealed a whole world of miracle and poetry.
He saw the light at Saint-Léons, a little commune of the canton of Vezins
in the Haut Rouergue, on the 22nd December, 1823, some seven years earlier
than Mistral, his most famous neighbour, the greater lustre of whose
celebrity was to eclipse his own.
Here he essayed his earliest steps; here he stammered his first syllables.
His early childhood, however, was passed almost wholly at Malaval, a tiny
hamlet in the parish of Lavaysse, whose belfry was visible at quite a short
distance; but to reach it one had to travel nearly twenty-five rough,
mountainous miles, through a whole green countryside; green, but bare, and
lacking in charm. (1/1.)
All his paternal forebears came from Malaval, and thence one day his
father, Antoine Fabre, came to dwell at Saint-Léons, as a consequence of
his marriage with the daughter of the huissier, Victoire Salgues, and in
order to prepare himself, as working apprentice, in the tricks and quibbles
of the law. (1/2.)
In the roads of Malaval, bordered with brambles, in the glades of bracken,
and amid the meadows of broom, he received his first impressions of nature.
At Malaval too lived his grandmother, the good old woman who could lull him
to sleep at night with beautiful stories and simple legends, while she
wound her distaff or spun her bobbin.
But what were all these imaginary marvels, what were the ogres who smelt
fresh meat, or "the fairies who turned pumpkins into coaches and lizards
into footmen" beside all the marvels of reality, which already he was
beginning to perceive?
For above all things he was born a poet: a poet by instinct and by
vocation. From his earliest childhood, "the brain hardly released from the
swaddling-bands of unconsciousness," the things of the outer world left a
profound and living impression. As far back as he can remember, while still
quite a child, "a little monkey of six, still dressed in a little baize
frock," or just "wearing his first braces," he sees himself "in ecstasy
before the splendours of the wing-cases of a gardener-beetle, or the wings
of a butterfly." At nightfall, among the bushes, he learned to recognize
the chirp of the grasshopper. To put it in his own words, "he made for the
flowers and insects as the Pieris makes for the cabbage and the Vanessa
makes for the nettle." The riches of the rocks; the life which swarms in
the depth of the waters; the world of plants and animals, that "prodigious
poem; all nature filled him with curiosity and wonder." "A voice charmed
him; untranslatable; sweeter than language and vague as a dream." (1/3.)
These peculiarities are all the more astonishing in that they seem to be
absolutely spontaneous and in nowise hereditary. What his parents were he
himself has told us: small farmers, cultivating a little unprofitable land;
poor "husbandmen, sowers of rye, cowherds"; and in the wretched
surroundings of his childhood, when the only light, of an evening, came
from a splinter of pine, steeped in resin, which was held by a strip of
slate stuck into the wall; when his folk shut themselves in the byre, in
times of severe cold, to save a little firewood and while away the
evenings; when close at hand, through the bitter wind, they heard the
howling of the wolves: here, it would seem, was nothing propitious to the
birth of such tastes, if he had not borne them naturally within him.
But is it not the very essence of genius, as it is the peculiarity of
instinct, to spring from the depths of the invisible?
Yet who shall say what stores of thought unspoken, what unknown treasures
of observation never to be communicated, what patient reflections
unuttered, may be housed in those toil-worn brains, in which, perhaps,
slowly and obscurely, accumulate the germs of faculties and talents by
which some more favoured descendant may one day benefit? How many poets
have died unpublished or unperceived, in whom only the power of expression
was lacking!
When he was seven years old his parents recalled him to Saint-Léons, in
order to send him to the school kept by his godfather, Pierre Ricard, the
village schoolmaster, "at once barber, bellringer, and singer in the
choir." Rembrandt, Teniers, nor Van Ostade never painted anything more
picturesque than the room which served at the same time as kitchen,
refectory, and bedroom, with "halfpenny prints papering the walls" and "a
huge chimney, for which each had to bring his log of a morning in order to
enjoy the right to a place at the fireside."
He was never to forget these beloved places, blessed scenes of his
childhood, amid which he grew up like a little savage, and through all his
material sufferings, all his hours of bitterness, and even in the
resignation of age, their idyllic memory sufficed to make his life
fragrant. He would always see the humble paternal garden, the brook where
he used to surprise the crayfish, the ash-tree in which he found his first
goldfinch's nest, and "the flat stone on which he heard, for the first
time, the mellow ringing of the bellringer frog." (1/4.) Later, when
writing to his brother, he was to recall the good days of still careless
life, when "he would sprawl, the sun on his belly, on the mosses of the
wood of Vezins, eating his black bread and cream" or "ring the bells of
Saint-Léons" and "pull the tails of the bulls of Lavaysse." (1/5.)
For Henri had a brother, Frédéric, barely two years younger than he;
equally meditative by nature, and of a serious, upright mind; but his
tastes inclined rather to matters of administration and the understanding
of business, so that where Frédéric was bored, Henri was more than content,
thirstily drinking in science and poetry "among the blue campanulas of the
hills, the pink heather of the mountains, the golden buttercups of the
meadows, and the odorous bracken of the woods." (1/6.) Apart from this the
two brothers "were one"; they understood one another in a marvellous
fashion, and always loved one another. Henri never failed to watch over
Frédéric with a wholly fatherly solicitude; he was prodigal of advice,
helpful with his experience, doing his best to smooth away all
difficulties, encouraging him to walk in his footsteps and make his way
through the world behind him. He was his confidant, giving an ear to all
that befell him of good or ill; to his fears, his disappointments, his
hopes, and all his thoughts; and he took the keenest interest in his
studies and researches. On the other hand, he had no more sure and devoted
friend; none more proud of his first success, and in later days no more
enthusiastic admirer, and none more eager for his fame. (1/7.)
He was twelve years old when his father, "the first of all his line, was
tempted by the town," and led all his family to Rodez, there to keep a
café. The future naturalist entered the school of this town, where he
served Mass on Sunday, in the chapel, in order to pay his fees. There again
he was interested in the animal creation above all. When he began to
construe Virgil the only thing that charmed him, and which he remembered,
was the landscape in which the persons of the poem move, in which are so
many "exquisite details concerning the cicada, the goat, and the laburnum."
Thus four years went by: but then his parents were constrained to seek
their fortune elsewhere, and transported their household to Toulouse, where
again the father kept a café. The young Henri was admitted gratuitously to
the seminary of the Esquille, where he managed to complete his fifth year.
Unfortunately his progress was soon interrupted by a new exodus on the part
of his family, which emigrated this time to Montpellier, where he was
haunted for a time by dreams of medicine, to which he seemed notably
adapted. Finally, a run of bad luck persisting, he had to bid farewell to
his studies and gain his bread as best he could. We see him set out along
the wide white roads: lost, almost a wanderer, seeking his living by the
sweat of his brow; one day selling lemons at the fair of Beaucaire, under
the arcades of the market or before the barracks of the Pré; another day
enlisting in a gang of labourers who were working on the line from
Beaucaire to Nîmes, which was then in process of construction. He knew
gloomy days, lonely and despairing. What was he doing? of what was he
dreaming? The love of nature and the passion for learning sustained him in
spite of all, and often served him as nourishment; as on the day when he
dined on a few grapes, plucked furtively at the edge of a field, after
exchanging the poor remnant of his last halfpence for a little volume of
Reboul's poems; soothing his hunger by reciting the verses of the gentle
baker-poet. Often some creature kept him company; some insect never seen
before was often his greatest pleasure; such as the pine-chafer, which he
encountered then for the first time; that superb beetle, whose black or
chestnut coat is sprinkled with specks of white velvet; which squeaks when
captured, emitting a slight complaining sound, like the vibration of a pane
of glass rubbed with the tip of a moistened finger. (1/8.)
Already this young mind, romantic and classic at once, full of the ideal,
and so positive that it seemed to seek support in an intense grasp of
things and beings--two gifts well-nigh incompatible, and often mutually
destructive--already it knew, not only the love of study and a passion for
the truth, but the sovereign delight of feeling everything and
understanding everything.
It was under these conditions--that is, amid the rudest privations--that he
ventured to enter a competitive examination for a bursary at the École
Normale Primaire of Avignon; and his will-power realized this first miracle
of his career--he straightway obtained the highest place.
In those days, when education had barely reached the lower classes, the
instruction given in the primary normal school was still of the most
summary. Spelling, arithmetic, and geometry practically exhausted its
resources. As for natural history, a poor despised science, almost unknown,
no one dreamed of it, and no one learned or taught it; the syllabus ignored
it, because it led to nothing. For Fabre only, notwithstanding, it was his
fixed idea, his constant preoccupation, and "while the dictation class was
busy around him, he would examine, in the secrecy of his desk, the sting of
a wasp or the fruit of the oleander," and intoxicate himself with poetry.
(1/9.) His pedagogic studies suffered thereby, and the first part of his
stay at the normal school was by no means extremely brilliant. In the
middle of his second year he was declared idle, and even marked as an
insufficient pupil and of mediocre intelligence. Stung to the quick, he
begged as a favour that he should be given the opportunity of following the
third year's course in the six months that remained, and he made such an
effort that at the end of the year he victoriously won his superior
certificate. (1/10.)
A year in advance of the regulation studies, his curiosity might now
exercise itself freely in every direction, and little by little it became
universal. A chance chemistry lesson finally awakened in him the appetite
for knowledge, the passion for all the sciences, of which he thirsted to
know at least the elements. Between whiles he returned to his Latin,
translating Horace and re-reading Virgil. One day his director put an
"Imitation" into his hands, with double columns in Greek and Latin. The
latter, which he knew fairly well, assisted him to decipher the Greek. He
hastened to commit to memory the vocables, and idioms and phrases of all
kinds (1/11.), and in this curious fashion he learned the language. This
was his only method of learning languages. It is the process which he
recommended to his brother, who was commencing Latin:
"Take Virgil, a dictionary, and a grammar, and translate from Latin into
French for ever and for ever; to make a good version you need only common
sense and very little grammatical knowledge or other pedantic accessories.
"Imagine an old inscription half-effaced: correctness of judgment partly
supplies the missing words, and the sense appears as if the whole were
legible. Latin, for you, is the old inscription; the root of the word alone
is legible: the veil of an unknown language hides the value of the
termination: you have only the half of the words; but you have common sense
too, and you will make use of it." (1/12.)
CHAPTER 2. THE PRIMARY TEACHER.
Furnished with his superior diploma, he left the normal school at the age
of nineteen, and commenced as a primary teacher in the College of
Carpentras.
The salary of the school teacher, in the year 1842, did not exceed 28
pounds sterling a year, and this ungrateful calling barely fed him, save on
"chickpeas and a little wine." But we must beware lest, in view of the
increasing and excessive dearness of living in France, the beggarly
salaries of the poor schoolmasters of a former day, so little worthy of
their labours and their social utility, appear even more disproportionately
small than they actually were. What is more to the point, the teachers had
no pension to hope for. They could only count on a perpetuity of labour,
and when sickness or infirmity arrived, when old age surprised them, after
fifty or sixty years of a narrow and precarious existence, it was not
merely poverty that awaited them; for many there was nothing but the
blackest destitution. A little later, when they began to entertain a vague
hope of deliverance, the retiring pension which was held up to their gaze,
in the distant future, was at first no more than forty francs, and they had
to await the advent of Duruy, the great minister and liberator, before
primary instruction was in some degree raised from this ignominious level
of abasement.
It was a melancholy place, this college, "where life had something
cloistral about it: each master occupied two cells, for, in consideration
of a modest payment, the majority were lodged in the establishment, and ate
in common at the principal's table."
It was a laborious life, full of distasteful and repugnant duties. We can
readily imagine, with the aid of the striking picture which Fabre has drawn
for us, what life was in these surroundings, and what the teaching was:
"Between four high walls I see the court, a sort of bear-pit where the
scholars quarrelled for the space beneath the boughs of a plane-tree; all
around opened the class-rooms, oozing with damp and melancholy, like so
many wild beasts' cages, deficient in light and air...for seats, a plank
fixed to the wall...in the middle a chair, the rushes of the seat departed,
a blackboard, and a stick of chalk." (2/1.)
Let the teachers of our spacious and well-lighted schools of to-day ponder
on these not so distant years, and measure the progress accomplished.
Evoking the memory of their humble colleague of Carpentras, may they feel
the true greatness of his example: a noble and a glorious example, of which
they may well be proud.
And what pupils! "Dirty, unmannerly: fifty young scoundrels, children or
big lads, with whom," no doubt, "he used to squabble," but whom, after all,
he contrived to manage, and by whom he was listened to and respected: for
he knew precisely what to say to them, and how, while talking lightly, to
teach them the most serious things. For the joy of teaching, and of
continually learning by teaching others, made everything endurable. Not
only did he teach them to read, write, and cipher, which then included
almost the entire programme of primary education; he endeavoured also to
place his own knowledge at their service, as he himself acquired it.
It was not only his love of the work that sustained him; it was the desire
to escape from the rut, to accomplish yet another stage; to emerge, in
short, from so unsatisfactory a position. Now nothing but physical and
mathematical science would allow him to entertain the hope of "making an
opening" in the world of secondary schoolmasters. He accordingly began to
study physics, quite alone, "with an impossible laboratory, experimenting
after his own fashion"; and it was by teaching them to his pupils that he
learned first of all chemistry, inexpensively performing little elementary
experiments before them, "with pipe-bowls for crucibles and aniseed flasks
for retorts," and finally algebra, of which he knew not a word before he
gave his first lesson. (2/2.)
How he studied, what was the secret of his method, he told his brother a
few years later, when the latter, marking time behind him, was pursuing the
same career. A very disappointing career, no doubt, and far from lucrative,
but "one of the noblest; one of those best fitted for a noble spirit, and a
lover of the good." (2/3.)
Listen to the lesson which he gives his brother:
"To-day is Thursday; nothing calls you out of doors; you choose a
thoroughly quiet retreat, where the light is not too strong. There you are,
elbows on table, your thumbs to your ears, and a book in front of you. The
intelligence awakes; the will holds the reins of it; the outer world
disappears, the ear no longer hears, the eye no longer sees, the body no
longer exists; the mind schools itself, recollects itself; it is finding
knowledge, and its insight increases. Then the hours pass quickly, quickly;
time has no measure. Now it is evening. What a day, great God! But hosts of
truths are grouped in the memory; the difficulties which checked you
yesterday have fused in the fire of reflection; volumes have been devoured,
and you are content with your day...
"When something embarrasses you do not abuse the help of your colleagues;
with assistance the difficulty is only evaded; with patience and reflection
IT IS OVERTHROWN. Moreover, one knows thoroughly only what one learns
oneself; and I advise you earnestly, as far as possible, to have recourse
to no aid other than reflection, above all for the sciences. A book of
science is an enigma to be deciphered; if some one gives you the key of the
enigma nothing appears more simple and more natural than the explanation,
but if a second enigma presents itself you will be as unskilful as you were
with the first...
"It is probable that you will get the chance of a few lessons; do not by
preference accept the easier and more lucrative, but rather the more
difficult, even when the subject is one of which as yet you know nothing.
The self-esteem which will not allow one's true character to be seen is a
powerful aid to the will. Do not forget the method of Jules Janin, running
from house to house in Paris for a few wretched lessons in Latin: 'Unable
to get anything out of my stupid pupils, with the besotted son of the
marquis I was simultaneously pupil and professor: I explained the ancient
authors to myself, and so, in a few months, I went through an excellent
course of rhetoric...'
"Above all you must not be discouraged; time is nothing provided the will
is always alert, always active, and never distracted; 'strength will come
as you travel.'
"Try only for a few days this method of working, in which the whole energy,
concentrated on one point, explodes like a mine and shatters obstacles; try
for a few days the force of patience, strength, and perseverance; and you
will see that nothing is impossible!" (2/4.)
These serious reflections show very clearly that his mind was already as
mature, as earnest, and as concentrated as it was ever to be.
Not only did he join example to precept; he looked about him and began to
observe nature in her own house. The doings of the Mason-bee, which he
encountered for the first time, aroused his interest to such a pitch that,
being no longer able to constrain his curiosity, he bought--at the cost of
what privations!--Blanchard's "Natural History of the Articulata," then a
classic work, which he was to re-read a hundred times, and which he still
retains, giving it the first place in his modest library, in memory of his
early joys and emotions.
The rocks also arrested and captivated his attention: and already the first
volumes were corpulent of what was eventually to become his gigantic
herbiary. His brother, about to leave for Vezins on vacation, was told of
the specimens which he wanted to complete his collection; for although he
had never set foot there since his first departure, he recalled, with
remarkable precision, all the plants that grew in his native countryside;
their haunts, their singularities, and the characteristics by which one
could not fail to recognize them: as well as all the places which they
chose by preference, where he used to wander as an urchin; the Parnassia
palustris, "which springs up in the damp meadows, below the beech-wood to
the west of the village; which bears a superb white flower at the top of a
slightly twisted stem, having an oval leaf about its middle"; the purple
digitalis, "whose long spindles of great red flowers, speckled with white
inside, and shaped like the fingers of a glove," border a certain road; all
the ferns that grow on the wastes, "amid which it is often no easy task to
recollect one's whereabouts," and on the arid hills all the heathers, pink,
white, and bluish, with different foliage, "of which the innumerable
species do not, however, very greatly differ." Nothing is to be neglected;
"every plant, whatever it may be, great or little, rare or common, were it
only a frond of moss, may have its interest." (2/5.)
Never weary of work, he accumulated all these treasures in his little
museum, in order to study them the better; he collected all the coins
exhumed from this ancient soil, formerly Roman, "records of humanity more
eloquent than books," and which revealed to him the only method of learning
and actually re-living history: for he saw in knowledge not merely a means
of gaining his bread, but "something nobler; the means of raising the
spirit in the contemplation of the truth, of isolating it at will from the
miseries of reality, so to find, in these intellectual regions, the only
hours of happiness that we may be permitted to taste." (2/6.)
Fabre was so steeped in this passion for knowledge that he wished to evoke
it in his brother, now teacher at Lapalud, on the Rhône, not far from
Orange. It seemed to him that he would delight in his wealth still better
could he share it with another. (2/7.) He stimulated him, pricked him on,
and sought to encourage the remarkable aptitude for mathematics with which
he believed him endowed. He employed his whole strength in breathing into
the other's mind "that taste for the true and the beautiful" which
possessed his own nature; he wished to share with him those stores of
learning "which he had for some years so painfully amassed"; he would
profit by the vacation to place them at his disposal; they would work
together "and the light would come." Above all his brother must not allow
his intelligence to slumber, must beware of "extinguishing that divine
light without which one can, it is true, attend to one's business, but
which alone can make a man honourable and respected."
Let him, on the contrary, cultivate his mind incessantly, "the only
patrimony on which either of us can count"; the reward would be his moral
well-being, and, he hoped, his physical welfare also.
Once more he reinforced his advice by that excellent counsel which was
always his own lodestar:
"Science, Frédéric, knowledge is everything...You are too good a thinker
not to say with me that no one can better employ his time than by acquiring
fresh knowledge...Work, then, when you have the opportunity...an
opportunity that very few may possess, and for which you ought to be only
too thankful. But I will stop, for I feel my enthusiasm is going to my
head, and my reasons are so good already that I have no need of still more
triumphant reasons to convince you." (2/8.)
He had only one passion: shooting; more especially the shooting of larks.
This sport delighted him, "with the mirror darting its intermittent beams
under the rays of the morning sun amid the general scintillation of the
dewdrops and crystals of hoarfrost hanging on every blade of grass." (2/9.)
His sight was admirably sure, and he rarely missed his aim. His passion for
shooting was always sustained by the same motive: the desire to acquire
fresh knowledge; to examine unknown creatures close at hand; to discover
what they ate and how they lived.
Later, when he again took up his gun, it was still because of his love of
life: it was to enable him to enumerate, inventory, and interrogate his new
compatriots, his feathered fellow-citizens of Sérignan; to inform himself
of their diet, to reveal the contents of their crops and gizzards.
At one time he suddenly ceased to employ this distraction; he seems to have
sacrificed it easily, under the stress of present necessities and cruel
anxieties as to his uncertain future. "When we do not know where we shall
be tomorrow nothing can distract us." (2/10.)
His responsibilities were increasing. He had lately married. On the 30th
October, 1844, he was wedded to a young girl of Carpentras, Marie Villard,
and already a child was born. His parents, always unlucky, met nowhere with
any success. By dint of many wanderings they had finally become stranded at
Pierrelatte, the chief town of the canton of La Drôme, sheltered by the
great rock which has given the place its name; and there again, of course,
they kept a café, situated on the Place d'Armes.
The whole family was now assembled in the same district, a few miles only
one from another: but Henri was really its head. Having heard that a
quarrel had arisen between his brother and his mother, he wrote to Frédéric
in reprimand; gently scolding him and begging him to set matters right,
"even if all the wrongs were not on his side."
"My father, in one of his letters, complains that in spite of your nearness
you have not yet been to see them. I know very well there is some reason
for sulking; but what matter? Give it up: forget everything; do your best
to put an end to all these petty and ugly estrangements. You will do so,
won't you? I count on it, for the happiness of all." (2/11.)
He was their arbitrator, their adviser, their oracle, their bond of union.
With all this, he was ready to attempt the two examinations which were to
decide his future. Very shortly, at Montpellier, he passed almost
successively, at an interval of only a few months the examinations for both
his baccalauréats; and then the two licentiate examinations in mathematics
and physical science.
While he was ardently studying for these examinations, sorrow for the first
time knocked at his door. His first-born fell suddenly ill, and in a few
days died. On this occasion all his ardent spirituality asserted itself,
though in stricken accents, in the letter which he wrote to his brother to
announce his loss:
"After a few days of a marked improvement, which made me think he was
saved, two large teeth were cut...and in three days a dreadful fever took
him, not from us, who will follow him, but from this miserable world. Ah,
poor child, I shall always see you as you were during those last moments,
turning those wide, wandering eyes toward heaven, seeking the way to your
new country. With a heart full of tears, I shall often let my thoughts go
straying after you; but alas! with the eyes of the body I shall never see
you again. I shall see you no more: yet only a few days ago I was making
the finest plans for you. I used to work for you only; in my studies I
thought only of you. Grow up, I used to say, and I will pour into your mind
all the knowledge which has cost me so dear, which I am hoarding little by
little...But reflection leads me to higher thoughts. I choke back the tears
in my heart, and I congratulate him that Heaven has mercifully spared him
this life of trials...My poor child...you will never, like your father,
have to struggle against poverty and misfortune; you will never know the
bitterness of life, and the difficulties of creating a position at a time
when there are so many paths that lead to failure...I weep for you because
we have lost you, but I rejoice because you are happy...You are happy, and
this is not the mad hope of a father broken by sorrow; no, your last glance
told me so, too eloquently for me to doubt it. Oh, how beautiful you were
in your mortal pallor; the last sigh on your lips, your gaze upon heaven,
and your soul ready to fly into the bosom of God! Your last day was the
most beautiful!" (2/12.)
Although study was his refuge, although he was thereby able to live through
these evil days without too greatly feeling their weight, his position was
hateful, and he lived a wretched life "from one day to another, like a
beggar."
In those troublous times, when education was of no account, it often
happened that his teacher's salary was several months in arrears, and the
city of Carpentras, "not being in funds," paid it only by instalments, and
even so kept him a long time waiting. "One has to besiege the paymaster's
door merely to obtain a trifle on account. I am ashamed of the whole
business, and I would gladly abandon my claim if I knew where to raise any
money." (2/13.)
The genius of Balzac has recorded some unforgettable types of those poor
and notable lives, at once so humble and so lofty. He has described the
village curé and the country doctor. But how we should have loved to
encounter in his gallery, among so many living portraits, a picture of the
university life of fifty years ago; and above all a picture of the small
schoolmaster of other days, living a life so narrow, so slavish, so
painful, and yet so full of worth, so imbued with the sense of duty, and
withal so resigned; a portrait for which Fabre might have served as model
and prototype, and for which he himself has drawn an unforgettable sketch.
He awaited impatiently the news of his removal, very modestly limiting his
ambitions to the hope of entering some lycée as professor of the sciences.
His rector was not unnaturally astonished that a young man of such unusual
worth, already twice a licentiate, should be so little appreciated by those
in high places and allowed to stagnate so long in an inferior post, and one
unworthy of him.
In the end, however, after much patient waiting, he became indignant; as
always, he could see nothing ahead. The chair of mathematics at Tournon
escaped him. Another position, at Avignon, also "slipped through his
fingers"; why or how he never knew. He "began to see clearly what life is,
and how difficult it is to make one's mark amid all this army of schemers,
beggars and imbeciles who besiege every vacant post."
But his heart was "none the less hot with indignation"; he had had enough
of "Carpentras, that accursed little hole"; and when the vacations came
round once more he "plainly considered the question" and declared "that he
would never again set foot inside a communal school." (2/14.)
He wrote to the rector: "If instead of crushing me into the narrow round of
a primary school they would give me some employment of the kind for which
my studies and ideas fit me, they would know then what is hatching in my
head and what untirable activity there is in me." (2/15.)
He resigned himself nevertheless; he cursed and swore and stormed at his
fate; but he had once more to put up with it "for want of a better." All
the same "the injustice was too unheard-of, and no one had ever seen or
would ever see the like: to give him two licentiate's diplomas, and to make
him conjugate verbs for a pack of brats! It was too much!" (2/16.)
CHAPTER 3. CORSICA.
At last the chair of physics fell vacant at the college of Ajaccio, the
salary being 72 pounds sterling, and he left for Corsica. His stay there
was well calculated to impress him. 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.
He was soon so accustomed to his new life in peaceful Ajaccio, whose
surroundings, decked in eternal verdure, are so captivating and so
beautiful, that in spite of a vague desire for change he now dreaded to
leave it. He never wearied of admiring and exalting the beautiful and
majestic aspects of his new home. How he longed to share his enthusiasm
with his father or his brother, as he rambled through the neighbouring
maquis!
"The infinite, glittering sea at my feet, the dreadful masses of granite
overhead, the white, dainty town seated beside the water, the endless
jungles of myrtle, which yield intoxicating perfumes, the wastes of
brushwood which the ploughshare has never turned, which cover the mountains
from base to summit; the fishing-boats that plough the gulf: all this forms
a prospect so magnificent, so striking, that whosoever has beheld it must
always long to see it again." (3/1.)
"What is their rock of Pierrelatte, that enormous block of stone which
overhangs the place where they dwell, a reef which rises from the surface
of the ancient sea of alluvium, compared with these blocks of uprooted
granite which lie upon the hillsides here?"
And what were the Aubrac hills which traversed his native country; what was
the Ventoux even, that famous Alp, "beside the peaks which rise about the
gulf of Ajaccio, always crowned with clouds and whitened with snow, even
when the soil of the plains is scorching and rings like a fired brick?"
Time did nothing to abate these first impressions, and after more than a
year on the island he was still full of wonder "at the sight of these
granite crests, corroded by the severities of the climate, jagged,
overthrown by the lightning, shattered by the slow but sure action of the
snows, and these vertiginous gulfs through which the four winds of heaven
go roaring; these vast inclined planes on which snow-drifts form thirty,
sixty, and ninety feet in depth, and across which flow winding watercourses
which go to fill, drop by drop, the yawning craters, there to form lakes,
black as ink when seen in the shadow, but blue as heaven in the light...
"But it would be impossible for me to give you the least idea of this dizzy
spectacle, this chaos of rocks, heaped in frightful disorder. When, closing
my eyes, I contemplate these results of the convulsion of the soil in my
mind's eye, when I hear the screaming of the eagles, which go wheeling
through the bottomless abysses, whose inky shadows the eye dares hardly
plumb, vertigo seizes me, and I open my eyes to reassure myself by the
reality."
And he sends with his letter a few leaves of the snow immortelle--the
edelweiss--plucked on the highest summits, amid the eternal snows; "you
will put this in some book, and when, as you turn the leaves, the
immortelle meets your eyes, it will give you an excuse for dreaming of the
beautiful horrors of its native place." (3/2.)
What a misfortune for him, what regret he would feel, "if he had now to go
to some trivial country of plains, where he would die of boredom!"
For him everything was unfamiliar: not only the flora, but the maritime
wealth of this singular country. He would set out of a morning, visiting
the coves and creeks, roving along the beaches of this magnificent gulf, a
lump of bread in his pocket, quenching his thirst with sea-water in default
of fresh!
They were mornings full of rosy illusions, whose smiling hopes were
revealed in his admirable letters to his brother. Already he meditated a
conchology of Corsica, a colossal history of all the molluscs which live
upon its soil or in its waters. (3/3.) He collected all the shells he could
procure. He analysed, described, classed, and co-ordinated not only the
marine species, but the terrestrial and freshwater shells also, extant or
fossil. He asked his brother to collect for him all the shells he could
find in the marshes of Lapalud, in the brooks and ditches of the
neighbourhood of Orange. In his enthusiasm he tried to convince him of the
immense interest of these researches, which might perhaps seem ridiculous
or futile to him; but let him only think of geology; the humblest shell
picked up might throw a sudden light upon the formation of this or that
stratum. None are to be disdained: for men have considered, with reason,
that they were honouring the memory of their eminent fellows by giving
their names to the rarest and most beautiful. Witness the magnificent Helix
dedicated to Raspail, which is found only in the caverns where the
strawberry-tree grows amid the high mountains of Corsica. (3/4.)
Moreover, he said, "the infinitesimal calculus of Leibnitz will show you
that the architecture of the Louvre is less learned than that of a snail:
the eternal geometer has unrolled his transcendent spirals on the shell of
the mollusc that you, like the vulgar profane, know only seasoned with
spinach and Dutch cheese." (3/5.)
For all that, he did not neglect his mathematics, in which, on the
contrary, he found abundant and suggestive recreation. The properties of a
figure or a curve which he had newly discovered prevented his sleep for
several nights.
"All this morning I have been busy with star-shaped polygons, and have
proceeded from surprise to surprise...perceiving in the distance, as I
advanced, unforeseen and marvellous consequences."
Here, among others, is one question which suddenly presented itself to his
mind "in the midst of the spikes" of his polygons: what would be the period
of the rotation of the sun on its own centre if its atmosphere reached as
far as the earth? And this question gave rise to another, "without which
the sequence stops then and there; number, space, movement, and order form
a single chain, the first link of which sets all the rest in motion."
(3/6.) And the hours went by quickly, so quickly with "x," the plants and
the shells, that "literally there was no time to eat."
For Fabre was born a poet, and mathematics borders upon poetry; he saw in
algebra "the most magnificent flights," and the figures of analytical
geometry unrolled themselves in his imagination "in superb strophes"; the
Ellipse, "the trajectory of the planets, with its two related foci, sending
from one to the other a constant sum of vector radii"; the Hyperbole, "with
repulsive foci, the desperate curve which plunges into space in infinite
tentacles, approaching closer and closer to a straight line, the asymptote,
without ever finally attaining it"; the Parabola, "which seeks fruitlessly
in the infinite for its second, lost centre: it is the trajectory of the
bomb: it is the path of certain comets which come one day to visit our sun,
then flee into the depths whence they never return." (3/7.)
And one fine morning we behold him mounting, thrilled by a lyric passion,
to the lofty regions in which Number, "irresistible, omnipotent, keystone
of the vault of the universe, rules at once Time and Space." He ascends, he
rushes forward, farther than the chariot--
"Beyond the Husbandman who ploughs in space
And sows the suns in furrows of the skies."
He ascends those tracks of flame, where on high
"in those lists inane
Wise regulator, Number holds the reins
Of those indomitable steeds;
Number has set a bit i' the foaming mouths
Of these Leviathans, and with nervous hand
Controls them in their tracks;
Their smoking flanks beneath the yoke in vain
Quiver; their nostrils vainly void as foam
Dense tides of lava; and in vain they rear;
For Number on their mettled haunches poised
Holds them, or duly with the rein controls,
Or in their flanks buries his spur divine." (3/8.)
Later he confessed all that he owed, as a writer, to geometry, whose severe
discipline forms and exercises the mind, gives it the salutary habit of
precision and lucidity, and puts it on its guard against terms which are
incorrect or unduly vague, giving it qualities far superior to all the
"tropes of rhetoric."
It was then that he became the pupil of Requien of Avignon, the retired
botanist, a lofty but somewhat limited mind, who was hardly capable of
opening up other horizons to him. But Requien did at least enrich his
memory by a prodigious quantity of names of plants with which he had not
been acquainted. He revealed to him the immense flora of Corsica, which he
himself had come to study, and for which Fabre was to gather such a vast
amount of material.
Fabre found in Requien more especially a friend "proof against anything";
and when the latter died almost suddenly at Bonifacio, Fabre was
overwhelmed by the sad news. On that very day he had on the table before
him a parcel of plants gathered for the dead botanist. "I cannot let my
eyes rest upon it," he wrote at the time, "without feeling my heart wrung
and my sight dim with tears." (3/9.)
But the most admirably fruitful encounter, as it exercised the profoundest
influence upon his destiny, was his meeting with Moquin-Tandon, a Toulouse
professor who followed Requien to Corsica, to complete the work which the
latter had left unfinished: the complete inventory of the prodigious wealth
of vegetation, of the innumerable species and varieties which Fabre and he
collected together, on the slopes and summits of Monte Renoso, often
botanizing "up in the clouds, mantle on back and numb with cold." (3/10.)
Moquin-Tandon was not merely a skilful naturalist; he was one of the most
eloquent and scholarly scientists of his time. Fabre owed to him, not his
genius, to be sure, but the definite indication of the path he was finally
to take, and from which he was never again to stray.
Moquin-Tandon, a brilliant writer and "an ingenious poet in his
Montpellerian dialect," (3/11.) taught Fabre never to forget the value of
style and the importance of form, even in the exposition of a purely
descriptive science such as botany. He did even more, by one day suddenly
showing Fabre, between the fruit and the cheese, "in a plate of water," the
anatomy of the snail. This was his first introduction to his true destiny
before the final revelation of which I shall presently speak. Fabre
understood then and there that he could do decidedly better than to stick
to mathematics, though his whole career would feel the effects of that
study.
"Geometers are made; naturalists are born ready-made," he wrote to his
brother, still excited by this incident, "and you know better than any one
whether natural history is not my favourite science." (3/12.)
>From that time forward he began to collect not only dead, inert, or
dessicated forms, mere material for study, with the aim of satisfying his
curiosity; he began to dissect with ardour, a thing he had never done
before. He housed his tiny guests in his cupboard; and occupied himself, as
he was always to do in the future, with the smaller living creatures only.
"I am dissecting the infinitely little; my scalpels are tiny daggers which
I make myself out of fine needles; my marble slab is the bottom of a
saucer; my prisoners are lodged by the dozen in old match-boxes; maxime
miranda in minimis." (3/13.)
Roaming at night along the marshy beaches, he contracted fever, and several
terrible attacks, accompanied by alarming tremors, left him so bloodless
and feeble that, much against his will, he had to beg for relief, and even
insist upon his prompt return to the mainland. in the meantime he obtained
sick-leave, and returned to Provence after a terrible crossing which lasted
no less than three days and two nights, on a sea so furious that he gave
himself up for lost. (3/14.)
Slowly he recovered his health, and after a second but brief stay at
Ajaccio he received the news of his appointment to the lycée of Avignon.
(3/15.)
He returned with his imagination enriched and his mind expanded, with
settled ideas, and thoroughly ripe for his task.
CHAPTER 4. AT AVIGNON.
The resolute worker resumed his indefatigable labours with an ardour
greater than ever, for now he was haunted by a noble ambition, that of
becoming a teacher of the superior grade, and of "talking plants and
animals" in a chair of the faculty. With this end in view he added to his
two diplomas--those of mathematics and physics--a third certificate, that
of natural sciences. His success was triumphant.
Already tenacious and fearless in affirming what he believed to be the
truth, he astonished and bewildered the professors of Toulouse. Among the
subjects touched upon by the examiners was the famous question of
spontaneous generation, which was then so vital, and which gave rise to so
many impassioned discussions. The examiner, as it chanced, was one of the
leading apostles of this doctrine. The future adversary of Darwin, at the
risk of failure, did not scruple to argue with him, and to put forward his
personal convictions and his own arguments. He decided the vexed question
in his own way, on his own responsibility. A personality already so
striking was regarded with admiration; a candidate so far out of the
ordinary was welcomed with enthusiasm, and but for the insufficiency of the
budget which so scantily met the needs of public instruction his
examination fees would have been returned. (4/1.)
Why, after this brilliant success, was Fabre not tempted to enter himself
for a fellowship, which would later in his career have averted so many
disappointments? It was doubtless because he felt, obscurely, that his
ideal future lay along other lines, and that he would have been taking a
wrong turning. Despite all the solicitations which were addressed to him he
would think of nothing but "his beloved studies in natural history" (4/2.);
he feared to lose precious time in preparing himself for a competitive
examination; "to compromise by such labour, which he felt would be
fruitless" (4/3.), the studies which he had already commenced, and the
inquiries already carried out in Corsica. He was busy with his first
original labours, the theses which he was preparing with a view to his
doctorate in natural science, "which might one day open the doors of a
faculty for him, far more easily than would a fellowship and its
mathematics." (4/4.)
At heart he was utterly careless of dignities and degrees. He worked only
to learn, not to attain and follow up a settled calling. What he hoped
above all was to succeed in devoting all his leisure to those marvellous
natural sciences in which he could vaguely foresee studies full of
interest; something animated and vital; a thousand fascinating themes, and
an atmosphere of poetry.
His genius, as yet invisible, was ripening in obscurity, but was ready to
come forth; he lacked only the propitious circumstance which would allow
him to unfold his wings.
He was seeking them in vain when a volume by Léon Dufour, the famous
entomologist, who then lived in the depths of the Landes, fell by chance
into his hands, and lit the first spark of that beacon which was presently
to decide the definite trend of his ideas.
It was this incident which then and there developed the germs already
latent within him. These had only awaited such an occasion as that which so
fortunately came to pass one evening of the winter of 1854.
Fabre offers yet another example of the part so often played by chance in
the manifestations of talent. How many have suddenly felt the unexpected
awakening of gifts which they did not suspect, as a result of some unusual
circumstance!
Was it not simply as a result of having read a note by the Russian chemist
Mitscherlich on the comparison of the specific characteristics of certain
crystals that Pasteur so enthusiastically took up his researches into
molecular asymmetry which were the starting-point of so many wonderful
discoveries?
Again, we need only recall the case of Brother Huber, the celebrated
observer of the bee, who, having out of simple curiosity undertaken to
verify certain experiments of Réaumur's, was so completely and immediately
fascinated by the subject that it became the object of the rest of his
life.
Again, we may ask what Claude Bernard would have been had he not met
Magendie? Similarly Léon Dufour's little work was to Fabre the road to
Damascus, the electric impulse which decided his vocation.
It dealt with a very singular fact concerning the manners of one of the
hymenoptera, a wasp, a Cerceris, in whose nest Dufour had found small
coleoptera of the genus Buprestis, which, under all the appearances of
death, retained intact for an incredible time their sumptuous costume,
gleaming with gold, copper, and emerald, while the tissues remained
perfectly fresh. In a word, the victims of Cerceris, far from being
desiccated or putrefied, were found in a state of integrity which was
altogether paradoxical.
Dufour merely believed that the Buprestes were dead, and he gave an
attempted explanation of the phenomenon.
Fabre, his curiosity and interest aroused, wished to observe the facts for
himself; and, to his great surprise, he discovered how incomplete and
insufficiently verified were the observations of the man who was at that
time known as "the patriarch of entomologists."
>From that moment he saw his way ahead; he suspected that there was still
much to discover and much to revise in this vast department of nature, and
conceived the idea of resuming the work so splendidly outlined by Réaumur
and the two Hubers, but almost completely neglected since the days of those
illustrious masters. He divined that here were fresh pastures, a vast
unexplored country to be opened up, an entire unimagined science to be
founded, wonderful secrets to be discovered, magnificent problems to be
solved, and he dreamed of consecrating himself unreservedly, of employing
his whole life in the pursuit of this object; that long life whose fruitful
activity was to extend over nearly ninety years, and which was to be so
"representative" by the dignity of the man, the probity of the expert, the
genius of the observer, and the originality of the writer.
The year 1855 saw the first appearance, in the "Annales des sciences
naturelles," of the famous memoir which marked the beginning of his fame:
the history, which might well be called marvellous and incredible, of the
great Cerceris, a giant wasp and "the finest of the Hymenoptera which hunt
for booty at the foot of Mont Ventoux." (4/5.)
Fabre was now thirty-two years old, and his situation as assistant-
professor of physics was somewhat precarious. From the 72 pounds sterling
which he drew at Ajaccio, an overseas post, his salary was reduced, on his
return to the mainland, to 64 pounds sterling, and during the whole of his
stay at Avignon he obtained neither promotion nor the smallest increase of
pay, excepting a few additional profits which were unconnected with his
habitual duties. When he left the university after twenty well-filled
years, he left as he had entered, with the same title, rank, and salary of
a mere assistant-professor.
Yet all about him "everywhere and for every one, all was black indeed": his
family had increased and therewith his expenses; there were now seven at
table every day. Very shortly his modest salary would no longer suffice; he
was obliged to supplement it by all sorts of hack-work--classes,
"repetitions," private lessons; tasks which repelled him, for they absorbed
all his available time; they prevented him from giving himself up to his
favourite studies, to his silent and solitary observations. Nevertheless,
he acquitted himself of these duties patiently and conscientiously, for at
heart he loved his profession, and was rather a fellow-disciple than a
master to his pupils. For this reason all those about him worked with
praiseworthy assiduity; even the worst elements, the black sheep, the "bad
eggs" of other classes, with him were suddenly transformed and as attentive
as the rest. Although he knew how to keep order, how to make himself
respected, and could on occasion deal severely and speak sternly, so that
very few dared to forget themselves before him, he knew also how to be
merry with his pupils, chatting with them familiarly, putting himself in
their place, entering into their ideas, and making himself their rival. If
life was laborious under his ferula, it was also merry. The best proof of
this is the fact that of all his colleagues at the lycée he was the only
one who had no nickname, a rarity in scholastic annals.
He did not therefore object to these lessons; but while at Carpentras he
was made much of and praised by the principal, was a general favourite, and
had perfect liberty to follow his inspiration during his partly gratuitous
classes, here the hours and the programme tied him down, which was
precisely what he found insupportable.
Everything made things difficult for him here: his external self; his
character, ever so little shy and unsocial; his temperament, which was made
for solitude.
In the thick of this hierarchical society of university professors he
remained independent; he knew nothing of what was said or what was
happening in the college, and his colleagues were always better informed
than he. (4/6.) As he was not a fellow, he was made to feel the fact and
was treated as a subordinate; the others, who prided themselves on the
title, and who were incapable of recognizing his merit, which was a little
beyond them, were jealous of him, all the more inasmuch as his name was
momentarily noised abroad, and they revenged themselves by calling him "the
fly" among themselves, by way of allusion to his favourite subject. (4/7.)
Indifferent to distinctions, as well as to those who bore them,
contemptuous of etiquette, and incapable of putting constraint upon his
nature, he remained an "outsider," and refused to comply with a host of
factitious or worldly obligations which he regarded as useless or
disgusting. Thus even at Ajaccio he managed to escape the customary
ceremonies of New Year's Day.
"Good society I avoid as much as possible; I prefer my own company. So I
have seen no one; I did not respond to the principal's invitation to make
the official round of visits." (4/8.)
When obliged to accept some invitation, apart from occasions of too great
solemnity, when he was really constrained to dress himself in the complete
livery of circumstance and ceremony, he remained faithful to his black felt
hat, which made a blot among all the carefully polished "toppers" of his
colleagues. He was called to order; he was reprimanded; he obeyed
unwillingly, or worse, he resisted; he revolted, and threatened to send in
his resignation. To pay court to people, to endeavour to make himself
pleasant, to grovel before a superior, were to him impossibilities. He
could neither solicit, nor sail with the wind, nor force himself on others,
nor even make use of his relations.
However, when he went to Paris to take his doctor's degree in natural
sciences, he did not forget Moquin-Tandon, who had formerly, in Corsica,
revealed to him the nature of biology, and whom he himself had received and
entertained in his humble home.
The ex-professor of Toulouse, who was now eminent in his speciality,
occupied the chair of natural history in the faculty of medicine in Paris.
What better occasion could he wish of introducing himself to a highly
placed official? Fabre had formerly been his host; he could recall the
happy hours they had spent together; he could explain his plans, and ask
for the professor's assistance! Fate pointed to him as a protector. But if
Fabre had been capable of climbing the professor's stairs with some such
ambitious desires, he would quickly have been disabused.
The "dear master" had long ago forgotten the little professor of Ajaccio,
and his welcome was by no means such as Fabre had the right to expect. Far
from insisting, he was disheartened, perhaps a little humiliated, and
hastened to take his leave.
The theses which Fabre brought with him, and which, he had thought, ought
to lead him one day to a university professorship, did not, as a matter of
fact, contain anything very essentially original.
He had been attracted, indeed fascinated, by all the singularities
presented by the strange family of the orchids; the asymmetry of their
blossoms, the unusual structure of their pollen, and their innumerable
seeds; but as for the curious rounded and duplicated tubercles which many
of them bore at their base, what precisely were they? The greatest
botanists--de Candolle, A. de Jussieu--had perceived in them nothing more
than roots. Fabre demonstrated in his thesis that these singular organs are
in reality merely buds, true branches or shoots, modified and disguised,
analogous to the metamorphosed tubercle of the potato. (4/9.)
He added also a curious memoir on the phosphorescence of the agaric of the
olive-tree, a phenomenon to which he was to return at a later date.
In the field of zoology his scalpel revealed the complicated structure of
the reproductive organs of the Centipedes (Millepedes), hitherto so
confused and misunderstood; as also certain peculiarities of the
development of these curious creatures, so interesting from the point of
view of the zoological philosopher (4/10.), for he had become expert in
handling not only the magnifying glass, which was always with him, but also
the microscope, which discovers so many infinite wonders in the lowest
creatures, yet which was not of particular service in any of the beautiful
observations upon which his fame is built.
Returning to Avignon, in the possession of his new degree, he commenced an
important task which took him nearly twenty years to complete: a
painstaking treatise on the Sphaeriaceae of Vaucluse, that singular family
of fungi which cover fallen leaves and dead twigs with their blackish
fructifications; a remarkable piece of work, full of the most valuable
documentation, as were the theses whose subjects I have just detailed; but
without belittling the fame of their author, one may say that another, in
his place, might have acquitted himself as well.
Although he continued to undertake researches of limited interest and
importance, although he persisted in dissecting plants, and, although he
disliked it, in "disembowelling animals," the fact was that apart from
Thursdays and Sundays it was scarcely possible for him to escape from his
week's work; hardly possible to snatch sufficient leisure to undertake the
studies toward which he felt himself more particularly drawn. Tied down by
his duties, which held him bound to a discipline that only left him brief
moments, and by the forced hack-work imposed upon him by the necessity of
earning his daily bread, he had scarcely any time for observation excepting
vacations and holidays.
Then he would hasten to Carpentras, happy to hold the key to the meadows,
and wander across country and along the sunken lanes, collecting his
beautiful insects, breathing the free air, the scent of the vines and
olives, and gazing upon Mont Ventoux, close at hand, whose silver summit
would now be hidden in the clouds and now would glitter in the rays of the
sun.
Carpentras was not merely the country in which his wife's parents dwelt: it
was, above all, a unique and privileged home for insects; not on account of
its flora, but because of the soil, a kind of limestone mingled with sand
and clay, a soft marl, in which the burrowing hymenoptera could easily
establish their burrows and their nests. Certain of them, indeed, lived
only there, or at least it would have been extremely difficult to find them
elsewhere; such was the famous Cerceris; such again, was the yellow-winged
Sphex, that other wasp which so artistically stabs and paralyses the
cricket, "the brown violinist of the clods."
At Carpentras too the Anthophorae lived in abundance; those wild bees with
whom the vexed and enigmatic history of the Sitaris and the Meloë is bound
up; those little beetles, cousins of the Cantharides, whose complex
metamorphoses and astonishing and peculiar habits have been revealed by
Fabre. This memoir marked the second stage of his scientific career, and
followed, at an interval of two years, the magnificent observations on the
Cerceris.
These two studies, true masterpieces of science, already constituted two
excellent titles to fame, and would by themselves have sufficed to fill a
naturalist's whole lifetime and to make his name illustrious.
>From that time forward he had no peer. The Institute awarded him one of its
Montyon prizes (4/11.), "an honour of which, needless to say, he had never
dreamed." (4/12.) Darwin, in his celebrated work on the "Origin of
Species," which appeared precisely at this moment, speaks of Fabre
somewhere as "the inimitable observer." (4/13.)
Exploring the immediate surroundings of Avignon, he very soon discovered
fresh localities frequented almost exclusively by other insects, whose
habits in their turn absorbed his whole attention.
First of these was the sandy plateau of the Angles, where every spring, in
the sunlit pastures so beloved of the sheep, the Scarabaeus sacer, with his
incurved feet and clumsy legs, commences to roll his everlasting pellet,
"to the ancients the image of the world." His history, since the time of
the Pharaohs, had been nothing but a tissue of legends; but stripping it of
the embroidery of fiction, and referring it to the facts of nature, Fabre
demonstrated that the true story is even more marvellous than all the tales
of ancient Egypt. He narrated its actual life, the object of its task, and
its comical and exhilarating performances. But such is the subtlety of
these delicate and difficult researches that nearly forty years were
required to complete the study of its habits and to solve the mystery of
its cradle. (4/14.)
On the right bank of the Rhône, facing the embouchure of the Durance, is a
small wood of oak-trees, the wood of Des Issarts. This again, for many
reasons, was one of his favourite spots. There, "lying flat on the ground,
his head in the shadow of some rabbit's burrow," or sheltered from the sun
by a great umbrella, "while the blue-winged locusts frisked for joy," he
would follow the rapid and sibilant flight of the elegant Bembex, carrying
their daily ration of diptera to her larvae, at the bottom of her burrow,
deep in the fine sand." (4/15.)
He did not always go thither alone: sometimes, on Sundays, he would take
his pupils with him, to spend a morning in the fields, "at the ineffable
festival of the awakening of life in the spring." (4/16.)
Those most dear to him, those who in the subsequent years have remained the
object of a special affection, were Devillario, Bordone, and Vayssières
(4/17.), "young people with warm hearts and smiling imaginations,
overflowing with that springtime sap of life which makes us so expansive
and so eager to know.
Among them he was "the eldest, their master, but still more their companion
and friend"; lighting in them his own sacred fire, and amazing them by the
deftness of his fingers and the acuteness of his lynx-like eyes. Furnished
with a notebook and all the tools of the naturalist--lens, net, and little
boxes of sawdust steeped in anaesthetic for the capture of rare specimens--
they would wander "along the paths bordered with hawthorn and hyaebla,
simple and childlike folk," probing the bushes, scratching up the sand,
raising stones, running the net along hedge and meadow, with explosions of
delight when they made some splendid capture or discovered some unrecorded
marvel of the entomological world.
It was not only on the banks of the Rhône or the sandy plateau of Avignon
that they sought adventure thus, "discussing things and other things," but
as far as the slopes of Mont Ventoux, for which Fabre had always felt an
inexplicable and invincible attraction, and whose ascent he accomplished
more than twenty times, so that at last he knew all its secrets, all the
gamut of its vegetation, the wealth of the varied flora which climb its
flanks from base to summit, and which range "from the scarlet flowers of
the pomegranate to the violet of Mont Cenis and the Alpine forget-me-not"
(4/18.), as well as the antediluvian fauna revealed amid its entrails, a
vast ossuary rich in fossils.
His disciples, all of whom, without exception, regarded him with absolute
worship, have retained the memory of his wit, his enthusiasm, his geniality
and his infectious gaiety, and also of the singular uncertainty of his
temperament; for on some days he would not speak a word from the beginning
to the end of his walk.
Even his temper, ordinarily gentle and easy, would suddenly become hasty
and violent, and would break out into terrible explosions when a sudden
annoyance set him beside himself; for instance, when he was the butt of
some ill-natured trick, or when, in spite of the lucidity of his
explanations, he felt that he had not been properly understood. Perhaps he
inherited this from his mother, a rebellious, crotchety, somewhat fantastic
person, by whose temper he himself had suffered.
But the young people who surrounded him were far from being upset by these
contrasts of temperament, in which they themselves saw nothing but natural
annoyance, and the corollary, as it were, of his abounding vitality.
(4/19.)
It was because he was the only university teacher in Avignon to occupy
himself with entomology that Pasteur visited him in 1865. The illustrious
chemist had been striving to check the plague that was devastating the
silkworm nurseries, and as he knew nothing of the subject which he proposed
to study, not even understanding the constitution of the cocoon or the
evolution of the silkworm, he sought out Fabre in order to obtain from his
store of entomological wisdom the elementary ideas which he would find
indispensable. Fabre has told us, in a moving page (4/20), with what a
total lack of comprehension of "poverty in a black coat" the great
scientist gazed at his poor home. Preoccupied by another problem, that of
the amelioration of wines by means of heat, Pasteur asked him point-blank--
him, the humble proletarian of the university caste, who drank only the
cheapest wine of the country--to show him his cellar. "My cellar! Why not
my vaults, my dusty bottles, labelled according to age and vintage! But
Pasteur insisted. Then, pointing with my finger, I showed him, in a corner
of the kitchen, a chair with all the straw gone, and on this chair a two-
gallon demijohn: 'There is my cave, monsieur!'"
If the country professor was embarrassed by the chilliness of the other, he
was none the less shocked by his attitude. It would seem, from what Fabre
has said, that Pasteur treated him with a hauteur which was slightly
disdainful. The ignorant genius questioned his humble colleague, distantly
giving him his orders, explaining his plans and his ideas, and informing
him in what directions he required assistance.
After this, we cannot be surprised if the naturalist was silent. How could
sympathetic relations have survived this first meeting? Fabre could not
forgive it. His own character was too independent to accommodate itself to
Pasteur's. Yet never, perhaps, were two men made for a better
understanding. They were equally expert in exercising their admirable
powers of vision in the vast field of nature, equally critical of self,
equally careful never to depart from the strict limits of the facts; and
they were, one may say, equally eminent in the domain of invention,
different though their fortunes may have been; for the sublimity of
scientific discoveries, however full of genius they may be, is often
measured only by the immediate consequences drawn therefrom and the
practical importance of their results.
In reality, were they not two rivals, worthy of being placed side by side
in the paradise of sages? Both of them, the one by demolishing the theory
of spontaneous generation, the other by refuting the mechanical theory of
the origin of instincts, have brought into due prominence the great unknown
and mysterious forces which seem destined to hold eternally in suspense the
profound enigma of life.
Now he was anxious not to leave the Vaucluse district, the scene of his
first success, and a place so fruitful in subjects of study. He wished to
remain close to his insects, and also near the precious library and the
rich collections which Requien had left by will to the town of Avignon. In
spite of the meagreness of his salary, he asked for nothing more; and, what
is more, by an inconsequence which is by no means incomprehensible, he
avoided everything that might have resulted in a more profitable position
elsewhere, and evaded all proposals of further promotion. Twice, at
Poitiers and Marseilles, he refused a post as assistant professor, not
regarding the advantages sufficient to balance the expenses of removal.
(4/21.)
It is true that his modest position was slightly improved; at the lycée he
had just been appointed drawing-master, thanks to his knowledge of design,
for he could draw--indeed, what could he not do? The city, on the other
hand, appointed him conservator of the Requien Museum, and presently
municipal lecturer, so that his earnings were increased by 48 pounds
sterling per annum, and he was at last able to abandon "those abominable
private lessons" (4/22.), which the insufficiency of his income had
hitherto forced him to accept. These new duties, which naturally demanded
much time and much labour, kept him almost as badly tied as he had been
before.
To be rich enough to set himself free; to be master of all his time, to be
able to devote himself entirely to his chosen work: this was his dream, his
constant preoccupation: it haunted him; it was a fixed idea.
Such was the principal motive of his inquiry into the properties of madder,
the colouring principle of which he succeeded in extracting directly, by a
perfectly simple method, which for a time very advantageously replaced the
extremely primitive methods of the old dyers, who used a simple extract of
madder; a crude preparation which necessitated long and expensive
manipulations. (4/23.)
He had been working at this for eight years when Victor Duruy, Minister of
Public Instruction and Grand Master of the University, came to surprise him
in his laboratory at Saint-Martial, in the full fever of research. Whatever
was Duruy's idea in entering into relations with him, it seems that from
their first meeting the two men were really taken with one another: there
were, between them, so many close affinities of taste and character. Duruy
found in Fabre a man of his own temper; for his, like Fabre's, was a modest
and simple nature. Both came of the people, and the principal motive of
each was the same ideal of work, emancipation, and progress.
A little later Duruy summoned the modest sage of Avignon to Paris, with
particular insistence; he was full of attentions and of forethought, and
made him there and then a chevalier of the Legion of Honour; a distinction
of which Fabre was far from being proud, and which he was careful never to
obtrude; but he nevertheless always thought of it with a certain
tenderness, as a beloved "relic" in memory of this illustrious friend.
On the following day the naturalist was conveyed to the Tuileries to be
presented to the Emperor. You must not suppose that he was in the least
disturbed at the idea of finding himself face to face with royalty. In the
presence of all these bedizened folk, in his coat of a cut which was
doubtless already superannuated, he cared little for the impression he
might produce. As good an observer of men as of beasts, he gazed quietly
about him; he exchanged a few words with the Emperor, who was "quite
simple," almost suppressed, his eyes always half-closed; he watched the
coming and going of "the chamberlains with short breeches and silver-
buckled shoes, great scarabaei, clad with café au lait wing-cases, moving
with a formal gait." Already he sighed regretfully; he was bored; he was on
the rack, and for nothing in the world would he have repeated the
experience. He did not even feel the least desire to visit the vaunted
collections of the Museum. He longed to return; to find himself once more
among his dear insects; to see his grey olive-trees, full of the frolicsome
cicadae, his wastes and commons, which smelt so sweet of thyme and cypress;
above all, to return to his furnace and retorts, in order to complete his
discovery as quickly as possible.
But others profited by his happy conceptions. Like the cicada, the Cigale
of his fable (See "Social Life in the Insect World," by Jean-Henri Fabre
(T. Fisher Unwin, 1912).), which makes a "honeyed reek" flow from--
"the bark
Tender and juicy, of the bough,"
on which it is quickly supplanted by
"Fly, drone, wasp, beetle too with hornèd head" (4/24.),
who
"Now lick their honey'd lips, and feed at leisure,"
so, after he had painfully laboured for twelve years in his well, he saw
others, more cunning than he, come to his perch, who by dint of "stamping
on his toe," succeeded in ousting him. Pending the appearance of artificial
alizarine, which was presently to turn the whole madder industry upside
down, these more sophisticated persons were able to benefit at leisure by
the ingenious processes discovered by Fabre, so that the practical result
of so much assiduity, so much patient research, was absolutely nil, and he
found himself as poor as ever.
So faded his dream: and, if we except his domestic griefs, this was
certainly the deepest and cruellest disappointment he had ever experienced.
Thenceforth he saw his salvation only in the writing of textbooks, which
were at last to throw open the door of freedom. Already he had set to work,
under the powerful stimulus of Duruy, preoccupied as he always was by his
incessant desire for freedom. The first rudiments of his "Agricultural
Chemistry," which sounded so fresh a note in the matter of teaching, had
given an instance and a measure of his capabilities.
But he did not seriously devote himself to this project until after the
industrial failure and the distressing miscarriage of his madder process;
and not until he had been previously assured of the co-operation of Charles
Delagrave, a young publisher, whose fortunate intervention contributed in
no small degree to his deliverance. Confident in his vast powers of work,
and divining his incomparable talent as POPULARIZER, Delagrave felt that he
could promise Fabre that he would never leave him without work; and this
promise was all the more comforting, in that the University, despite his
twenty-eight years of assiduous service, would not accord him the smallest
pension.
Victor Duruy was the great restorer of education in France, from elementary
and primary education, which should date, from his great ministry, the era
of its deliverance, to the secondary education which he himself created in
every part. He was also the real initiator of secular instruction in
France, and the Third Republic has done little but resume his work, develop
his ideas, and extend his programme. Finally, by instituting classes for
adults, the evening classes which enabled workmen, peasants, bourgeois, and
young women to fill the gaps in their education, he gave reality to the
generous and fruitful idea that it is possible for all to divide life into
two parts, one having for its object our material needs and our daily
bread, and the other consecrated to the spiritual life and the delights of
the Ideal.
At the same time he emancipated the young women of France, formerly under
the exclusive tutelage of the clergy, and opened to them for the first time
the golden gates of knowledge; an audacious innovation, and formidable
withal, for it shrewdly touched the interests of the Church, struck a blow
at her ever-increasing influence, and clashed with her consecrated
privileges and age-long prejudices. (4/25.)
At Avignon Fabre was instructed to give his personal services. He gave them
with all his heart; and it was then that he undertook, in the ancient Abbey
of Saint-Martial, those famous free lectures which have remained celebrated
in the memory of that generation. There, under the ancient Gothic vault,
among the pupils of the primary Normal College, an eager crowd of listeners
pressed to hear him; and among the most assiduous was Roumanille, the
friend of Mistral, he who so exquisitely wove into his harmonies "the
laughter of young maidens and the flowers of springtime." No one expounded
a fact better than Fabre; no one explained it so fully and so clearly. No
one could teach as he did, in a fashion so simple, so animated, so
picturesque, and by methods so original.
He was indeed convinced that even in early childhood it was possible for
both boys and girls to learn and to love many subjects which had hitherto
never been proposed; and in particular that Natural History which to him
was a book in which all the world might read, but that university methods
had reduced it to a tedious and useless study in which the letter "killed
the life."
He knew the secret of communicating his conviction, his profound faith, to
his hearers: that sacred fire which animated him, that passion for all the
creatures of nature.
These lectures took place in the evening, twice a week, alternately with
the municipal lectures, to which Fabre brought no less application and
ardour. In the intention of those who instituted them these latter were
above all to be practical and scientific, dealing with science applied to
agriculture, the arts, and industry.
But might he not also expect auditors of another quality, in love only with
the ideal, "who, without troubling about the possible applications of
scientific theory, desired above all to be initiated into the action of the
forces which rule nature, and thereby to open to their minds more wondrous
horizons"?
Such were the noble scruples which troubled his conscience, and which
appeared in the letter which he addressed to the administration of the
city, when he was entrusted by the latter with what he regarded as a lofty
and most important mission.
"...Is it to be understood that every purely scientific aspect, incapable
of immediate application, is to be rigorously banished from these lessons?
Is it to be understood that, confined to an impassable circle, the value of
every truth must be reckoned at so much per hundred, and that I must
silently pass over all that aims only at satisfying a laudable desire of
knowledge? No, gentlemen, for then these lectures would lack a very
essential thing: the spirit which gives life!" (4/26.)
Physically, according to the testimony of his contemporaries, he was
already as an admirable photograph represents him twenty years later: he
wore a large black felt hat; his face was shaven, the chin strong and
wilful, the eyes vigilant, deep-set and penetrating; he hardly changed, and
it was thus I saw him later, at a more advanced age.
The ancient Abbey of Saint-Martial, where these lectures were given, was
occupied also by the Requien Museum, of which Fabre had charge. It was here
that he one day met John Stuart Mill.
The celebrated philosopher and economist had just lost his wife: "the most
precious friendship of his life" was ended. (4/27.) It was only after long
waiting that he had been able to marry her. Subjected at an early age by a
father devoid of tenderness and formidably severe to the harshest of
disciplines, he had learned in childhood "what is usually learned only by a
man." Scarcely out of his long clothes, he was construing Herodotus and the
dialogues of Plato, and the whole of his dreary youth was spent in covering
the vast field of the moral and mathematical sciences. His heart, always
suppressed, never really expanded until he met Mrs. Harriett Taylor.
This was one of those privileged beings such as seem as a rule to exist
only in poetry and literature; a woman as beautiful as she was
astonishingly gifted with the rarest faculties; combining with the most
searching intelligence and the most persuasive eloquence so exquisite a
sensitiveness that she seemed often to divine events in advance.
Mill possessed her at last for a few years only, and he had resigned his
post in the offices of the East India Company to enjoy a studious retreat
in the enchanted atmosphere of southern Europe when suddenly at Avignon
Harriett Mill was carried off by a violent illness. (Mill retired in 1858,
when the government of India passed to the Crown. He had married Mrs. John
Taylor in 1851. [Tr.])
>From that time the philosopher's horizon was suddenly contracted to the
limit of those places whence had vanished the adored companion and the
beneficent genius who had been the sole charm of his entire existence.
Overwhelmed with grief, he acquired a small country house in one of the
least frequented parts of the suburbs of Avignon, close to the cemetery
where the beloved dead was laid to rest for ever. A silent alley of planes
and mulberry-trees led to the threshold, which was shaded by the delicate
foliage of a myrtle. All about he had planted a dense hedge of hawthorn,
cypress, and arborvitae, above which, from the vantage of a small terrace,
built, under his orders, at the level of the first floor, he could see, day
by day and at all hours, the white tomb of his wife, and a little ease his
grief.
Thus he cloistered himself, "living in memory," having no companion but the
daughter of his wife; trying to console himself by work, recapitulating his
life, the story of which he has told in his remarkable "Memoirs." (4/28.)
Fabre paid a few visits to this Thebaïd. A solitary such as Mill had become
could be attracted only by a man of his temper, in whom he found, if not an
affinity of nature, at least tastes like his own, and immense learning, as
great as his. For Mill also was versed in all the branches of human
knowledge: not only had he meditated on the high problems of history and
political economy, but he had also probed all branches of science:
mathematics, physics, and natural history. It was above all botany which
served them as a bond of union, and they were often seen to set forth on a
botanizing expedition through the countryside.
This friendship, which was not without profit for Fabre (4/29.), was still
more precious to Mill, who found, in the society of the naturalist, a
certain relief from his sorrow. The substance of their conversation was far
from being such as one might have imagined it. Mill was not highly sensible
to the festival of nature or the poetry of the fields. He was hardly
interested in botany, except from the somewhat abstract point of view of
classification and the systematic arrangement of species. Always
melancholy, cold, and distant, he spoke little; but Fabre felt under this
apparent sensibility a rigorous integrity of character, a great capacity
for devotion, and a rare goodness of heart.
So the two wandered across country, each thinking his own thoughts, and
each self-contained as though they were walking on parallel but distant
paths.
However, Fabre was not at the end of his troubles; and secret ill-feeling
began to surround him. The free lectures at Saint-Martial offended the
devout, angered the sectaries, and excited the intolerance of the pedants,
"whose feeble eyelids blink at the daylight," and he was far from
receiving, from his colleagues at the lycée, the sympathy and encouragement
which were, at this moment especially, so necessary to him. Some even went
so far as to denounce him publicly, and he was mentioned one day from the
height of the pulpit, to the indignation of the pupils of the upper Normal
College, as a man at once dangerous and subversive.
Some found it objectionable that this "irregular person, this man of
solitary study," should, by his work and by the magic of his teaching,
assume a position so unique and so disproportionate. Others regarded the
novelty of placing the sciences at the disposal of young girls as a heresy
and a scandal.
Their bickering, their cabals, their secret manoeuvres, were in the long
run to triumph. Duruy had just succumbed under the incessant attacks of the
clericals. In him Fabre lost a friend, a protector, and his only support.
Embittered, defeated, he was now only waiting for a pretext, an incident, a
mere nothing, to throw up everything.
One fine morning his landladies, devout and aged spinsters, made themselves
the instruments of the spite of his enemies, and abruptly gave him notice
to quit. he had to leave before the end of the month, for, simple and
confident as usual, he had obtained neither a lease nor the least written
agreement.
At this moment he was so poor that he had not even the money to meet the
expenses of his removal. The times were troublous: the great war had
commenced, and Paris being invested he could no longer obtain the small
earnings which his textbooks were beginning to yield him, and which had for
some time been increasing his modest earnings. On the other hand, having
always lived far from all society, he had not at Avignon a single relation
who could assist him, and he could neither obtain credit nor find any one
to extricate him from his embarrassments and save him from the extremity of
need with which he was threatened. He thought of Mill, and in this
difficult juncture it was Mill who saved him. The philosopher was then in
England; he was for the time being a member of the House of Commons, and he
used to vary his life at Avignon by a few weeks' sojourn in London. His
reply, however, was not long in coming: almost immediately he sent help; a
sum of some 120 pounds sterling, which fell like manna into the hands of
Fabre; and he did not, in exchange, demand the slightest security for this
advance.
Then, filled with disgust, the "irregular person" shook off the yoke and
retired to Orange. At first he took shelter where he could, anxious only to
avoid as far as possible any contact with his fellow-men; then, having
finally discovered a dwelling altogether in conformity with his tastes, he
moved to the outskirts of the city, and settled at the edge of the fields,
in the middle of a great meadow, in an isolated house, pleasant and
commodious, connected with the road to Camaret by a superb avenue of tall
and handsome plane-trees. This hermitage in some respects recalled that of
Mill in the outskirts of Avignon; and thence his eyes, embracing a vast
horizon, from the pediment of the ancient theatre to the hills of Sérignan,
could already distinguish the promised land.
CHAPTER 5. A GREAT TEACHER.
It was in 1871. Fabre had lived twenty years at Avignon. This date
constitutes an important landmark in his career, since it marks the precise
moment of his final rupture with the University.
At this time the preoccupations of material life were more pressing than
ever, and it was then that he devoted himself entirely and with
perseverance to the writing of those admirable works of introduction and
initiation, in which he applied himself to rendering science accessible to
the youngest minds, and employed all his profound knowledge to the thorough
teaching of its elements and its eternal laws.
To this ungrateful task--ungrateful, but in reality pleasurable, so
strongly had he the vocation, the feeling, and the genius of the teacher--
Fabre applied himself thenceforth with all his heart, and for nine years
never lifted his hand.
How insipid, how forbidding were the usual classbooks, the second-rate
natural histories above all, stuffed with dry statements, with raw
knowledge, which brought nothing but the memory into play! How many
youthful faces had grown pale above them!
What a contrast and a deliverance in these little books of Fabre's, so
clear, so luminous, so simple, which for the first time spoke to the heart
and the understanding; for "work which one does not understand disgusts
one." (5/1.)
To initiate others into science or art, it is not enough to have understood
them oneself; it is not enough even that one should be an artist or a
scientist. Scientists of the highest flight are sometimes very unskilful
teachers, and very indifferent hands at explaining the alphabet. It is not
given to the first comer to educate the young; to understand how to
identify his understanding with theirs, to measure their powers. It is a
matter of instinct and good sense rather than of memory or erudition, and
Fabre, who had never in his life been the pupil of any one, could better
than any remember the phases through which his mind had passed, could
recollect by what detours of the mind, by what secret labours of thought,
by what intuitive methods he had succeeded in conquering, one by one, all
the difficulties in his path, and in gradually attaining to knowledge.
It is wonderful to watch the mastery with which he conducts his
demonstrations, the simplest as well as the most involved, singling out the
essential, little by little evoking the sense of things, ingeniously
seeking familiar examples, finding comparisons, and employing picturesque
and striking images, which throw a dazzling light upon the obscurest
question or the most difficult problem. How in such matters can one
dispense with figurative speech, when one is reduced, as a rule, to an
inability to show the things themselves, but only their images and their
symbols?
Follow him, for example, in the "The Sky" (5/2.), which seems to thrill
with the ardent and comprehensive genius of a Humboldt, and admire the ease
with which he surmounts all the difficulties and smooths the way for the
vast voyage on which he conducts you, past the infinity of the suns and the
stars in their millions, scintillating in the cold air of night, to descend
once more to our humble "Earth" (5/3.); first an ocean of fire, rolling its
heavy waves of molten porphyry and granite, then "slowly hardening into
strange floes and bergs, hotter than the red iron in the fire of the
forge," rounding its back, all covered with gaping pustules, eruptive
mountains and craters, and the first folds of its calcined crust, until the
day when the vast mist of densest vapours, heaped up on every hand and of
immeasurable depth, begins gradually to show rifts, giving rise at last to
an infinite storm, a stupendous deluge, and forming the strange universal
sea, "a mineral sludge, veiled by a chaos of smoke," whence at length the
primitive soil emerges, "and at last the green grass."
And although "a little animal proteid, capable of pleasure and pain,
surpasses in interest the whole immense creation of dead matter," he does
not forget to show us the spectacle of life flowing through matter itself;
and he animates even the simple elementary bodies, celebrating the
marvellous activities of the air, the violence of Chlorine, the
metamorphoses of Carbon, the miraculous bridals of Phosphorus, and "the
splendours which accompany the birth of a drop of water." (5/4.)
A man must indeed love knowledge deeply before he can make others love it,
or render it easy and attractive, revealing only the smiling highways; and
Fabre, above all things the impassioned professor, was the very man to lead
his disciples "between the hedges of hawthorn and sloe," whether to show
them the sap, "that fruitful current, that flowing flesh, that vegetable
blood," or how the plant, by a mysterious transubstantiation, makes its
wood, "and the delicate bundle of swaddling-bands of its buds," or how
"from a putrid ordure it extracts the flavour and the fragrance of its
fruits"; or whether he seeks to evoke the murderous plants that live as
parasites at the cost of others; the white Clandestinus, "which strangles
the roots of the alders beside the rivers," the Cuscuta, "which knows
nothing of labour," the wicked Orobanche, plump, powerful and brazen, the
skin covered with ugly scales, "with sombre flowers that wear the livery of
death, which leaps at the throat of the clover, stifling it, devouring it,
sucking its blood." (5/5.)
Botany, by this genial treatment, becomes a most interesting study, and I
know of no more captivating reading than "The Plant" and "The Story of the
Log," the jewels of this incomparable series.
Employ Fabre's method if you wish to learn by yourself, or to evoke in your
children a love of science, and, according to the phrase of the gentle
Jean-Jacques, to help them "to buy at the best possible of prices." Give
them as sole guides these exquisite manuals, which touch upon everything,
initiating them into everything, and bringing within the reach of all, for
their instruction or amusement, the heavens and the earth, the planets and
their moons, the mechanism of the great natural forces and the laws which
govern them, life and its materials, agriculture and its applications. For
more than a quarter of a century these catechisms of science, models of
lucidity and good sense, effected the education of generations of
Frenchmen. Abridgments of all knowledge, veritable codes of rural wisdom,
these perfect breviaries have never been surpassed.
It was after reading these little books, it is said, that Duruy conceived
the idea of confiding to this admirable teacher the education of the
Imperial heir; and it is very probable that this was, in reality, the
secret motive which would explain why he had so expressly summoned Fabre to
Paris. What an ideal tutor he had thought of, and how proud might others
have been of such a choice! But the man was too zealous of his
independence, too difficult to tame, to bear with the environment of a
court, and God knows whether he was made for such refulgence! We need not
be surprised that Fabre never heard of it; it must have sufficed the
minister to speak with him for a few minutes to realize that the most
tempting offers and all the powers of seduction would never overcome his
insurmountable dislike of life in a capital, nor prevail against his
inborn, passionate, exclusive love of the open.
For these volumes Fabre was at first rather wretchedly paid; at all events,
until public education had definitely received a fresh impulse; and for a
long time his life at Orange was literally a hand-to-mouth existence.
As soon as he was able to realize a few advances, he had nothing so much at
heart as the repayment of Mill, and he hastened to call on the philosopher;
all the more filled with gratitude for his generosity in that the loan,
although of the comparatively large amount of three thousand francs, was
made without security, practically from hand to hand, with no other
warranty than his probity.
For this reason this episode was always engraven on his memory. Thirty
years later he would relate the affair even to the most insignificant
details. How many times has he not reminded me of the transaction,
insisting that I should make a note of it, so anxious was he that this
incident in his career should not be lost in oblivion! How often has he not
recalled the infinite delicacy of Mill, and his excessive scrupulousness,
which went so far that he wished to give a written acknowledgment of the
repayment of the debt, of which there was no record whatever save in the
conscience of the debtor!
Scarcely two years later Mill died suddenly at Avignon. Grief finally
killed him; for this unexpected death seemed to have been only the ultimate
climax of the secret malady which had so long been undermining him.
It was in the outskirts of Orange that Fabre for the last time met him and
accompanied him upon a botanizing expedition. He was struck by his weakness
and his rapid decline. Mill could hardly drag himself along, and when he
stooped to gather a specimen he had the greatest difficulty in rising. They
were never to meet again.
A few days later--on the 8th May, 1873--Fabre was invited to lunch with the
philosopher. Before going to the little house by the cemetery he halted, as
was his custom, at the Libraire Saint-Just. It was there that he learned,
with amazement, of the tragic and sudden event which set a so unexpected
term to a friendship which was doubtless a little remote, but which was, on
both sides, a singularly lofty and beautiful attachment.
His class-books were now bringing in scarcely anything; their preparation,
moreover, involved an excessive expenditure of time, and gave him a great
deal of trouble; it is impossible to imagine what scrupulous care, what
zeal and self-respect Fabre brought to the execution of the programme which
he had to fulfil.
To begin with, he considered that he could not enjoy a more splendid
opportunity to give children a taste for science and to stimulate their
curiosity than by finding a means to interest them, from their earliest
infancy, in their simple playthings, even the crudest and most inexpensive;
so true is it that "in the smallest mechanical device or engine, even in
its simplest form, as conceived by the industry of a child, there is often
the germ of important truths, and, better than books, the school of the
playroom, if gently disciplined, will open for the child the windows of the
universe."
"The humble teetotum, made of a crust of rye-bread transfixed by a twig,
silently spinning on the cover of a school-book, will give a correct enough
image of the earth, which retains unmoved its original impulse, and travels
along a great circle, at the same time turning on itself. Gummed on its
disc, scraps of paper properly coloured will tell us of white light,
decomposable into various coloured rays...
"There will be the pop-gun, with its ramrod and its two plugs of tow, the
hinder one expelling the foremost by the elasticity of the compressed air.
Thus we get a glimpse of the ballistics of gunpowder, and the pressure of
steam in engines..."
The little hydraulic fountain made of an apricot stone, patiently hollowed
and pierced with a hole at either side, into which two straws are fitted,
one dipping into a cup of water and the other duly capped, "expelling a
slender thread of water in which the sunlight flickers," will introduce us
to the true syphon of physics.
"What amusing and useful lessons" a well-balanced scheme of education might
extract from this "academy of childish ingenuity"! (5/6.)
At this time he was undertaking the education of his own children. His
chemistry lessons especially had a great success. (5/7.) With apparatus of
his own devising and of the simplest kind, he could perform a host of
elementary experiments, the apparatus as a rule consisting of the most
ordinary materials, such as a common flask or bottle, an old mustard-pot, a
tumbler, a goose-quill or a pipe-stem.
A series of astonishing phenomena amazed their wondering eyes. He made them
see, touch, taste, handle, and smell, and always "the hand assisted the
word," always "the example accompanied the precept," for no one more fully
valued the profound maxim, so neglected and misunderstood, that "to see is
to know."
He exerted himself to arouse their curiosity, to provoke their questions,
to discover their mistakes, to set their ideas in order; he accustomed them
to rectify their errors themselves, and from all this he obtained excellent
material for his books.
For those more especially intended for the education of girls he took
counsel with his daughter Antonia, inviting her collaboration, begging her
to suggest every aspect of the matter that occurred to her; for instance,
in respect of the chemistry of the household, "where exact science should
shed its light upon a host of facts relating to domestic economy" (5/8.),
from the washing of clothes to the making of a stew.
Even now, to his despair, although freed from the cares of school life, he
was always almost wholly without leisure to devote himself to his chosen
subjects.
It was at this period above all that he felt so "lonely, abandoned,
struggling against misfortune; and before one can philosophize one has to
live." (5/9.)
And his incessant labour was aggravated by a bitter disappointment. In the
year of Mill's death Fabre was dismissed from his post as conservator of
the Requien Museum, which he had held in spite of his departure from
Avignon, going thither regularly twice a week to acquit himself of his
duties. The municipality, working in the dark, suddenly dismissed him
without explanation. To Fabre this dismissal was infinitely bitter; "a
sweeper-boy would have been treated with as much ceremony." (5/10.) What
afflicted him most was not the undeserved slight of the dismissal, but his
unspeakable regret at quitting those beloved vegetable collections,
"amassed with such love" by Requien, who was his friend and master, and by
Mill and himself; and the thought that he would henceforth perhaps be
unable to save these precious but perishable things from oblivion, or
terminate the botanical geography of Vaucluse, on which he had been thirty
years at work!
For this reason, when there was some talk of establishing an agronomic
station at Avignon, and of appointing him director, he was at first warmly
in favour of the idea. (5/11.) Already he foresaw a host of fascinating
experiments, of the highest practical value, conducted in the peace and
leisure and security of a fixed appointment. It is indeed probable that in
so vast a field he would have demonstrated many valuable truths, fruitful
in practical results; he was certainly meant for such a task, and he would
have performed it with genuine personal satisfaction. He had already
exerted his ingenuity by trying to develop, among the children of the
countryside, a taste for agriculture, which he rightly considered the
logical complement of the primary school, and which is based upon all the
sciences which he himself had studied, probed, taught, and popularized.
It will be remembered how patiently he devoted himself for twelve years to
the study of madder, multiplying his researches, and applying himself not
only to extracting the colouring principle, but also to indicating means
whereby adulteration and fraud might be detected.
He had published memoirs of great importance dealing with entomology in its
relations to agriculture. Impressed with the importance of this little
world, he suggested valuable remedies, means of preservation; which were
all the more logical in that the destruction of insects, if it is to be
efficacious, must be based not upon a gross empiricism, but on a previous
study of their social life and their habits.
With what patience he observed the terribly destructive weevils, and those
formidable moths with downy wings, which fly without sound of a night, and
whose depredations have often been valued at millions of francs! How
meticulously he has recorded the conditions which favour or check the
development of those parasitic fungi whose mortal blemishes are seen on
buds and flowers, on the green shoots and clusters that promise a
prosperous vintage!
But then he became anxious. Was it all worth the sacrifice of his liberty?
"Would he not suffer a thousand annoyances from pretentious nobodies?" for
as things were, all ideas of again "enregimenting" himself "filled him with
horror." (5/12.)
Slowly, however, the first instalment of the work which he had spent nearly
twenty-five years in planning, creating, and polishing, began to take
shape. At the end of the year 1878 he was able to assemble a sufficient
number of studies to form material for what was to be the first volume of
his "Souvenirs entomologiques." (A selection of which forms "Social Life in
the Insect World" (T. Fisher Unwin, 1912).)
Let us stop for a moment to consider this first book, whose publication
constitutes a truly historical date, not only in the career of Fabre, but
in the annals of universal science. It was at once the foundation and the
keystone of the marvellous edifice which we shall watch unfolding and
increasing, but to which the future was in reality to add nothing
essential. The cardinal ideas as to instinct and evolution, the necessity
of experimenting in the psychology of animals, and the harmonic laws of the
conservation of the individual, are here already expounded in their final
and definite form. This fruitful and decisive year brought Fabre a great
grief. He lost his son Jules, that one of all his children whom he seems
most ardently to have loved.
He was a youth of great promise, "all fire, all flame"; of a serious
nature; an exquisite being, of a precocious intelligence, whose rare
aptitudes both for science and literature were truly extraordinary. Such
too was the subtlety of his senses that by handling no matter what plant,
with his eyes closed, he could recognize and define it merely by the sense
of touch. This delightful companion of his father's studies had scarcely
passed his fifteenth year when death removed him. A terrible void was left
in his heart, which was never filled. Thirty years later the least allusion
to this child, however tactful, which recalled this dear memory to his
mind, would still wring his heart, and his whole body would be shaken by
his sobs. As always, work was his refuge and consolation; but this terrible
blow shattered his health, until then so robust. In the midst of this
disastrous winter he fell seriously ill. He was stricken with pneumonia,
which all but carried him off, and every one gave him up for lost. However,
he recovered, and issued from his convalescence as though regenerated, and
with strength renewed he attacked the next stage of his labours.
But what are the most fruitful resolutions, and what poor playthings are we
in the hands of the unexpected! A vulgar incident of every-day life had
sufficed to make Fabre decide to break openly with the University, and to
leave Avignon. The secret motive of his departure from Orange was scarcely
more solid. His new landlord concluded one day, either from cupidity or
stupidity, to lop most ferociously the two magnificent rows of plane-trees
which formed a shady avenue before his house, in which the birds piped and
warbled in the spring, and the cicadae chorused in the summer. Fabre could
not endure this massacre, this barbarous mutilation, this crime against
nature. Hungry for peace and quiet, the enjoyment of a dwelling-place could
no longer content him; at all costs he must own his own home.
So, having won the modest ransom of his deliverance, he waited no longer,
but quitted the cities for ever; retiring to Sérignan, to the peaceful
obscurity of a tiny hamlet, and this quiet corner of the earth had
henceforth all his heart and soul in keeping.
CHAPTER 6. THE HERMITAGE.
Goethe has somewhere written: Whosoever would understand the poet and his
work should visit the poet's country.
Let us, then, the latest of many, make the pilgrimage which all those who
are fascinated by the enigma of nature will accomplish later, with the same
piety that has led so many and so fervent admirers to the dwelling of
Mistral at Maillane.
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 a 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 facade 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.
I shall never forget my first visit. It was in the month of August; and the
whole countryside was ringing with the song of the cicadae. I had applied
to a job-master of Orange, counting on him to take me thither; but he had
never driven any one to Sérignan, had hardly heard of Fabre, and did not
know where his house was. At length, however, we contrived to find it. At
the entrance of the little market-town, in a solitary corner, in the centre
of an enclosure of lofty walls, which were taller than the crests of the
pines and cypresses, his dwelling was hidden away. No sound proceeded from
it; but for the baying of the faithful Tom I do not think I should have
dared to knock on the great door, which turned slowly on its hinges. 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.
Before us, beyond a little wall of a height to lean upon, on an isolated
lawn, beneath the shade of great trees with interwoven boughs, a circular
basin displays its still surface, across which the skating Hydrometra
traces its wide circles. Then, suddenly, we see an opening into the most
extraordinary and unexpected of gardens; a wild park, full of strenuous
vegetation, which hides the pebbly soil in all directions; a chaos of
plants and bushes, created throughout especially to attract the insects of
the neighbourhood.
Thickets of wild laurel and dense clumps of lavender encroach upon the
paths, alternating with great bushes of coronilla, which bar the flight of
the butterfly with their yellow-winged flowers, and whose searching
fragrance embalms all the air about them.
It is as though the neighbouring mountain had one day departed, leaving
here its thistles, its dogberry-trees, its brooms, its rushes, its juniper-
bushes, its laburnums, and its spurges. There too grows the "strawberry
tree," whose red fruits wear so familiar an appearance; and tall pines, the
giants of this "pigmy forest." There the Japanese privet ripens its black
berries, mingled with the Paulownia and the Cratoegus with their tender
green foliage. Coltsfoot mingles with violets; clumps of sage and thyme mix
their fragrance with the scent of rosemary and a host of balsamic plants.
Amid the cacti, their fleshy leaves bristling with prickles, the periwinkle
opens its scattered blossoms, while in a corner the serpent arum raises its
cornucopia, in which those insects that love putrescence fall engulfed,
deceived by the horrible savour of its exhalations.
It is in the spring above all that one should see this torrent of verdure,
when the whole enclosure awakens in its festival attire, decked with all
the flowers of May, and the warm air, full of the hum of insects, is
perfumed with a thousand intoxicating scents. It is in the spring that one
should see the "Harmas," the open-air observatory, "the laboratory of
living entomology" (6/1.); a name and a spot which Fabre has made famous
throughout the world.
I enter the dining-room, whose wide, half-closed shutters allow only a
half-light to enter between the printed curtains. Rush-bottomed chairs, a
great table, about which seven persons daily take their places, a few poor
pieces of furniture, and a simple bookcase; such are all the contents. On
the mantel, a clock in black marble, a precious souvenir, the only present
which Fabre received at the time of his exodus from Avignon; it was given
by his old pupils, the young girls who used to attend the free lectures at
Saint-Martial's.
There, every afternoon, half lying on a little sofa, the naturalist has the
habit of taking a short siesta. This light repose, even without sleep, was
of old enough to restore his energies, exhausted by hours of labour.
Thenceforth he was once more alert, and ready for the remainder of the day.
But already he is on his feet, bareheaded, in his waistcoat, his silk
necktie carelessly fastened under the soft turned-down collar of his half-
open shirt, his gesture, in the shadowy chamber, full of welcome.
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 scrutinize Nature and decipher her enigmas? Above
the orbits, two short, bristling eyebrows 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.
Such is this striking physiognomy, which one who has seen it cannot forget.
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.
Let us indeed remember how much time has been required and what effort has
been expended to complete the long and patient inquiries which he had
hitherto accomplished; obliged, as he was, to allow himself to be
interrupted at any moment, and to postpone his observations often at the
most interesting moment, in order to undertake some enervating labour, or
the disagreeable and mechanical duties of his profession. Remember that his
first labours already dated from twenty-five years earlier, and at the
moment when we observe him in his solitude at Sérignan he had only just
painfully gathered together the material for his first book. What a
contrast to the thirty fruitful years that were to follow! Now nearly ten
volumes, no less overflowing with the richest material, were to succeed one
another at almost regular intervals--about one in every three years.
To be sure, he would have gathered his harvest in no matter what corner of
the world, provided he had found within his reach, in whatever sphere of
life he had been placed, any subject of inquiry whatever; such was
Rousseau, botanizing over the bunch of chickweed provided for his canary;
such was Bernardin Saint-Pierre, discovering a world in a strawberry-plant
which had sprouted by chance at the corner of his window. (6/2.) But the
field in which he had hitherto been able to glean was indeed barren. That
he was able, later on, to narrate the wonderful history of the Pelopaeus,
whose habits he had observed at Avignon, was due to the fact that this
curious insect had come to lodge with him, having chosen Fabre's chamber
for its dwelling. None the less he threw himself eagerly upon all such
scraps of information as happened to come under his notice; witness the
observations which he embodied in a memoir touching the phosphorescence of
certain earth-worms which, abounding in a little courtyard near his
dwelling, were so rare elsewhere that he was never again able to find them.
(6/3.) It was therefore fortunate, if not for himself, at least for his
genius, that he did not become, as he had wished, a professor in a faculty;
there, to be sure, he would have found a theatre worthy of his efforts, in
which he might even have demonstrated, in all its magnificence, his
incomparable gift of teaching; but it is probable too that he would have
been stranded in shoal waters; that in the official atmosphere of a city
his still more marvellous gifts of observation would scarcely have found
employment.
It was only by belonging fully to himself that he could fruitfully exercise
his talents. Necessary to every scholar, to every inquirer, to an open-air
observer like Fabre liberty and leisure were more than usually essential;
failing these he might never have accomplished his mission. How many lives
are wasted, how many minds expended in sheer loss, in default of this
sufficiency of leisure! How many scholars tied to the soil, how many
physicians absorbed by an exigent practice, who perhaps had somewhat to
say, have succeeded only in devising plans, for ever postponing their
realization to some miraculous tomorrow, which always recedes!
But we must not fall into illusions. How many might be tempted to imitate
him, hoping to see some unknown talent awaken or expand within them, only
to find themselves incapable of producing anything, and to consume
themselves in an insurmountable and barren ennui! One must be rich in one's
own nature, rich in will and in ability, to live apart and seek new paths
in solitude, and it is not without reason that the majority prefer the
turmoil of cities and the murmur of men to the silence of the country.
The atmosphere of a great capital, for instance, is singularly conducive to
work. Living constantly within the circle of light shed by the masters,
within reach of the laboratories and the great libraries, we are less
likely to go astray; we are stimulated by the contact of others; we profit
by their advice and experience; and it is easy to borrow ideas if we lack
them. Then there is the stimulant of self-respect, the sense of rivalry,
the eager desire to advance, to distinguish oneself, to shine, to attract
attention, to become in one's turn an arbiter, an object of wonder and
envy, without which stimulus many would merely have existed, and would
never have become what they are.
On the other hand, a man needs an intrinsic radio-activity, and a real
talent; and the aid, moreover, of exceptional circumstances, if fame is to
consent to come to him and take him by the hand in the depths of some
unknown Maillane, some obscure Sérignan; even, as in the case of Fabre, at
the end only of a long life.
But he, by a kind of fatality inherent in his nature, loved "to
circumscribe himself," according to the happy expression of Rousseau; and
he profited, rather than otherwise, by living entirely to himself; for he
had long been, indeed he always was, the man who, at twenty-five, writing
to his brother, had said, in speaking of his native countryside:
"For a impassioned botanist, it is a delightful country, in which I could
pass a month, two months, three months, a year even, alone, quite alone,
with no other companion than the crows and the jays which gossip among the
oak-trees; without being weary for a moment; there would be so many
beautiful fungi, orange, rosy, and white, among the mosses, and so many
flowers in the fields." (6/4.)
His work having brought him at last just enough to enable him to give
himself the pleasure of becoming, in his turn, a proprietor, he had
acquired, for a modest sum, this dilapidated dwelling and this deserted
spot of ground; barren land, given over to couch-grass, thistles, and
brambles; a sort of "accursed spot, to which no one would have confided
even a pinch of turnip-seed." A piece of water in front of the house
attracted all the frogs in the neighbourhood; the screech-owl mewed from
the tops of the plane-trees, and numerous birds, no longer disturbed by the
presence of man, had domiciled themselves in the lilacs and the cypresses.
A host of insects had seized upon the dwelling, which had long been
deserted.
He restored the house, and to some extent reduced confusion to order. In
the uncultivated and pebbly plain where the plough had been long a stranger
he established plants of a thousand varieties, and, the better to hide
himself, he had walls built to shut himself in.
Why was he drawn by preference to this village of Sérignan?--for he did not
go thither without making some inquiries as to the possibility of obtaining
shelter elsewhere, and the Carpentras cemetery had tempted him also; but
what had particularly seduced and drawn him thither was the nearness of the
mountain with its Mediterranean flora, so rich that it recalled the
Corsican maquis; full of beautiful fungi and varied insects, where, under
the flat stones exposed to the burning sun, the centipede burrowed and the
scorpion slept; where a special fauna abounded--of curious dung-beetles,
scarabaei, the Copris, the Minotaur, etc.--which only a little farther
north grow rapidly scarcer and then altogether disappear.
He had thus at last arrived in port; he had found his "Eden."
He had realized, "after forty years of desperate struggles," the dearest,
the most ardent, the longest cherished of all his desires. He could observe
at leisure "every day, every hour," his beloved insects; "under the blue
sky, to the music of the cigales." He had only to open his eyes and to see;
to lend an ear and hear; to enjoy the great blessing of leisure to his
heart's content.
Doffing the professor's frock-coat for the peasant's blouse, planting a
root of sweet basil in his "topper," and finally kicking it to pieces, he
snapped his fingers at his past life.
Liberated at last, far from all that could irritate or disturb him or make
him feel dependent, satisfied with his modest earnings, reassured by the
ever-increasing popularity of his little books, he had obtained entire
possession of his own body and mind, and could give himself without reserve
to his favourite subjects.
So, with Nature and her inexhaustible book before him, he truly commenced a
new life.
But would this life have been possible without the support and comfort of
those intimate feelings which are at the root of human nature? Man is
seldom the master of these feelings, and they, with reason or despite
reason, force themselves on his notice as the question of questions.
This delicate problem Fabre had to resolve after suffering a fresh grief.
Hardly had he commenced to enjoy the benefits of this profound peace, when
he lost his wife. At this moment his children were already grown up; some
were married and some ready to leave him; and he could not hope much longer
to keep his old father, the ex-café-keeper of Pierrelatte, who had come to
rejoin him; and who might be seen, even in his extreme old age, going forth
in all weathers and dragging his aged limbs along all the roads of
Sérignan. (6/5.) The son, moreover, had inherited from his father his
profound inaptitude for the practical business of life, and was equally
incapable of managing his interests and the economics of the house. This is
why, after two years of widowerhood, having already passed his sixtieth
year, although still physically quite youthful, he remarried. Careless of
opinion, obeying only the dictates of his own heart and mind, and following
also the intuitions of unerring instinct, which was superior to the
understanding of those who thought it their duty to oppose him, he married,
as Boaz married Ruth, a young woman, industrious, full of freshness and
life, already completely devoted to his service, and admirably fitted to
satisfy that craving for order, peace, quiet, and moral tranquillity, which
to him were above all things indispensable.
His new companion, moreover, was in all things faithful to her mission, and
it was thanks to the benefits of this union, as the future was to show,
that Fabre was in a position to pursue his long-delayed inquiries.
Three children, a son and two daughters, were born in swift succession, and
reconstituted "the family," which was very soon increased by the youngest
of his daughters by his first wife, who had not married; this was that
Aglaë, who so often helped her father with her childlike attentions, and,
"her cheek blooming with animation," collaborated in some of his most
famous observations (6/6.); an unobtrusive figure, a soul full of devotion
and resignation, heroic and tender. Having in vain ventured into the world,
she had returned to the beloved roof at Sérignan, unable to part from the
father she so admired and adored.
Later, when the shadow of age grew denser and heavier, the young wife and
the younger children of the famous poet-entomologist took part in his
labours also; they gave him their material assistance, their hands, their
eyes, their hearing, their feet; he in the midst of them was the
conceiving, reasoning, interpreting, and directing brain.
>From this time forward the biography of Fabre becomes simplified, and
remains a statement of his inner life. For thirty years he never emerged
from his horizon of mountains and his garden of shingle; he lived wholly
absorbed in domestic affections and the tasks of a naturalist. None the
less, he still exercised his vocation as teacher, for neither pure science
nor poetry was sufficient to nourish his mind, and he was still Professor
Fabre, untiringly pursuing his programme of education, although no longer
applying himself thereto exclusively.
This long active period was also the most silent period of his life,
although not an hour, not a minute of his many days was left unoccupied.
In the first few months at his new home he resumed his hymn to labour.
"You will learn in your turn," he writes to his son Émile, "you will learn,
I hope, that we are never so happy as when work does not leave us a
moment's repose. To act is to live." (6/7.)
The better to belong to himself, he eluded all invitations, even those from
his nearest or most intimate friends; he hated to go away even for a few
hours, preferring to enjoy in his own house their presence amidst his
habitual and delightful surroundings. Everything in this still unexplored
country was new to him. What would he do elsewhere, even in his beloved
Carpentras, whither his faithful friend and pupil Devillario, who had
formerly followed him in his walks around Avignon, would endeavour from
time to time to draw him? Devillario was a magistrate, a collector and
palaeontologist; his simple tastes, his wide culture, and his passion for
natural history would surely have decided Fabre to accept his invitations,
but that he forbade himself the pleasure. "I am afraid the hospitable
cutlet that awaits me at your table will have time to grow cold; I am up to
the neck in my work (6/8.)...But you, when you can, escape from your
courts, and we will philosophize at random, as is our custom when we can
manage to pass a few hours together. As for me, it is very doubtful whether
the temptation will seize me to come to Carpentras. A hermit of the Thebaïd
was no more diligent in his cell than I in my village home." (6/9.)
CHAPTER 7. THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE.
Was there not indeed a sufficiency of captivating matters all about him,
and beneath his very feet?
In his deep, sunny garden a thousand insects fly, creep, crawl, and hum,
and each relates its history to him. A golden gardener-beetle trots along
the path. Rose-beetles pass, in snoring flight, on every hand, the gold and
emerald of their elytra gleaming; now and again one of them alights for a
moment on the flowering head of a thistle; he seizes it carefully with the
tips of his nervous, pointed fingers, seems to caress it, speaks to it, and
then suddenly restores it to freedom.
Wasps are pillaging the centauries. On the blossoms of the camomile the
larvae of the Meloë are waiting for the Anthophorae to carry them off to
their cells, while around them roam the Cicindelae, their green bodies
"spotted with points of amaranth." At the bottom of the walls "the chilly
Psyche creeps slowly along under her cloak of tiny twigs." In the dead
bough of a lilac-tree the dark-hued Xylocopa, the wood-boring bee, is busy
tunnelling her gallery. In the shade of the rushes the Praying Mantis,
rustling the floating robe of her long tender green wings, "gazes alertly,
on the watch, her arms folded on her breast, her appearance that of one
praying," and paralyses the great grey locust, nailed to its place by fear.
Nothing here is insignificant; what the world would smile at or deride will
provide the sage with food for thought and reflection. "Nothing is trivial
in the majestic problem of nature; our laboratory acquaria are of less
value than the imprint which the shoe of a mule has left in the clay, when
the rain has filled the primitive basin, and life has peopled it with
marvels"; and the least fact offered us by chance on the most thoroughly
beaten track may possibly open prospects as vast as all the starry sky.
Tell yourself that everything in nature is a symbol of something like a
specimen of an abstruse cryptogram, all the characters of which conceal
some meaning. But when we have succeeded in deciphering these living texts,
and have grasped the allusion; when, beside the symbol, we have succeeded
in finding the commentary, then the most desolate corner of the earth
appears to the solitary seeker as a gallery full of the masterpieces of an
unsuspected art. Fabre puts into our hands the golden key which opens the
doors of this marvellous museum.
Let us consider the terebinth louse; it is just a little yellow mite; but
is it nothing else? Its genealogical history teaches us "by what amazing
essays of passion and variety the universal law which rules the
transmission of life is evolved. Here is neither father nor eggs; all these
mites are mothers; and the young are born living, just like their mothers."
To this end "almost the whole of the maternal substance is disintegrated
and renewed and conglobated to form the ovarium...the whole creature has
become an egg, which has, for its shell, the dry skin of the tiny creature,
and the microscope will show a whole world in formation...a nebulosity as
of white of egg, in which fresh centres of life are forming, as the suns
are condensed in the nebulae of the heavens." (7/1.)
What is this fleck of foam, like a drop of saliva, which we see in
springtime on the weeds of the meadows; among others on the spurge, when
its stems begin to shoot, and its sombre flowers open in the sunlight? "It
is the work of an insect. It is the shelter in which the Cicadellina
deposits her eggs. What a miraculous chemist! Her stiletto excels the
finest craft of the botanical anatomist" by its sovereign art of separating
the acrid poison which flows with the sap in the veins of the most venomous
plants, and extracting therefrom only an inoffensive fluid. (7/2.)
At every step the insects set us problems equally varied. The other
creatures are nearer to us; they resemble us in many respects. But insects,
almost the first-born of creation, form a world apart, and contain, in
their tiny bodies, as Réaumur has admirably said, "more parts than the most
gigantic animals." They have senses and faculties of their own, which
enable them to accomplish actions, which are doubtless very simply related
in reality, but which seem, to our minds, as extraordinary as the habits of
the inhabitants of Mars might, if by chance they were to descend in our
midst. We do not know how they hear, nor how they see through their
compound eyes, and our ignorance concerning the majority of their senses
still further increases the difficulty, which so often arrests us, of
interpreting their actions.
The tubercled Cerceris "finds by the hundred" and almost immediately a
species of weevil, the Cleona ophthalmica, on which it feeds its larvae,
and which the human eye, though it searches for hours, can scarcely find
anywhere. The eyes of the Cerceris are like magnifying glasses, veritable
microscopes, which immediately distinguish, in the vast field of nature, an
object that human vision is powerless to discover. (7/3.)
How does the Ammophila, hovering over the turf and investigating it far and
wide, in its search for a grey grub, contrive to discern the precise point
in the depth of the subsoil where the larva is slumbering in immobility?
"Neither touch nor sight can come into play, for the grub is sealed up in
its burrow at a depth of several inches; nor the scent, since it is
absolutely inodorous; nor the hearing, since its immobility is absolute
during the daytime." (7/4.)
The Processional caterpillar of the pine-trees, "endowed with an exquisite
hygrometric sensibility," is a barometer more infallible than that of the
physicists. "It foresees the tempests preparing afar, at enormous
distances, almost in the other hemisphere," and announces them several days
before the least sign of them appears on the horizon. (7/5.)
A wild bee, the Chalicodoma, and a wasp, the Cerceris, carried in the dark
far from their familiar pastures, to a distance of several miles, and
released in spots which they have never seen, cross vast and unknown spaces
with absolute certainty, and regain their nests; even after long absence,
and in spite of contrary winds and the most unexpected obstacles. It is not
memory that guides them, but a special faculty whose astonishing results we
must admit without attempting to explain them, so far removed are they from
our own psychology. (7/6.) But here is another example:
The Greater Peacock moths cross hills and valleys in the darkness, with a
heavy flight of wings spotted with inexplicable hieroglyphics. They hasten
from the remotest depths of the horizon to find their "sleeping beauties,"
drawn thereto by unknown odours, inappreciable by our senses, yet so
penetrating that the branch of almond on which the female has perched, and
which she has impregnated with her effluvium, exerts the same extraordinary
attraction. (7/7.)
Considering these creatures, we end by discovering more things than are
contained in all the philosophies...if we know how to look for them.
Among so many unimaginable phenomena, which bewilder us, "because there is
nothing analogous in us," we succeed in perceiving, here and there, a few
glimpses of day, which suddenly throw a singular light upon this black
labyrinth, in which the least secret we can surprise "enters perhaps more
directly into the profound enigma of our ends and our origins than the
secret of the most urgent and most closely studied of our passions." (7/8.)
Fabre explains by hypnosis one of those curious facts which have hitherto
been so poorly interpreted. When surprised by abnormal conditions, we see
insects suddenly fall over, drop to the ground, and lie as though struck by
lightning, gathering their limbs under their bodies. A shock, an unexpected
odour, a loud noise, plunges them instantly into a sort of lethargy, more
or less prolonged. The insect "feigns death," not because it simulates
death, but in reality because this MAGNETIC condition resembles that of
death. (7/9.) Now the Odynerus, the Anthidium, the Eucera, the Ammophila,
and all the hymenoptera which Fabre has observed sleeping at the fall of
night, "suspended in space solely by the strength of their mandibles, their
bodies tense, their limbs retracted, without exhaustion or collapse"; and
the larva of the Empusa, "which for some ten months hangs to a twig by its
limbs, head downwards": do not these present a surprising analogy with
those hypnotized persons who possess the faculty of remaining fixed in the
most painful poses, and of supporting the most unusual attitudes, for an
extremely long time; for instance, with one arm extended, or one foot
raised from the ground, without appearing to experience the least fatigue,
and with a persevering and unfaltering energy? (7/10.)
That the ex-schoolmaster was able to penetrate so far into this new world,
and that he has been able to interest us in so many fascinating problems,
was due to the fact that he had also "taken a wide bird's-eye view through
all the windows of creation." His universal capabilities, his immense
culture and almost encyclopaedic science have enabled him to utilize,
thanks to his studies, all the knowledge allied to his subject. He is not
one of those who understand only their speciality and who, knowing nothing
outside their own province and their particular labours, refuse to grasp at
anything beyond the narrow limits within which they stand installed.
All plants are to him so familiar that the flowers, for him, assume the
airs of living persons. But without a profound knowledge of botany, who
would hope to grasp the profound, perpetual, and intimate relations of the
plant and the insect?
He has turned over strata and interrogated the schistous deposits, whose
archives preserve the forms of vanished organizations, but "keep silence as
to the origin of the instincts." Bending over his reagents, he has sought
to discover, according to the phrase of a philosopher, those secret
retreats in which Nature is seated before her furnaces, in the depths of
her laboratory; following up the metamorphoses of matter even to the wings
of the Scarabaei, and observing how life, returning to her crucible the
debris and ashes of the organism, combines the elements anew, and from the
elements of the urine can derive, for example, by a simple displacement of
molecules, "all this dazzling magic of colours of innumerable shades: the
amethystine violet of Geotrupes, the emerald of the rose-beetle, the gilded
green of the Cantharides, the metallic lustre of the gardener-beetles, and
all the pomp of the Buprestes and the dung-beetles." (7/11.)
His books are steeped in all the ideas of modern physics. The highest
mathematical knowledge has been referred to with profit in his marvellous
description of the hunting-net of the Epeïra. Whose "terribly scientific"
combinations realize "the spiral logarithm of the geometers, so curious in
its properties" (7/12.); a splendid observation, in which Fabre makes us
admire, in the humble web of a spider, a masterpiece as astonishing and
incomprehensible as and even more sublime than the honeycomb.
This explains why Fabre has always energetically denied that he is properly
speaking an entomologist; and indeed the term appears often wrongly to
describe him. He loves, on the contrary, to call himself a naturalist; that
is, a biologist; biology being, by definition, the study of living
creatures considered as a whole and from every point of view. And as
nothing in life is isolated, as all things hold together, and as each part,
in all its relations, presents itself to the gaze of the observer under
innumerable aspects, one cannot be a true naturalist without being at the
same time a philosopher.
But it is not enough to know and to observe.
To be admitted to the spectacle of these tiny creatures, to become familiar
with their habits, to grasp the mysterious threads which connect them one
with another and with the vast universe: for this the cold and deliberate
vision of the specialist would often be insufficient. There is an art of
observation, and the gift of observation is a true function of that
constantly alert intelligence, continually dominated by the need of delving
untiringly down to the ultimate truth accessible, "allowing ourselves to
pass over nothing without seeking its reason, and habitually following up
every response with another question, until we come to the granite wall of
the Unknowable." Above all we need an ardent and interested sympathy, for
"we penetrate farther into the secret of things by the heart than by the
reason," as Toussenel has said; and "it is only by intuition that we can
know what life truly is," adds Bergson profoundly. (7/13.) Now Fabre loves
these little peoples and knows how to make us love them. How tenderly he
speaks of them; with what solicitude he observes them; with what love he
follows the progress of their nurslings; the young grubs wriggling in his
test-tubes, with doddering heads, are happy; and he himself is happy to see
them "well-fed and shining with health." He pities the bee stabbed by the
Philanthus "in the holy joys of labour." He sympathizes with the sufferings
of these little creatures and their hard labours. If, in his search for
ideas, he has to overturn their dwellings, "he repents of subjecting
maternal love to such tribulations," and if he is constrained to put them
to the question, to torment them in order to extract their secrets, he is
grieved to have provoked "such miseries!" (7/14.) Having provided for their
needs, and satisfied with the secrets which they have revealed to him, it
is not without regret and difficulty that he parts from them and restores
them "to the delights of liberty."
He is thoroughly convinced, moreover, that all the creatures that share the
face of the earth with us are accomplishing an august and appointed task.
He welcomes the swallows to his dwelling, even surrendering his workroom to
them, at the risk of jeopardizing his notes and books. He pleads for the
frog, and applies himself to setting forth his unknown qualities; he
rehabilitates the bat, the hedgehog, and the screech-owl, persecuted,
defamed, crushed, stoned, and crucified! (7/15.)
So intimate is the life which he leads among them all that he makes himself
truly their companion, and relates his own history in narrating theirs;
pleased to discover in their joys and sorrows his own trials and delights;
mingling in their annals his memories and his impressions; delightful
fragments of a childlike autobiography, encrusted in his learned work;
moving and delightful pages in which all the ingenuity of this noble mind
reveals itself with a touching sincerity, in which all the freshness of
this charming and so profoundly unworldly nature is seen as through a pure
crystal.
There is no real communion with nature without sentiment, without an
illuminating passion: often the sole and effectual grace which enables its
true meaning to appear. Neither taste, nor intelligence, nor logic, nor all
the science of the schools can suffice alone. To see further there is
needed something like a gift of correspondence, surpassing the limits of
observation and experience, which enables us to foresee and to divine the
profound secrets of life which lie beneath appearances. Those who are so
gifted have often only to open their eyes in order to grasp matters in
their true light.
A great observer is in reality a poet who imagines and creates. The
microscope, the magnifying glass, the scalpel, are as it were the strings
of a lyre. "The felicitous and fruitful hypothesis which constitutes
scientific invention is a gift of sentiment" in the words of Claude
Bernard; and of this king of physiology, who commenced by proving himself
in works of pure imagination, and whose genius finally took for its theme
the manifold variations of living flesh, of him too may we not say that he
has explored the labyrinths of life with "the torch of poetry in his hand"?
Similarly, do not the harmonious sequences which run through all the
admirable discoveries of Pasteur give us the sensation of a veritable and
gigantic poem?
In Fabre also it seems that the passion which he brings to all his patient
observations is in itself truly creative: "his heart beats with emotion,
the sweat drips from his brow to the soil, making mortar of the dust"; he
forgets food and drink, and "thus passes hours of oblivion in the happiness
of learning." I have seen him in his laboratory studying the spawning of
the bluebottle, when I, at his side, could scarcely support the horrible
stench which rose from the putrefying adders and lumps of meat; he,
however, was oblivious of the frightful odour, and his face was inundated
with smiles of delight.
Intelligence, then, must here be the servant of feeling and intuition; a
kind of primitive faculty, mysterious and instinctive, which alone makes a
great naturalist like Fabre, a great historian like Michelet, a great
physician like Boherhaave or Bretonneau.
These last are not always the most scholarly nor the most learned nor the
most patient, but they are those who possess in a high degree that special
vision, that gift, properly speaking poetic, which is known as the clinical
eye, which at the first glance perceives and confirms the diagnosis in all
its detail.
Fabre has a mind propitious to such processes; and if, by chance,
circumstances had directed his attention to medicine, that science which is
based upon an abundant provision of facts, but in which good sense and a
kind of divination play a still wider part, there is no doubt that he would
have been capable of becoming a shining light in this new arena.
He was full of admiration for that other illustrious Vauclusian, François
Raspail (7/16.), whose medical genius anticipated Pasteur and all the
conceptions of modern medicine. It would seem that he found in him his own
temper, his own fashion of seeing and representing things. He loved
Raspail's books and his prescriptions, full of reason and a most judicious
good sense, distrusting for himself and for his family the complicated
formulae and cunning remedies of an art too considered and still unproved.
At Carpentras, while his first-born, Émile, was hovering between life and
death, and the physician who came to see him, "being at the end of his
resources," did nothing more for him and soon ceased to come, thinking that
the child would not last till the morrow, Fabre flew to the works of
Raspail.
"I searched to discover what his malady was. I found it, and he was treated
day and night accordingly. To-day he is convalescent; and his appetite has
returned. I believe he is saved, and I shall say, like Ambroise Paré, 'I
have nursed him; God has cured him.'" (7/17.)
The episode which he relates, when, at the primary school of Avignon, a
retort had just burst, "spurting in all directions its contents of
vitriol," right in the midst of the suddenly interrupted chemistry lesson,
and when, thanks to his prompt action, he saved the sight of one of his
comrades, does honour to his initiative and presence of mind. (7/18.)
While "all physicians should bow before the facts which he excels in
discovering" (7/19.), he has also been able to make direct application of
the marvels of entomology to some of the problems of hygiene and medicine.
He has shown that the irritant poison secreted by certain caterpillars,
"which sets the fingers which handle them on fire," is nothing but a waste
product of the organism, a derivative of uric acid; he does not hesitate to
perform painful experiments on himself in order to furnish the proof of his
theory; and he explains thus the curious cases of dermatitis which are
often observed among silkworm-breeders. (7/20.) He proves the uselessness
of our meat-safes of metallic gauze, intended to preserve meat against
contamination, and the efficacy of a mere envelope of paper, not only to
preserve meat from flies, but also our garments from the clothes-moth.
(7/21.) He recommends the curious Provençal recipe, which consists in
boiling suspected mushrooms in salt and water before eating them. Finally
he suggests to members of the medical profession that they might perhaps
extract heroic remedies from these treacherous vegetables. (7/22.)
He had need of that indefinite leisure which had hitherto been so wholly
lacking, for the events of ephemeral lives occur at indeterminate hours, at
unexpected moments, and are of brief duration.
So, attentive to their least movements, Fabre goes forth to observe them at
the earliest break of day, in the red dawn, when the bee "pops her head out
of her attic window to see what the weather is," and the spiders of the
thickets lie in wait under the whorls of their nets, "which the tears of
night have changed into chaplets of dewdrops, whose magic jewellery,
sparkling in the sun," is already attracting moths and midges.
Seated for hours before a sprig of terebinth, his eye, armed with the
magnifying glass, follows the slow manoeuvres of the terebinth louse, whose
proboscis "cunningly distils the venom which causes the leaf to swell and
produces those enormous tumours, those misshapen and monstrous galls, in
which the young pass their period of slumber."
He watches at night, by the dim light of a lantern, to copy the Scolopendra
at her task, seeking to surprise the secret of her eggs (7/23.); to observe
the Cione constructing her capsule of goldbeater's skin, or the
Processional caterpillars travelling head to tail along their satin trail,
extinguishing his candle only when sleep at last sets his eyelids blinking.
He will wake early to witness the fairy-like resurrection of the silkworm
moth (7/24.); "in order not to lose the moment when the nymph bursts her
swaddling-bands," or when the wing of the locust issues from its sheath and
"commences to sprout"; no spectacle in the world is more wonderful than the
sight of "this extraordinary anatomy in process of formation," the
unrolling of these "bundles of tissue, cunningly folded and reduced to the
smallest possible compass" in the insignificant alar stumps, which
gradually unfold "like an immense set of sails," like the "body-linen of
the princess" of the fairy-tale, which was contained in one single hemp-
seed. (7/25.)
In his Harmas he is like a stranger discovering an unknown world; "like a
kindly giant from Sirius, holding a magnifying glass to his eye, retaining
his breath, lest it should overturn and sweep away the pigmies which he is
observing."
His passion for interrogating the Sphinx of life, everywhere and at all
moments, sufficed to fill his days from one end of the year to the other.
When some distant subject interested him, even on the most scorching days,
he would put "his lunch in his pocket, an apple and a crust of bread," and
sit out in the hot sunlight, accompanied by his dog, Vasco, Tom, or Rabbit;
fearing only that some importunate third person might come between nature
and himself.
When he walked in his garden he would let nothing escape him; witness those
precise notes of an eclipse of the sun, and of the effects which that
phenomenon produces upon animal life as a whole.
While his children followed the progress of the moon across the sun through
a pane of smoked glass, he attentively observed all that occurred in the
countryside.
"It is four; the day grows pale; the temperature is fresher; the cocks
crow, surprised by this kind of twilight which comes before the hour. A few
dogs are baying...The swallows, numerous before, have all disappeared...a
couple have taken refuge in my study, one window of which is open...when
the normal light returns they will come outdoors once more...The
nightingale, which had so long importuned me by his interminable song, is
silent at last (7/26.); the black-capped skylarks, which were warbling
continually, are suddenly still...only the young house-sparrows under the
tiles of the roof are mournfully chirping...Peace and silence, the daylight
more than half gone...In the Harmas I can no longer see the insects flying;
I find only one bee pillaging the rosemary; all life has disappeared.
"Only a weevil, the Lixus," which he is observing in a cage, "continues,
step by step, without the slightest emotion, his amorous by-play, as though
nothing unusual were happening...The nightingale and the skylark may be
silent, oppressed by fear; the bee may re-enter her hive; but is a weevil
to be upset because the sun threatens to go out?" (7/27.)
He was no less curious concerning the resurrection of the sun, and every
time he made an excursion to the Ventoux he was careful not to miss this
spectacle; setting out at an early hour from the foot of the mountain, so
that he might see the dawn grow bright from the summit of its rocky mass;
then the sun, suddenly rising in the morning breeze, and setting fire,
little by little, to the Alps of Dauphiné and the hills of Comtat; and the
Rhône, far below, slender as a silver thread.
He took infinite pleasure too in drinking his fill of the sublime terrors
of the thunderstorm, which he regarded as one of the most magnificent
spectacles which nature can offer; not content with observing it through
glass, he would open wide the windows at night the better to enjoy the
phosphorescence of the atmosphere, the conflagration of the clouds, the
bursts of thunder, and all the solemn pomp with which the great purifying
phenomenon manifests itself.
But pure observation, as practised by his predecessors, Réaumur and Huber,
is often insufficient, or "furnishes only a glimpse of matters."
He had recourse, therefore, to artificial observation of the kind known as
experimentation, and we may say that Fabre was really the first to employ
the experimental method in the study of the minds of animals.
Near the field of observation, therefore, is the naturalist's workshop,
"the animal laboratory," in which such inductions as may be suggested by
the doings and the movements of the insects "which roam at liberty amidst
the thyme and lavender" are subjected to the test of experiment. It is a
great, silent, isolated room, brilliantly lighted by two windows facing
south, upon the garden, one at least of which is always kept open that the
insects may come and go at liberty.
In the glass-topped boxes of pine which occupy almost the entire height of
the whitewashed walls are carefully arranged the collections so patiently
amassed; all the entomological fauna of the South of France, and the sea-
shells of the Mediterranean; an abundant wealth also of divers rarities;
numismatical treasures and fragments of pottery and other prehistorical
documents, of which the numerous ossuaries in the neighbourhood of
Sérignan, scattered here and there upon the hills, contain many specimens.
At the top, crowning the facade of glass-topped cases like an immense
frieze, is the colossal herbarium, the first volumes of which go back to
the early youth of their owner; all the flora, both of the Midi and the
North, those of the plains and those of the mountains, and all the algae of
fresh and salt water.
But it must not be supposed that Fabre attaches any great value to these
collections, enormous though the sum of labour which they represent. To him
they have been a means of education, a means of organizing and arranging
his knowledge, and not of satisfying an idle curiosity; not the amusement
of one content with the rind of things. In order to identify at first sight
such specimens as one encounters and proposes to examine, one must first of
all learn to observe and to see thoroughly, and to school the eyes in the
colours and forms peculiar to each individual species.
One may fairly complain of Réaumur, for example, that his knowledge was
uncertain and incomplete. Too often he leaves his readers undecided as to
the nature of the species whose habits he describes. Fabre himself, by dint
of criticizing with so much humour the abuse of classifications, has
sometimes allowed himself to fall into the same fault. (7/28.) He has taken
good care, however, not to neglect the systematic study of species; witness
his "Flora of the Vaucluse" and that careful catalogue of Avignon which he
has not disdained to republish. (7/29.) The truth is that "if we do not
know their names the knowledge of the things escapes us" (7/30.), and he
was profoundly conscious of the truth of this precept of the great
Linnaeus.
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 larvae, the creation and
the 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 as observation or experimental cages in which the progress and
the actions of "these tiny living machines" can be examined.
Fabre has revealed himself as a psychologist without rival, of a consummate
skill in the difficult and delicate art of experimentation; the art of
making the insect speak, of putting questions to it, of forcing it to
betray its secrets; for experiment is "the only method which can throw any
light upon the nature of instincts."
His resources being slender and his mind inventive, he has ingeniously
supplemented the poverty of his equipment, and has discovered less costly
and less complex means of conducting his experiments; knowing the secret of
extracting the sublimest truth from clumsy combinations of "trivial,
peasant-made articles."
He has succeeded, in his rustic laboratory, in applying the rigorous rules
of investigation and experimentation established by the great biologists.
He has therefore been able to establish his beautiful observations in a
manner so indisputable that those who come after him and are tempted to
study the same things can but arrive at the same results, and derive
inspiration from his researches.
To note with care all the details of a phenomenon is the first essential,
so that others may afterwards refer to them and profit by them; the
difficult thing is to interpret them, to discover the circumstances, the
whys and wherefores, the consequences, and the connecting links.
But a single fact observed by chance at the wayside, and which would not
even attract the attention of another, will be instantly luminous to this
searching understanding, it will suggest questions unforeseen, and will
evoke, by anticipation, preconceived ideas and sudden flashes of intuition,
which will necessitate the test of experiment.
Why, for example, does the Philanthus, that slender wasp, which captures
the honey-bee upon the blossoms in order to feed her larvae; why, before
she carries her prey to her offspring, does she "outrage the dying insect,"
by squeezing its crop in order to empty it of honey, in which she appears
to delight, and does indeed actually delight?
"The bandit greedily takes in her mouth the extended and sugared tongue of
the dead insect; then once more she presses the neck and the thorax, and
once more applies the pressure of her abdomen to the honey-sac of the bee.
The honey oozes forth and is instantly licked up. Thus the bee is gradually
compelled to disgorge the contents of the crop. This atrocious meal lasts
often half an hour and longer, until the last trace of honey has
disappeared."
The detailed answer is obtained by experiment, which perfectly explains
this "odious feast," the excuse for which is simply maternity. The
Philanthus knows, instinctively, without having learned it, that honey,
which is her ordinary fare, is, by a very singular "inversion," a mortal
poison to her larvae. (7/31.)
As an accomplished physiologist, Fabre conducts all kinds of experiments.
Behind the wires of his cages, he provokes the moving spectacle of the
scorpion at grip with the whole entomological fauna, in order to test the
effects of its terrible venom upon various species; and thus he discovers
the strange immunity of larvae; the virus, "the reagent of a transcendent
chemistry, distinguishes the flesh of the larva from that of the adult; it
is harmless to the former, but mortal to the latter"; a fresh proof that
"metamorphosis modifies the substance of the organism to the point of
changing its most intimate properties." (7/32.)
You may judge from this that he knows through and through the history of
the creatures which form the subjects of his faithful narratives. He is
informed of the smallest events of their lives. He possesses a calendar of
their births; he records their chronology and the succession of
generations; he has noted their methods of work, examined their diet, and
recorded their meals. He discovers the motives which dictate their
peculiarities of choice; why the Cerceris, for instance, among all the
victims at its disposal, never selects anything but the Buprestis and the
weevils. He is familiar too with their tactics of warfare and their methods
of conflict.
His gaze has penetrated even the most hidden dwellings; those in which the
Halictus "varnishes her cells and makes the round loaf which is to receive
the egg"; in which, under the cover of cocoons, murderous grubs devour
slumbering nymphs; even the depths of the soil are not hidden from him, for
there, thanks to his artifices, he has surprised the astonishing secret of
the Minotaur.
He sifts all doubtful stories; anecdotes, statements of supposed habits;
all that is incoherent, or ill observed, or misinterpreted; all the cliches
which the makers of books pass from hand to hand.
In place of repetition he gives us laws, constant facts, fixed rules.
With incomparable skill, he repeats and tests the ancient experiments of
Réaumur.
He is not content to show us that Erasmus Darwin is mistaken; he points out
how it is that he has fallen into error. (7/33.)
He sets himself to decipher the meaning of old tales, skilfully disengaging
the little parcel of truth which usually lies beneath a mass of incorrect
or even false statements. He criticises La Fontaine, and questions the
statements of Horus Apollo and Pliny. From a mass of undigested knowledge
he has created the living science of entomology, which had received from
Réaumur a first breath of vitality, in such wise that each individual
creature is presented in his work with its precise expression and the
absolute truth of its character and attitudes; the inhabitants of the woods
and fields, whether those which feed upon the crops or those which live in
the crevices of the rocks, or the obscure workers that crawl upon the
earth; all those which have a secret to tell or something to teach us; the
Cigale, so different from the insect of the Fable; and above all that
beetle whose name had hitherto been encountered arrayed in the most
fantastic legends, the famous Scarabaeus sacer of the tombs, which Fabre
preferred to place at the head of his epic as an agreeable prologue,
although the inquiry relative to his amazing feats belongs chronologically
to a comparatively recent period of his career.
How moderate he is in such suppositions as he ventures; how cautious when
his persistent patience has at last struck against "the inaccessible wall
of the Unknowable"! Then, with admirable frankness, tranquil and sincere,
he simply owns that "he does not know," unlike so many others, whose
uncritical minds are contented with a fragmentary vision, and run so far
ahead of the facts that they can only promote indefinite illusion and
error.
One is surprised indeed to remark how few even of the most learned and
well-informed of men have a real aptitude for observation, and a highly
instructive book might be written concerning the discrepancies and the weak
points in our knowledge. If they were subjected to a sufficiently severe
test, how threadbare would appear many of those problems which nature and
the world present, and which are regarded as resolved!
How long, for instance, was needed to destroy the legend of the cuckoo,
incessantly repeated down to the days of Xavier Raspail, and to us so
familiar; to elucidate its history, and to set it in its true light!
(7/34.)
It is by means of such data as these that a science is founded, for
theories decay, and only well-observed facts remain irrefragable. With
stones such as these, which are hewn by the great artisan, the structures
of the future will be built, and our own science, perhaps, will one day be
refashioned.
For this reason Fabre's books are an education for all those who wish to
devote themselves to observation; a manual of mental discipline, 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.
On the other hand, it is impossible to conceive what labour this delicate
work demands; what perseverance Fabre has required painfully to extract one
grain of gold; to glean and unite the definite factors, the positive
documents, which served as foundations for each of his essays; lucid,
limpid, and captivating as the most delightful of fairy-tales. We are
charmed, fascinated, and astonished; we see nothing of the groping advance,
the checks, and all the toil and the patience demanded. We do not suspect
the long waiting, the hesitation, the desperate length of the inquiries.
For example, to establish the curious relations which exist between the
wasps and the Volucellae, what long and repeated experiments were needful!
His notebooks, in which he records, from day to day, all that he sees, are
evidence of this. What watches in the alley of lilacs, year after year, to
decipher the mechanism and the mode of construction of the hunting-net of
the Epeïra! Some of these histories, like that of the hyper-metamorphosis
of the Meloë, were only completed as the result of twenty-five years of
assiduous inquiry, while forty years were required to complete that of the
Scarabaeus sacer, for his observation of it was always partial; it is
almost always impossible to divine what one cannot see from the little that
one does see; and as a rule one must return to the same point over and over
again in order to fill up lacunae.
The majority of the insects which Fabre has studied are solitary, and are
only to be encountered singly, scattered over wide areas of country. Some
live only in determined spots, and not elsewhere, such as the famous
Cerceris, or the yellow-winged Sphex, of which no trace is to be found
beyond the limits of the Carpentras countryside.
The proper season must be watched for; one must be ready at any moment to
profit by a lucky chance, and resign oneself to interminable watches at the
bottom of a ravine, or keep on the alert for hours under a fiery sun. Often
the chance goes by, or the trail followed proves false; but the season is
over, and one must wait for the return of another spring. The trade of
observer in many cases resembles the exhausting labours of the Sisyphus
beetle, painfully pushing his pellet up a rough and stony path; so that the
team halts and staggers at every moment, the load spills over and rolls
away, and all has to be commenced over again.
We can now cast back, in order to consider at leisure the immortal study
which marked the beginning of his fame, with the greater interest and
profit in that Fabre has been able, during his retirement, to generalize
and extend his discovery. (7/35.)
Let us first of all note how the observation which Dufour had made of the
nest of the Cerceris was transformed in his hands, and what developments he
was able to evolve therefrom.
Since they have been definitely established by Fabre these curious facts
have been well-known. They form perhaps the greatest prodigy presented by
entomology, that science so full of marvels.
These wasps nourish themselves only on the nectar of flowers; but their
larvae, which they will never behold, must have fresh and succulent flesh
still palpitating with life.
The insect digs a tunnel in the soil, in which she places her eggs, and
having provisioned the cell with selected game--cricket, spider,
caterpillar, or beetle--she finally closes the entrance, which she does not
again cross.
Like nearly all insects, the young wasp is born in the larval state, and
from the moment of its hatching to the end of its growth--that is to say,
for a period of many days--the grub enclosed in its cell can look for no
help from without.
Here then is a fascinating problem: either the victims deposited by the
mother are dead, and desiccation or putrefaction attacks them promptly, or
else they are living, as indeed the larvae require; but then "what will
become of this fragile creature, which a mere nothing will destroy, shut in
the narrow chamber of the burrow among vigorous beetles, for weeks on end
working their long spurred legs; or at grips with a monstrous caterpillar
making play with its flanks and mandibles, rolling and unrolling its
tortuous folds?"
Such is the thrilling mystery of which Fabre discovered the key.
With inconceivable ingenuity, the victim is seized and thrown to the
ground, and the wasp plunges her sting, not at random into the body, which
would involve the risk of death, but at determined points, exactly into the
seat of those invisible nervous ganglions whose mechanism commands the
various movements of the creature.
Immediately after these subtle wounds the prey is paralysed throughout its
body; its members appear to be disarticulated, "as though all the springs
were broken"; the true corpse is not more motionless.
But the wound is not mortal; not only does the insect continue to live, but
it has acquired the strange prerogative of being able to live for a very
long period without taking any nourishment, thanks precisely to the
condition of immobility, in some sort vegetative, which paralysis confers
upon it.
When the hour strikes the hungry larva will find its favourite meat served
to its liking; and it will attack this defenceless prey with all the
circumspection of a refined eater; "with an exquisitely delicate art,
nibbling the viscera of its victim little by little, with an infallible
method; the less essential parts first of all, and only in the last
instance those which are necessary to life. Here then is an
incomprehensible spectacle; the spectacle of an animal which, eaten alive,
mouthful by mouthful, during nearly a fortnight, is hollowed out, grows
less and less, and finally collapses," while retaining to the end its
succulence and its freshness.
The fact is that the mother has taken care to deposit her egg "at a point
always the same" in the region which her sting has rendered insensible, so
that the first mouthfuls are only feebly resented. But as the enemy goes
deeper and deeper "it sometimes happens that the cricket, bitten to the
quick, attempts to retaliate; but it only succeeds in opening and closing
the pincers of its mandibles on the empty air, or in uselessly waving its
antennae." Vain efforts: "for now the voracious beast has bitten deep into
the spot, and can with impunity ransack the entrails." What a slow and
horrible agony for the paralysed victim, should some glimmer of
consciousness still linger in its puny brain! What a terrible nightmare for
the little field-cricket, suddenly plunged into the den of the Sphex, so
far from the sunlit tuft of thyme which sheltered its retreat!
To paralyse without killing, "to deliver the prey to the larvae inert but
living": that is the end to be attained; only the method varies according
to the species of the hunter and the structure of the prey; thus the
Cerceris, which attacks the coleoptera, and the Scolia, which preys upon
the larvae of the rose-beetle, sting them only once and in a single place,
because there is concentrated the mass of the motor ganglions.
The Pompilus, which selects a spider for its victim, no less than the
redoubtable Tarantula, knows that its quarry "has two nervous centres which
animate respectively the movements of the limbs and those of the terrible
fangs; hence the two stabs of the sting." (7/36.)
The Sphex plunges her dagger three times into the breast of the cricket,
because she knows, by an intuition that we cannot comprehend, that the
locomotor innervation of the cricket is actuated by three nervous centres,
which lie wide apart. (7/37.)
Finally, the Ammophila, "the highest manifestation of the logic of
instinct, whose profound knowledge leaves us confounded, stabs the
caterpillar in nine places, because the body of the victim with which it
feeds its larvae is a series of rings, set end to end, each of which
possesses its little independent nervous centre." (7/38.)
This is not all; the genius of the Sphex is not yet at the end of its
foresight. You have doubtless heard of the comatose state into which the
wounded fall when, after a fracture of the skull, the brain is compressed
by a violent haemorrhage or a bony splinter. The physiologists imitate this
process of nature when they wish, for example, to obtain, in animals under
experiment, a state of complete immobility. But did the first surgeon who
thought of trepanning the skull in order to exert on the brain, by means of
a sponge, a certain degree of compression, ever imagine that an analogous
procedure had long been employed in the insect world, and that these clumsy
methods were merely child's play beside the astonishing feats of the
Unconscious?
For the stab in the thoracic ganglions, however efficacious, is often
insufficient. Although the six limbs are paralysed, although the victim
cannot move, its mandibles, "pointed, sharp, serrated, which close like a
pair of scissors, still remain a menace to the tyrant; they might at least,
by gripping the surrounding grasses, oppose a more or less effectual
resistance to the process of carrying off." So the preceding manoeuvres are
consummated by a kind of garrotting; that is, the insect "takes care to
compress the brain of its victim, but so as to avoid wounding it; producing
only a stupor, a simple torpor, a passing lethargy." Is not the ingenious
observer justified in concluding that "this is alarmingly scientific"?
Between the dry statements of Dufour, which served Fabre as his original
theme, and the unaccustomed wealth of this vast physiological poetry, what
a distance has been covered!
How far have we outstripped this barren matter, these shapeless sketches!
Dufour, another solitary, who retired to his province, in the depth of the
Landes, was above all a descriptive anatomist, and he limited himself to an
inventory of the nest of a Cerceris.
For him the Buprestes were dead, and their state of preservation was
explained simply as a kind of embalming, due to some special action of the
venom of the Hymenoptera.
These facts, therefore, were stated as simple curiosities.
Fabre proved that these victims possessed all the attributes of life
excepting movement, by provoking contractions in their members under the
influence of various stimulants, and by keeping them alive artificially for
an indefinite period.
On the other hand, he demonstrated the comparative innocuousness of the
venom of these wasps, some of which, like the great Cerceris or the
beautiful and formidable Scolia, alarm by their enormous size and their
terrifying aspect; so that the conservation of the prey could not be due to
any occult quality, to some more or less active antiseptic virtue of the
venomous fluid, but simply to the precision of the stab and the miraculous
deftness of the "surgeon."
He also pointed out the fact that the sting of the insect is able
immediately to dissociate the nervous system of the vegetative life from
that of the correlative life, sparing the former, and taking care not to
wound the abdomen, which contains the ganglions of the great sympathetic
nerve, while it annihilates the latter, which is more or less concentrated
along the ventral face of the thoracic region.
He completed this splendid demonstration, not only by provoking under his
own eyes the "murderous manoeuvres, the intimate and passionate drama," but
also by reproducing experimentally all these astonishing phenomena;
expounding their mechanism and their variations with a logic and lucidity,
an art and sagacity which raise this marvellous observation, one of the
most beautiful known to science, to the height of the most immortal
discoveries of physiology. Claude Bernard, in his celebrated experiments,
certainly exhibited no greater invention, no truer genius.
CHAPTER 8. THE MIRACLE OF INSTINCT.
"The Spirit Bloweth Whither it Listeth."
What is this instinct, which guides the insect to such marvellous results?
Is it merely a degree of intelligence, or some absolutely different form of
activity?
Is it possible, by studying the habits of animals, to discover some of
those elementary springs of action whose knowledge would enable us to dive
more deeply into our own natures?
Fabre has presented us to his Sphex, the "infallible paralyser." Are we to
credit her not only with memory, but also with the faculty of associating
ideas, of judgment, and of pursuing a train of reasoning in respect of her
astonishingly co-ordinated actions?
Put to the question by the malice of the operator, the "transcendent"
anatomist trips over a mere trifle, and the slightest novelty confounds
her.
Without the circle of her ordinary habits, what stupidity, "what darkness
wraps her round"! She retreats; she refuses to understand; "she washes her
eyes, first passing her hands across her mouth; she assumes a dreamy,
meditative air." What can she be pondering? Under what form of thought,
illusion, or mirage does the unfamiliar problem which has obtruded itself
into her customary life present itself behind those faceted eyes? (8/1.)
How can we tell? We can only attain to knowledge of ourselves by direct
intuition. It is only the idea of our ego which enables us to conjecture
what is passing in the brains of our fellows. Between the insect and
ourselves no understanding is possible, so remote are the analogies between
its organization and our own; and we can only form idle hypotheses as to
its states of consciousness and the real motive of its actions.
Consider only that unknown and mysterious energy which the insects display
in their operations and their labours, as it is in itself, and let us
content ourselves, first of all, with comparing it to our own intelligence,
such as we conceive it to be.
In seeking to appreciate whereby it differs perhaps we shall gain more than
by vainly seeking points of resemblance. We shall discover, in fact, behind
the insect and its prodigious instincts, a vast and remote horizon, a
region at once more profound, more extensive, and more fruitful than that
of the intelligence; and if Fabre is able to help us to decipher a few
pages of "the most difficult of all volumes, the book of ourselves," it is
precisely, as a philosopher told him, because "man has remained instinctive
in process of becoming intelligent." (8/2.)
The work of Fabre is from this point of view an invaluable treasury of
observations and experiments, and the richest contribution which has ever
been made to the study of these fascinating problems.
"The function of the intelligence is to reflect, to be conscious; that is,
to relate the effect to its cause, to add a "because" to a "why"; to remedy
the accidental; to adapt a new course of conduct to new circumstances."
In relation to the human intelligence thus defined Fabre has considered
these nervous aptitudes, so well adjusted, according to the evolutionists,
by ancient habit, that they have finally become impulsive and unconscious,
and, properly speaking, innate. He has demonstrated, with an abundance of
proof and a power of argument that we must admire, the blind mechanism
which determines all the manifestations, even the most extraordinary, of
that which we call instinct, and which heredity has fixed in a species of
unchangeable automatism, like the rhythm of the heart and the lungs. (8/3.)
Let us, from this wealth of material, from among the most suggestive
examples, select some of his most striking demonstrations, which are
classics of their kind.
Fabre has not attempted to define instinct, for it is indefinable; nor to
probe its essential nature, which is impenetrable. But to recognize the
order of nature is in itself a sufficiently fascinating study, without
striving to crack an unbreakable bone or wasting time in pondering
insoluble enigmas. The important matter is to avoid the introduction of
illusions, to beware of exceeding the data of observation and experiment,
of substituting our own inferences for the facts, of outstripping reality
and amplifying the marvellous.
Let us listen to the scrupulous analysis whose lessons, scattered through
four thousand pages, teach us more concerning instinct and its innumerable
variations than all the most learned treatises and speculations of the
philosophers.
Nothing in the world perplexes the mind of the observer like the spectacle
of the birth and growth of the instincts.
At precisely the right moment, just as failure or disaster seems
foreordained by the previously established circumstances, Fabre shows us
his insects as suddenly mastered by an irresistible force.
"At the right moment" they invincibly obey some sort of mysterious and
inflexible prescription. Without apprenticeship, they perform the very
actions required, and blindly accomplish their destiny.
Then, the moment having passed, the instincts "disappear and do not
reawaken. A few days more or less modify the talents, and what the young
insect knew the adult has often forgotten." (8/4.)
Among the Lycosae, at the moment of exodus, a sudden instinct is evolved
which a few hours later disappears never to return. It is the climbing
instinct, unknown to the adult spider, and soon forgotten by the
emancipated young, who are destined to roam upon the face of the earth. But
the young Lycosae, anxious to leave the maternal home and to travel, become
suddenly ardent climbers and aeronauts, each releasing a long, light thread
which serves it as parachute. The voyage accomplished, no trace of this
ingenuity is left. Suddenly acquired, the climbing instinct no less
suddenly disappears. (8/5.)
The great historiographer of instinct has thrown a wonderful light, by his
beautiful experiments relating to the nidification of the mason-bee, upon
the indissoluble succession of its different phases; the lineal
concatenation, the inevitable and necessary order which presides over each
of these nervous discharges of which the total series constitutes, properly
speaking, a mode of action.
The mason-bee continues to build upon the ready-completed nest presented to
her. She obstinately insists upon provisioning a cell already duly filled
with the quantity of honey required by the larva, because, in this case as
in the other, the impulse which incites her to build or to provision the
nest has not yet been exhausted.
On the other hand, if we empty the little cup of its contents when she has
filled it she will not recommence her labours. "The process of provisioning
being complete, the secret impulse which urged her to collect her honey is
no longer active. The insect therefore ceases to store her honey, and, in
spite of this accident, lays her egg in the empty cell, thus leaving the
future nursling without nourishment." (8/6.)
In the case of the Pelopaeus, Fabre calls our attention to one of the most
instructive physiological spectacles that can be imagined.
While the mason-bee does not notice that her cell has been emptied, the
Pelopaeus cannot perceive that the tricks of the experimenter have resulted
in the disappearance of her progeny; and she "continues to store away
spiders for a germ that no longer exists; she perseveres untiringly in her
useless hunting, as though the future of her larva depended on it; she
amasses provisions which will feed no one; more, she pushes aberration to
the extent of plastering even the place where her nest was if we remove it,
giving the last strokes of the trowel to an imaginary building, and putting
her seals upon empty nothing." (8/7.)
>From these facts, and others, no less celebrated, which show "the inability
of insects to escape from the routine of their customs and their habitual
labours," Fabre derives so many proofs of their lack of intelligence.
The Epeïra fasciata is incapable of replacing a single radial thread in the
geometrical structure of its web, when broken; it recommences the entire
web every evening, and weaves it at one stretch with the most beautiful
mastery, as though merely amusing itself.
The caterpillar of the Greater Peacock moth teaches us the same lesson;
when occupied in weaving its cocoon it does not know how to repair an
artificial rent; and "in spite of the certainty of its death, or rather
that of the future butterfly, it quietly continues to spin, without
troubling to cover the rent; devoting itself to a superfluous task, and
ignoring the treacherous breach, which leaves the cocoon and its inhabitant
at the mercy of the first thief that finds it." (8/8.)
Thus "because one action has just been performed, another must inevitably
be performed to complete the first; what is done is done, and is never
repeated. Like the watercourse, which cannot climb the hills and return to
its source, the insect does not retrace its steps or repeat its actions,
which follow one another invariably, and are inevitably connected in a
necessary order, like a series of echoes, one of which awakens
another...The insect knows nothing of its marvellous talents, just as the
stomach knows nothing of its cunning chemistry. It builds like a
bricklayer, weaves, hunts, stabs, and paralyses, as it secretes the venom
of its weapons, the silk of its cocoon, the wax of its comb, or the threads
of its web; always without the slightest knowledge of the means and the
end." (8/9.)
Thus instinct is one thing and intelligence is another; and for Fabre there
is no transition which can transform the one into the other.
But how profound and abundant, how infinite is the source from which this
manifold activity derives, distributed as it is throughout the entire
animal kingdom; and which in ourselves commands the profoundest part of our
nature; unconscious, or even in opposition to our wonderful intelligence,
which it often silences or altogether overwhelms.
Although the insect "has no need of lessons from its elders" in order to
accomplish its beautiful masterpieces, the comprehensive concept of the
genius which rises spontaneously and at a single step to the loftiest
conceptions is not always a product of pure reason.
Compare the sublime logic of animal maternity, the impeccable dictates of
instinct, with the hesitations, the gropings, the uncertainties, the errors
and tragic failures of human maternity, when it seeks to replace the
unerring commands of instinct by the clumsy efforts of the intelligence!
If all is darkness to the animal, apart from its habitual paths, how feeble
and hesitating, how faltering and unequal is reason when it seeks to oppose
its laborious inductions to the infallible wisdom of the unconscious!
It is, in fact, to this concatenation of actions, narrowly connected by a
mutual dependence, that we owe this inexhaustible series of cunning
industries and wonderful arts. To Fabre they are so many feats of a learned
unconsciousness.
"See the nest, the accustomed masterpiece of mothers; it is more often than
otherwise an animal fruit, a coffer full of germs, containing eggs in place
of seeds."
The satin bag of the Epeïra fasciata, in which her eggs are enclosed,
"breaks at the caress of the sun, like the skin of an over-ripe
pomegranate."
The Dorthesia, the louse inhabiting the euphorbia, "trebles the length of
her body, prolonging its hinder part into a pouch, comparable to that of
the opossum, into which the eggs are dropped, and in which the young are
hatched, to leave it afterwards at will." (8/10.)
The Chermes of the ilex "hardens into a rampart of ebony, whence an
innumerable legion of vermin bursts forth one day without changing their
place."
The capsule of gold-beater's skin, in which the grubs of the Cione are
enclosed, divides itself, at the moment of liberation, into two hemispheres
"of a regularity so perfect that they recall exactly the bursting of the
pyxidium when the seed is distributed." (8/11.)
Here and there, however, we catch a glimpse of a rudiment of what we
understand by consciousness, in the shape of a "vague discrimination."
Each plant has its lover, drawn to it by a kind of elective affinity and
invariable tendency. The Larra makes for the thistle, the Vanessa for the
nettle, the Clytus for the ilex, and the Crioceris for the lily. "The
weevil knows nothing but its peas and beans, the golden Rhynchites only the
sloe, and the Balaninus only the nut or acorn."
But the Pieris, which haunts the cabbage, frequents the nasturtium also,
and the golden rose-beetle, which "intoxicates itself at the clusters of
the hawthorn," is no less addicted to the nectar of the rose.
The Xylocopa, which burrows in the trunks of trees and old rafters, forming
little round corridors in which to lodge her offspring, "will utilize
artificial galleries which she has not herself bored."
The Chalicodoma "also is aware of the economic advantages of an old
abandoned nest"; the Anthophora is careful to establish her family "at the
least expense," and profits on occasion by galleries which have been mined
by previous generations; adapting herself to these new conditions, she
repairs the tunnels which she did not construct "and economizes her
forces." (8/12.)
It would seem, therefore, that these tiny minds are created and shaped by
means of experience; they recognize "that which is most fitting"; they
learn, they compare; may we not also say that they judge?
Does not the Mason-bee, "which rakes the roads for a dry powdery dust and
mixes it with saliva to convert it into a hard cement," foresee that this
mud will harden?
Is the Pelopaeus devoid of judgment when she seeks the interior of
dwelling-houses in order to shelter her nest of dried clay, which the least
drop of rain would reduce to its original state of mud?
Is it without knowledge of the effects that the sloe-weevil builds a
ventilating chimney to prevent the asphyxiation of her larva? that the
Scarabaeus sacer contrives a filter at the smaller end of its pear-shaped
ball, by means of which the grub is able to breathe? or that Arachne
labyrintha "introduces in her silk-work a rampart of compressed earth to
protect her eggs from the probe of the Ichneumon"?
May we not also see a masterpiece of the highest logic in the house of the
trap-door spider, Arachne clotho, which is furnished with a door, a true
door "which she throws open with a push of the leg, and carefully bolts
behind her on returning by means of a little silk"? (8/13.)
What a miracle of invention too is the prodigious nest of the Eumenes,
"with its egg suspended by a thread from the roof, like a pendulum,
oscillating at the lightest breath in order to save it from contact with
the caterpillars, which, incompletely paralysed, are wriggling and writhing
below"! Later, when the egg is hatched, "the filament is transformed into a
tube, a place of refuge, up which the grub clambers backwards. At the least
sign of danger from the mass of caterpillars the larva retreats into its
sheath and ascends to the roof, where the wriggling swarm cannot reach it."
(8/14.)
Let us refer also to the remarkable history of the Copris. We cannot deny
that the valiant dung-beetle is capable of "evading the accidental" (which
to Fabre constitutes one of the distinctive characteristics of the
intelligence), since it immediately intervenes if with the point of a
penknife we open the roof of its nest and lay bare its egg. "The fragments
raised by the knife are immediately brought together and soldered, so that
no trace is left of the injury, and all is once more in order." We may read
also with what incredible address the mother Copris was able to use and to
profit by the ready-made pellets of cow-dung which it occurred to Fabre to
offer her. (8/15.)
But their scope is limited, and encroaches very little, in the eyes of the
great observer, on the domain of intelligence. This he demonstrates to
satiety, and his astonishing Necrophori, which adapt themselves so
admirably to circumstances and triumph over the experimental difficulties
to which he subjects them, seem scarcely to exceed the limits of those
actions which at bottom are merely unconscious. (8/16.)
With the spawning of the Osmia, Fabre throws a fresh and unexpected light
on the intuitive knowledge of instinct.
We are still groping our way among the causes which rule the determination
of the sexes. Biology has only been able to throw a few scattered lights on
the subject, and we possess only a few approximate data; which nevertheless
are turned to account by the breeders of insects. We are still in the
region of illusion and imperfect prognostics.
But the Osmia knows what we do not. She is deeply versed in all
physiological and anatomical knowledge, and in the faculty of creating
children of either sex at will.
These pretty bees, "with coppery skin and fleece of ruddy velvet," which
establish their progeny in the hollow of a bramble stump, the cavity of a
reed, or the winding staircase of an empty snail-shell, know the fixed and
immutable genetic laws which we can only guess at, and are never mistaken.
This marvellous prerogative the Osmia shares with a host of apiaries, in
which the unequal development of the males and females requires an unequal
provision of space and of nourishment for the future larvae. For the
females, who exceed in point of size, huge cells and abundant provision;
for the more puny males, narrow cells and a smaller ration of pollen and
honey.
Now the circumstances which are encountered by the Osmia, when, pressed by
the necessities of spawning, she searches for a dwelling, are often
fortuitous and incapable of modification; and in order to give each set of
larvae the necessary space "she lays at will a male or a female egg,
according to the conditions of space."
In this marvellous study, which constitutes, with the history of the
Cerceris, the finest masterpiece of experimental entomology, Fabre
brilliantly establishes all the details of that curious law which in the
Hymenoptera rules both the distribution and the succession of the sexes. In
his artificial hives, in glass cylinders, he forces the Osmia to commence
her spawning with the males, instead of beginning with the females as
nature requires, since the insect is primarily preoccupied with the more
important sex, that which ensures par excellence the perpetuation of the
species. He even forces the whole swarm which buzzes about his work-tables,
his books, his bottles, and apparatus, completely to change the order of
its spawning. He shows finally that in the heart of the ovaries the egg of
the Osmia has as yet no determined sex, and that it is only at the precise
moment when the egg is on the point of emerging from the oviduct that it
receives, AT THE WILL OF THE MOTHER, the mysterious, final, and inevitable
imprint.
But whence does the Osmia derive this, "distinct idea of the invisible"?
Here again is one of those riddles of nature which Fabre declares himself
quite incapable of solving. (8/17.)
Is this all? No; we are far from having made the tour of this miraculous
and incommensurable kingdom through which this admirable master leads us,
and I should never be done were I to attempt to exhaust all the spectacles
which he offers us. Let us descend yet another step, among creatures yet
smaller and humbler. We shall find tendencies, impulses, preferences,
efforts, intentions, "Machiavellic ruses and unheard-of stratagems."
Certain miserable black mites, living specks, the larvae of a beetle, one
of the Meloidae, the Sitaris, are parasites of the solitary bee, the
Anthophora. They wait patiently all the winter at the entrance of her
tunnel, on the slope of a sunny bank, for the springtime emergence of the
young bees, as yet imprisoned in their cells of clay. A male Anthophora,
hatched a little earlier than the females, appears in the entrance of the
tunnel; these mites, which are armed with robust talons, rouse themselves,
hasten to and fro, hook themselves to his fleece, and accompany him in all
his peregrinations; but they quickly recognize their error; for these
animated specks are well aware that the males, occupied all day long in
scouring the country and pillaging the flowers, live exclusively out of
doors, and would in no wise serve their end. But the moment comes when the
Anthophora pays court to the fair sex, and the imperceptible creature
immediately profits by the amorous encounter to change its winged courser.
"These pigmies therefore have a memory, an experience of facts" (and how
one is tempted to add, a glimmering of intelligence!). Grappled now to the
female bee, the grub of the Sitaris "conceals itself, and allows itself to
be carried by her" to the end of the gallery in which she is now contriving
her cradle, "watches the precise moment when the egg is laid, installs
itself upon it, and allows itself to fall therewith upon the surface of the
honey, in order to substitute itself for the future offspring of the
Anthophora, and possess itself of house and victuals." (8/18.)
Another "little gelatinous speck," "a shadow of a creature," the larva of a
Chalcidian, the Leucopsis, one of the parasites of the Mason-bee, knows
that in the cell of the mason there is food for one only. Scarcely has it
entered the tiny dwelling but we see this "nameless shape" for several days
"anxiously wandering; it visits the top and bottom, the back, the front,
the sides"; it makes the tour of its domain; "it searches in the darkness,
palpitating, seemingly with an object in view." What does this "animated
globule" want? why is this atom so excited? It is searching to discover if
there is not in some corner hitherto unexplored another larva, a rival,
that it may exterminate it! (8/19.)
What then intrinsically is instinct? And what intrinsically is
intelligence?
How can we propose to draw up the inexhaustible inventory of all the
manifestations of life, and why attempt to include all its species and
their unknown varieties in narrow classes? Why say that there are only two
modes of life, instinct on the one hand and intelligence on the other,
"when we know how subtle and illusive is this Proteus, and that there are
not two things only, but a thousand dissimilar things" (8/20.): or rather
is it not always the same thing, everywhere present and acting in living
matter, and susceptible of infinite degrees, under forms and disguises
innumerable?
This is why it escapes the "scalpel of the masters" and the apparatus of
the chemists. We may dissect, we may scrutinize organs under the magnifying
glass, examine wing-cases, count the nervures of the wings, the number of
articulations in the limbs; we may reckon every point, like Réaumur
forgetting not a line, not a hair; we may compare and measure every portion
of the mouth, and define the class; and we shall not find a single point in
all this physical architecture which will positively inform us of the
habits of the insect. Of what account are a few slight differences? It is
in the physical far more than in the anatomical differences that the
inviolable demarcation between two species exists. Instincts dominate
forms; the tool does not make the artisan; "and none of these various
structures, however well adapted they may appear to us, bears within it its
reason or its finality."
Thus whatever opinion we may hold as to the nature of instinct, the
accomplishments and habits of insects are not, properly speaking, connected
with the external and visible form of their organs, and their acts do not
necessarily presuppose the instruments which would be appropriate to them.
We know that with most organisms, and particularly with plants, an almost
imperceptible variation in material circumstances is often enough to modify
their character and to produce fresh aptitudes. Nevertheless, we can but
wonder, with Fabre, that physical modifications, which, when they do exist,
are so slight always as to have escaped the most perfect observation,
should have sufficed to determine the appearance of profoundly dissimilar
faculties. Inexplicable abilities, unexpected habits, unforeseen physical
aptitudes, and unheard-of industries are exercised by means of organs which
are here and there practically identical. "The same tools are equally good
for any purpose. Talent alone is able to adapt them to manifold ends."
The Anthidia have two particular industries; "those which felt cotton and
card the soft down of hairy plants have the same claws, the same mandibles,
composed of the same portions as those which knead resin and mix it with
fine gravel." (8/21.)
The sloe-weevil "bores the hard stone of the sloe with the same rostrum as
that which its congeners, so like it in conformation, employ to roll the
leaves of the vine and the poplar into tiny cigars."
The implement of the Megachile, the rose-fly, is by no means appropriate to
its industry; "yet the perfectly circular fragments of leaves have the
precise perfection of form that a punch would give."
The Xylocopa, in order to pierce wood and to bore its galleries in an old
rafter, employs "the same utensils which in others are transformed into
picks and mattocks to attack clay and gravel, and it is only a
predisposition of talent that holds each worker to his speciality."
Moreover, have not the superior animals the same senses and the same
structure, yet what inequality there is among them, in the matter of
aptitudes and degrees of intelligence!
Habits are no more determined by anatomical peculiarities than are
aptitudes or industries.
The two Goat-moth caterpillars, of similar structure, have entirely
different stomachic aptitudes; "the exclusive portion of the one is the oak
and of the other the hawthorn or the cherry-laurel."
"Whence does the Mantis derive its excessive hunger, its pugnacity, its
cannibalism, and the Empusa its sobriety, its peaceableness, when their
almost identical organization would seem to indicate an identity of needs,
instincts, and habits?"
In the same way the black scorpion appears to present none of the
interesting peculiarities which we observe in the habits of its congener,
the white scorpion of Languedoc. (8/22.)
Structure, therefore, tells us nothing of aptitude; the organ does not
explain its function. Let the specialists hypnotize themselves over their
lenses and microscopes; they may accumulate at leisure masses of details
relating to this or that family or genus or individual; they may undertake
the most subtle inquiries, may write thousands and thousands of pages in
order to detail a few slight variations, without even succeeding in
exhausting the matter: they will not even have seen what is most wonderful.
When the little insect has for the last time cleaned its claws, the secret
of the little mind has fled for ever, with all the feelings that animated
it and gave it life. That which is crystallized in death cannot explain
what was life. This is the thought which the Provençal singer, with that
intuition which is the privilege of genius, has expressed in these
melodious lines:
"Oh! pau de sèn qu'emé l'escaupre
Furnant la mort, creson de saupre,
La vertu de l'abiho e lou secrèt doù méu."
(O men of little sense, who seek,
Scalpel in hand, to make Death tell
The virtue of the bee, the secret of her cell!) (8/23.)
CHAPTER 9. EVOLUTION OR "TRANSFORMISM."
"How did a miserable grub acquire its marvellous knowledge? Are its habits,
its aptitudes, and its industries the integration of the infinitely little,
acquired by successive experiences on the limitless path of time?"
It is in these words that Fabre presents the problem of evolution.
Difficult though it may be to follow the sequence of forms which have
endlessly succeeded and replaced one another on the face of the earth,
since the beginning of the world, it is certain that all living creatures
are closely related; and the magnificent and fertile hypothesis of
evolution, which seeks to explain how extant forms are derived from
extinct, has the immense advantage of giving a plausible reason for the
majority of the facts which at least cease to be completely unintelligible.
Otherwise we can certainly never imagine how so many instincts, and these
so complex and perfect, could have issued suddenly "from the urn of
hazard."
But Fabre will suppose nothing; he will only record the facts. Instead of
wandering in the region of probabilities, he prefers to confine himself to
the reality, and for the rest to reply simply that "we do not know."
This stern, positive, rigorous, independent, and observant mind, nourished
upon geometry and the exact sciences, which has never been able to content
itself with approximations and probabilities, could but distrust the
seductions of hypotheses.
His robust common sense, which was always his protection against
precipitate conclusions, too clearly comprehends the limits of science and
the necessity of accumulating facts "upon the thorny path of observation
and experiment" to indulge in generalization. He feels that life has
secrets which our minds are powerless to probe, and that "human knowledge
will be erased from the archives of the world before we know the last word
concerning the smallest fly."
This is why he was regarded as "suspect" by the company of official
scientists, to whom he was a dissenter, almost a traitor, especially at a
moment when the theories of evolution, then in the first flush of their
novelty, were everywhere the cause of a general elation.
No one as yet was capable of divining the man of the future in this modest
thinker who would not accept the word of the masters interested, but in
opposing the theory of transformation, far from being reactionary, Fabre
revealed himself, at least in the domain of animal psychology, as an
innovator, a true precursor.
Moreover, his observations, always so direct and personal, often revealed
the contrary of what was asserted or foreseen by the magic formulae
suggested by the mind.
To the ingenious mechanism invented by the transformists he preferred to
oppose, not contrary argument, but the naked undeniable fact, the obvious
testimony, the certain and irrefragable example. "Is it," he would ask
them, "to repulse their enemies that certain caterpillars smear themselves
with a corrosive product? But the larva of the Calosoma sycophanta, which
feeds on the Processional caterpillar of the oak-tree, pays no heed to it,
neither does the Dermestes, which feeds on the entrails of the Processional
caterpillar of the pine-tree."
And consider mimicry. According to the theory of evolution, certain insects
would utilize their resemblance to certain others in order to conceal
themselves, and to introduce themselves into the dwellings of the latter as
parasites living at their expense. Such would be the case with the
Volucella, a large fly whose costume, striped with brown and yellow bands,
gives it a rude resemblance to the wasp. Obliged, if not for its own sake
at least for that of its family, to force itself into the wasp's dwelling
as a parasite, it deceitfully dresses itself, we are told, in the livery of
its victim, thus affording the most curious and striking example of
mimicry; and naturalists insufficiently informed would regard it as one of
the greatest triumphs of evolution.
Now what does the Volucella do? It is true that it lays its eggs without
being disturbed in the nest of the wasp. But, as the rigorous observer will
tell you, it is a precious auxiliary and not an enemy of the community. Its
grubs, far from disguising or concealing themselves, "come and go openly
upon the combs, although every stranger is immediately massacred and thrown
out." Moreover, "they watch the hygiene of the city by clearing the nest of
its dead and ridding the larvae of the wasps of their excretory products."
Plunging successively into each chamber of the dormitory the forepart of
their bodies, "they provoke the emission of that fluid excrement of which
the larvae, owing to their cloistration, contain an extreme reserve." In a
word, the grubs of the Volucella "are the nurses of the larvae," performing
the most intimate duties." (9/1.)
What an astonishing conclusion! What a disconcerting and unexpected reply
to the "theories in vogue"!
Fabre, however, with his poetic temperament and ardent imagination, seemed
admirably prepared to grasp all that vast network of relations by which all
creatures are connected; but what proves the solidity of his imperishable
work is that all theories, all doctrines, and all systems may resort to it
in turn and profit by his proofs and arguments.
And he himself, although he boasts with so much reason of putting forward
no pretensions, no theories, no systems, has he not even so yielded
somewhat to the suggestions of the prevailing school of thought, and have
not his verdicts against evolution often been the more excessive in that he
has paid so notable a tribute to the evolutionary progress of creation?
In the first place, he is far from excluding the undeniable influence of
environing causes; the immense role of those myriad external circumstances
on which Lamarck so strongly insisted; but the work of these factors is, in
his eyes, only accessory and wholly secondary in the economy of nature; and
in any case it is far from explaining the definite direction and the
transcendent harmony which characterize evolution, both in its totality and
in its most infinitesimal details.
In one of his admirable little textbooks, intended to teach and to
popularize science, he complacently enumerates the happy modifications
effected by that "sublime magician," selection as understood by Darwin. He
evokes the metamorphoses of the potato, which, on the mountains of Chili,
is merely a wretched venomous tubercle, and those of the cabbage, which on
the rocky face of oceanic precipices is nothing but a weed, "with a tall
stem and scanty disordered leaves of a crude green, an acrid savour, and a
rank smell"; he speaks of wheat, formerly a poor unknown grass; the
primitive pear-tree "an ugly intractable thorny bush, with detestable
bitter fruit"; the wild celery, which grows beside ponds, "green all over,
hard, with a repulsive flavour, and which gradually becomes tenderer,
sweeter, whiter," and "ceases to distil its poison." (9/2.)
With profound exactitude this great biologist has also perceived the degree
to which size may be modified; may dwindle to dwarfness when a niggardly
soil refuses to furnish beast and plant alike with a sufficient
nourishment.
Without any communication with the other scientists who were occupied by
the same questions, knowing nothing of the results which these
experimenters had attained in the case of small mammiferous animals, and
which prove that dwarfness has often no other cause than physiological
poverty, he confirmed and expanded their ideas from an entomological point
of view. (9/3.)
Scarcely ever, indeed, was he first inspired by the doings of others in
this or that direction; he read scarcely anything, and nature was his sole
teacher. He considered that the knowledge to be obtained from books is but
so much vapour compared with the realities; he borrowed only from himself,
and resorted directly to the facts as nature presented them. One has only
to see his scanty library of odd volumes to be convinced how little he owes
to others, whether writers or workers.
A true naturalist philosopher, this profound observer has also thrown a
light upon certain singular anomalies which, in the insect world, seem to
constitute an exception, at all events in our Europe, to the general rules.
It is not only to the curiosity and for the amusement of entomologists that
he proposes these curious anatomical problems, but also, and chiefly, to
the Darwinian wisdom of the evolutionists.
Why, for example, is the Scarabaeus sacer born and why does it remain
maimed all its life; that is to say, deprived of all the digits on the
anterior limbs?
"If it is true that every change in the form of an appendage is only the
sign of a habit, a special instinct, or a modification in the conditions of
life, the theory of evolution should endeavour to account for this
mutilation, for these creatures are, like all others, constructed on the
same plan and provided with absolutely the same appendages."
The posterior limbs of the Geotrupes stercorarius, "perfectly developed in
the adult, are atrophied in the larvae, reduced to mere specks."
The general history of the species, of its migrations and its changes, will
doubtless one day throw light upon these strange infirmities, here
temporary and there permanent, which may perhaps be explained by unforeseen
encounters with undiscovered specimens, strayed perhaps into distant
countries. (9/4.)
What invaluable documents for the entomologist and the historian of the
evolution of the species are those multiple and fabulous metamorphoses of
the Sitares and the Meloïdae which this indefatigable inquirer has revealed
in all their astonishing phases!
One of the finest examples of scientific investigation is the pursuit,
through a period of twenty-five years, with a sagacity which seems to
border on divination, of this problem of HYPER-METAMORPHOSIS. The larvae of
those coleoptera which we have seen introduced, with infernal cunning, into
the cells of the Anthophora (See Chapter 8 above.), suffer no less than
four moults before they become nymphs.
These merely external transformations, which involve only the envelope, and
respect the internal structure, correspond each with a change of
environment and of diet. Each time the organism adapts itself to its new
mode of existence, "as perfectly as when it becomes adult"; and we see the
insect, which was clear-sighted, become blind; it loses its feet, to
recover them later; its slender body becomes ventripotent; hard, it grows
soft; its mandibles, at first steely, become hollowed out spoonwise, each
modification of conformation having its motive in a fresh modification of
the conditions of the creature's life.
How explain this strange evolution of a fourfold larval existence, these
successive appearances of organs, which become entirely unlike what they
were, to serve functions each time different?
What is the reason, the intention, the high law which presides over these
visible changes, these successive envelopments of creatures one within the
other, these multiple transfigurations?
By what bygone adaptations has the Sitaris successively acquired these
diverse extraordinary phases of life, indicating possibly for each
corresponding age some ancient and remote heredity? (9/5.)
How many other arguments might evolution derive from his books, and what
illustrations of the Darwinian philosophy has he unconsciously furnished!
Does he not even allow the admission to escape him that "the spirit of
cunning and deception is transmitted"? He sees in the persecutions of the
Dytiscus, the "pirate of the ponds," the origin of the faculty which the
Phryganea has of refashioning its shield when demanded of it. "To evade the
assault of the brigand, the Phryganea must hastily abandon its mantle; it
allows itself to sink to the bottom, and promptly removes itself; necessity
is the mother of invention." (9/6.)
Returning to the lacunae which it so amazes Fabre to discover in our
organization, even in the most perfect of us, are they fundamentally very
real? These mysterious and unknown senses which he has so greatly
contributed to elucidate in the case of the inferior species: why, he asks,
have we not inherited them, if we are truly the final term and the supreme
goal of creation?
But in cultivating our intuition, as Bergson invites us to do, would it be
impossible to re-awaken, deep within us, these strange faculties, which
perhaps are only slumbering? What of that species of indefinable memory
which permits the red ant, the Bembex, the Cerceris, the Pompilus, the
Chalicodoma and so many others to "find themselves," to orientate
themselves with infallible certainty and incredible accuracy? Is it not to
be found, according to travellers, in those men who have remained close to
nature and accustomed from their remotest origins to listen to the silence
of the great deserts?
Finally, the evolutionists, who "reconstruct the world in imagination," and
who see in the relationship of neighbouring species a proof of descent or
derivation, and a whole ideal series, will not fail to perceive throughout
his work, in the elementary operations of the Eumenes and the Odynerus,
cousins of the Cerceris, which sting their prey in places as yet ill
determined, not indeed so many isolated attempts, but an incomplete process
of invention, an attempt at procedures still in the fact of formation: in a
word, the birth of that marvellous instinct which ends in the transcendent
art of the Sphex and the Ammophila.
Although they have acquired such prodigious deftness, these master
paralysers are not, in fact, always infallible. Occasionally the Sphex
blunders and gropes, "operates clumsily"; the cricket revives, gets upon
its feet, turns round and round, and tries to walk. But, inquires Fabre, do
you say that having profited by a fortuitous act, which has turned out to
be favourable to them, they have perfected themselves by contact with their
elders, "thanks to the imitation of example," and that they have thus
crystallized their experiences, which have been transmitted by heredity--
thereby fixed in the race? (9/7.)
How much we should prefer that it were so! How much more comprehensible and
interesting their life would become!
But "when the hymenopteron breaks its cocoon, where are its masters! Its
predecessors have long ago disappeared. How then can it receive education
by example?"
You who "shape the world to your whim," you will reply: "Doubtless there
are no longer masters to-day; but go back to the first ages of the globe,
when the world in its newness, as Lucretius has so superbly said, as yet
knew neither bitter cold nor excessive heat (9/8.); an eternal springtide
bathed the earth, and the insects, not dying, as to-day, at the first touch
of frost, two successive generations lived side by side, and the younger
generation could profit at leisure by the lessons of example." (9/9.)
Let us return to Fabre's laboratory, to the covers of wire-gauze, and note
what becomes, at the approach of winter, of the survivors of the vespine
city.
In the mild and comfortable retreat where the wasps are kept under
observation they die no less, despite their well-being and all the care
expended on them, when once "the inexorable hour" has struck, and once the
exact capital of life which seems to have been imparted to them ages ago is
exhausted. With no apparent cause, we see death busy among them. "Suddenly
the wasps begin to fall as though struck by lightning; for a few moments
the abdomen quivers and the legs gesticulate, then finally remain inert,
like a clockwork machine whose spring has run down to the last coil."
(9/10.) This law is general; "the insect is born orphaned both of mother
and father, excepting the social insect, and again excepting the dung-
beetle, which dies full of days." (9/11.)
Moreover, Fabre is never weary of demonstrating that the insect, perfectly
unconscious of the motive which makes it act, this thereby incapable of
profiting by the lessons of experience and of innovation in its habits,
beyond a very narrow circle. "No apprentices, no masters." In this world
each obeys "the inner voice" on its own account; each sets itself to
accomplish its task, not only without troubling as to what its neighbour is
doing, but without thinking any further as to what it is doing itself;
instance the Epeïra, turning its back on its work, yet "the latter proceeds
of itself, so well is the mechanism devised"; and if by ill chance the
spider acted otherwise it would probably fail.
Darwin knew barely the tenth part of the colossal work of Fabre. He had
read firstly in the "Annals of Natural Science" of the habits of the
Cerceris and the fabulous history of the Meloidae. Finally he saw the first
volume of the "Souvenirs" appear, and was interested in the highest degree
by the beautiful study on the sense of location and direction in the Mason-
bees.
This was already more than enough to excite his curiosity and to make him
wonder whether all his philosophy would not stumble over this obstacle.
After having succeeded in explaining so luminously--and with what a lofty
purview--the origin of species and the whole concatenation of animal forms,
would it not be as though he halted midway in his task were the sanctuary
of the origin of instinct to remain for ever inscrutable?
Fabre had not yet left Orange when Darwin engaged in a curious
correspondence which lasted until the former had been nearly two years at
Sérignan, and which showed how passionately interested the great theorist
of evolution was in all the Frenchman's surprising observations.
It seems that on his side Fabre took a singular interest in the discussion
on account of the absolute sincerity, the obvious desire to arrive at the
truth, and also the ardent interest in his own studies, of which Darwin's
letters were full. He conceived a veritable affection for Darwin, and
commenced to learn English, the better to understand him and to reply more
precisely; and a discussion on such a subject between these two great
minds, who were, apparently, adversaries, but who had conceived an infinite
respect for one another, promised to be prodigiously interesting.
Unhappily death was soon to put an end to it, and when the solitary of Down
expired in 1882 the hermit of Sérignan saluted his great shade with real
emotion. How many times have I heard him render homage to this illustrious
memory!
But the furrow was traced; thenceforth Fabre never ceased to multiply his
pin-pricks in "the vast and luminous balloon of transformism (evolution),
in order to empty it and expose it in all its inanity." (9/12.) By no means
the least original feature of his work is this passionate and incisive
argument, in which, with a remarkable power of dialectic, and at times in a
tone of lively banter, he endeavoured to remove "this comfortable pillow
from those who have not the courage to inquire into its fundamental
nature." He attacked these "adventurous syntheses, these superb and
supposedly philosophic deductions," all the more eagerly because he himself
had an unshakable faith in the absolute certainty of his own discoveries,
and because he asserted the reality of things only after he had observed
and re-observed them to satiety.
This is why he cared so little to engage in argument relating to his own
works; he did not care for discussion; he was indifferent to the daily
press; he avoided criticism and controversy, and never replied to the
attacks which were made upon him; he rather took pains to surround himself
with silence until the day when he felt that his researches were ripe and
ready for publicity.
He wrote to his dear friend Devillario, shortly after Darwin's death:
"I have made a rule of never replying to the remarks, whether favourable or
the reverse, which my writings may evoke. I go my own gait, indifferent
whether the gallery applauds or hisses. To seek the truth is my only
preoccupation. If some are dissatisfied with the result of my observations-
-if their pet theories are damaged thereby--let them do the work
themselves, to see whether the facts tell another story. My problem cannot
be solved by polemics; patient study alone can throw a little light on the
subject. (9/13.)
"I am profoundly indifferent to what the newspapers may say about me," he
wrote to his brother seventeen years later; "it is enough for me if I am
pretty well satisfied with my own work." (9/14.)
He read all the letters he received only in a superficial manner,
neglecting to thank those who praised or congratulated him, and above all
shrinking from all that idle correspondence in which life is wasted without
aim or profit.
"I fume and swear when I have to cut into my morning in order to reply to
so-and-so who sends me, in print or manuscript, his meed of praise; if I
were not careful I should have no time left for far more important work."
His beloved Frédéric, "the best of his friends," was himself often treated
no better, and to excuse his silence and the infrequency of his letters,
Henri, even in the years spent at Carpentras and Ajaccio, could plead only
the same reasons; his stupendous labours, his exhausting task, "which
overwhelmed him, and was often too great, not for his courage, but for his
time and his strength." (9/15.)
Nevertheless, while evading the question of origins, his far-sighted
intellect was bound to "read from the facts" concerning the genesis of new
species in process of evolution; and his observations throw a singular
light on the quite recent theory of sudden mutations.
The nymph of the Onthophagus presents "a strange paraphernalia of horns and
spurs which the organism has produced in a moment of ardour--a luxurious
panoply which vanishes in the adult."
The nymph of the Oniticella also decks itself in "a temporary horn, which
departs when it emerges."
And "as the dung-beetle is recent in the general chronology of creatures,
as it takes rank among the last comers, as the geological strata are mute
concerning it, it is possible that these horn-like processes, which always
degenerate before they reach completion, may be not a reminiscence but a
promise, a gradual elaboration of new organs, timid attempts which the
centuries will harden to a complete armour, AND IF THIS WERE SO THE PRESENT
WOULD TEACH US WHAT THE FUTURE IS TO BE." (9/16.)
Here is a specific transformation, a veritable creation; fortuitous, blind,
and silent; one of those innumerable attempts which nature is always
making, for the moment a mere matter of hazard, until some propitious
circumstance fixes it in future incarnations.
Thus millions of indeterminate creatures are incessantly roughed out in the
substance of that microcosm which is the initial cell; and it is here that
Fabre sees the real secret of the law of evolution.
He refutes the great principle of Leibnitz, which was so brilliantly
adopted by Darwin, that changes occur by degrees, by "fine shades," by slow
variations, as the result of successive adaptations, and that there is no
jumping-off place in nature. On the contrary, life often passes suddenly
from one form to another, by abrupt and capricious leaps, by irregular and
disorderly steps, and it is in the egg that Fabre sees the first lineaments
of these mysterious and spontaneous variations.
Species are therefore born as a whole, each at the same time, AT THE SAME
MOMENT, "bringing into being its new organism, with its individual
properties and peculiarities, its indelible and innate faculties and
tendencies, like "so many medals, each struck with a different die, which
the gnawing tooth of time attacks only sooner or later to annihilate it."
However, Fabre affirms the continuity of progress; he believes in a better
and more merciful future, a more complete humanity, ruled by more
harmonious or less brutal laws.
With what profound intelligence and what generous enthusiasm he seeks to
conjecture what this future might be, in his beautiful observations on the
young of the Lycosa (9/17.), which can live for weeks and months in
absolute abstinence, although we can perceive no reserve of nutriment!
We know no other sources of animal activity save the energy derived from
food. Vegetables draw the materials of their nourishment from the soil and
the air, and the sunlight is only an intermediary which enables the plant
to fix its carbon. The animal species in turn borrow the elements
indispensable to their existence from the vegetable world, or restore their
flesh and blood with the flesh and blood of other animals.
Now the young Lycosae "are not inert on their mother's back; if they fall
from the maternal chine they quickly pick themselves up and climb up one of
her legs, and once back in place they have to preserve the equilibrium of
the mass. In reality they know no such thing as complete repose. What then
is the energetic aliment which enables the little Lycosae to struggle?
Whence is the heat expended in action derived?"
Fabre sees no other source than "the sun."
"Every day, if the sky is clear, the Lycosa, loaded with her little ones,
crawls to the edge of her well, and for long hours lies in the sun. There,
on the maternal back, the young ones stretch themselves out, saturate
themselves in the sunshine, charging themselves with motor reserves,
steeping themselves in energy, directly converting into movement the
calorific radiations coming from the sun, the centre of all life."
The Scorpion also is able to live for months without nourishment, restoring
directly, in the form of movement, "the effluvia emanating from the sun or
from other ambient energies--heat, electricity, light--which are the soul
of the world."
Perhaps, among the innumerable worlds of space, there is somewhere,
gravitating round a fixed star, a planet invisible to us where "the
sunlight sates the hunger of the blind."
The gentle philosophy of the ingenious dreamer soothes itself with the
vision, entertained by great and noble minds, of a humanity "whose teeth
will no longer attack sensible life, nor even the pulp of fruits"; "when
creatures will devour one another no longer, will no longer feed upon the
dead; when they will be nourished by the sunlight, without conflict,
without war, without labour; freed from all care, and assured against all
needs!"
Thus, in the humblest creatures, he sees the most marvellous perspectives;
the body of the lowest insect becomes suddenly a transcendent secret,
lighting up the abyss of the human soul, or giving it a glimpse of the
stars.
And although his work is in contradiction to the theories of the
evolutionists, it ends with the same moral conclusion, namely, that all
creation moves slowly and without intermission on its gradual ascent
towards progress.
CHAPTER 10. THE ANIMAL MIND.
The cunning anatomist has now successively laid bare all the springs of the
animal intellect; he has shown how the various movements are mutually
combined and engaged. But so far we have seen only one of the faces of the
little mind of the animal; let us now consider the other aspect, the moral
side, the region of feeling, the problem of which is confounded with the
problem of instinct, and is doubtless fundamentally only another aspect of
the same elemental power.
After the conflict the insect manifests its delight; it seems sometimes to
exult in its triumph; "beside the caterpillar which it has just stabbed
with its sting, and which lies writhing on the ground," the Ammophila
"stamps, gesticulates, beats her wings," capers about, sounding victory in
an intoxication of delight.
The sense of property exists in a high degree among the Mason-bees; with
them right comes before might, and "the intruder is always finally
dislodged." (10/1.)
But can we find in the insect anything analogous to what we term devotion,
attachment, affectionate feeling? There are facts which lead us to believe
we may.
Let us go once more into Fabre's garden and admire the Thomisus: absorbed
in her maternal function, the little spider lying flat on her nest can
strive no longer and is wasting away, but persists in living, mere ruin
that she is, in order to open the door to her family with one last bite.
Feeling under the silken roof her offspring stamping with impatience, but
knowing that they have not strength to liberate themselves, she perforates
the capsule, making a sort of practicable skylight. This duty accomplished,
she quietly surrenders to death, still grappled to her nest.
The Psyche, dominated by a kind of unconscious necessity, protects her
nursery by means of her body, anchors herself upon the threshold, and
perishes there, devoted to her family even in death.
However, Fabre will show us with infallible logic that all these instances
of foresight and maternal tenderness have, as a rule, no other motive than
pleasure and the blind impulse which urges the insect to follow only the
fatal path of its instincts.
In many species the material fact of maternity is reduced to its simplest
expression.
The Pieris limits herself to depositing her eggs on the leaves of the
cabbage, "on which the young must themselves find food and shelter."
"From the height of the topmost clusters of the centaury the Clythris
negligently lets her eggs fall to the ground, one by one, here or there at
hazard; without the least care as to their installation.
"The eggs of the Locustidae are implanted in the earth like seeds and
germinate like grain."
But stop before the Lycosa, that magnificent type of maternal love which
Fabre has already depicted. "She broods over her eggs with anxious
affection. With the hinder claws resting on the margin of the well she
holds herself supported above the opening of the white sac, which is
swollen with eggs. For several long weeks she exposes it to the sun during
half the day. Gently she turns it about in order to present every side to
the vivifying light. The bird, in order to hatch her eggs, covers them with
the down of her breast, and presses them against that living calorifer, her
heart. The Lycosa turns hers about beneath the fires of heaven; she gives
them the sun for incubator." (10.2.) Could abnegation be more perfect? What
greater proof could there be of renunciation and self-oblivion?
But appearances are vain. Substitute for the beloved sac some other object,
and the spider "will turn about, with the same love, as though it were her
sac of eggs, a piece of cork, a pincushion, or a ball of paper," just as
the hen, another victim of this sublime deception, will give all her heart
to hatching the china nest-eggs which have been placed beneath her, and for
weeks will forget to feed.
The young brood hatches, and the spider goes a-hunting, carrying her little
ones on her back; she protects them in case of danger, but is incapable of
recognizing them or of distinguishing them from the young of others. The
Copris and the Scorpion are no less blind, "and their maternal tenderness
barely exceeds that of the plant, which, a stranger to any sense of
affection or morality, none the less exercises the most exquisite care in
respect of its seeds."
Moreover, the impulse to work is only a kind of unconscious pleasure. When
the Pelopaeus "has stored her lair with game," when the Cerceris has sealed
the crypt to which she has confided the future of her race, neither one nor
the other can foresee "the future offspring which their faceted eyes will
never behold, and the very object of their labours is to them occult."
With them, as with all, life can only be a perpetual illusion.
Yet the marvellous edifice of the "Souvenirs entomologiques" is consummated
by the astonishing history of the Minotaur, whose habits surpass in ideal
beauty all that could be imagined.
At the bottom of a burrow, in a deeply sunken vault, two dung-beetles are
at work, the Minotaurs, who, once united, recognize one another, and can
find one another again if separated, but do not voluntarily separate,
realizing "the moral beauty of the double life" and "the touching concept
of the family, the sacred group par excellence." The male buries himself
with his companion, remains faithful to her, comes to her assistance, and
"stores up treasure for the future. Never discouraged by the heavy labour
of climbing, leaving to the mother only the more moderate labour, keeping
the severest for himself, the heavy task of transport in a narrow tunnel,
very deep and almost vertical, he goes foraging, forgetful of himself,
heedless of the intoxicating delights of spring, though it would be so good
to see something of the country, to feast with his brothers, and to pester
the neighbours; but no! he collects the food which is to nourish his
children, and then, when all is ready for the new-comers, when their living
is assured, having spent himself without counting the cost, exhausted by
his efforts, and feeling himself failing, he leaves his home and goes away
to die, that he may not pollute the dwelling with a corpse."
The mother, on her side, allows nothing to divert her from her household,
and only returns to the surface when accompanied by her young, who disperse
at will. Then, having nothing more to do, the devoted creature perishes in
turn. (10/3.)
Compared with the Scarabaeus, which contents itself with idle wandering, or
even with the meritorious Sisyphus, does it not seem that the Minotaur
moves on an infinitely higher plane?
What nobler could be found among ourselves? What father ever better
comprehended his duties and obligations toward his family? What morality
could be more irreproachable; what fairer example could be meditated?
"Is not life everywhere the same, in the body of the dung-beetle as in that
of man? If we examine it in the insect, do we not examine it in ourselves?"
Whence does the Minotaur derive these particular graces? How has it risen
to so high a level on the wings of pure instinct? How could we explain the
rarity of so sublime an example, did we not know, to satiety, that "nature
everywhere is but an enigmatic poem, as who should say a veiled and misty
picture, shining with an infinite variety of deceptive lights in order to
evoke our conjectures"? (10/4.)
Nevertheless, it is a fact that the majority have no other rule of conduct
than to follow the trend of their instincts, and to obey "their unbridled
desires." No one better than Fabre has expounded the blind operation of
these little natural forces, the brutality of their manners, their
cannibalism, and what we might call their amorality, were it possible to
employ our human formulae outside our own human world.
With the gardener-beetles, if one is crippled, none of the same race halts
or lingers; none attempts to come to his aid. Sometimes the passers-by
hasten to the invalid to devour him."
In the republic of the wasps "the grubs recognized as incurable are
pitilessly torn from their place and dragged out of the nest. Woe to the
sick! they are helpless and at once expelled."
When the winter comes all the larvae are massacred, and the whole vespine
city ends in a horrible tragedy.
But life is a whole, and all conduct is good whose actions realize an
object and are adapted to an end. If there is a "spirit" of the hive, the
insect also has its morality and the wasp's nest its "law," and the conduct
of its inmates, horrible though it may seem to Fabre, is doubtless only a
submission to certain exigencies of that universal law which makes nature a
"savage foster-mother who knows nothing of pity."
These cruelties particularly show us that one of the functions of the
insect in nature is to preside over the disappearance and also the ultimate
metamorphoses of the least "remnants of life."
Each has its providential hygienic function.
The Necrophori, "the first of the tiny scavengers of the fields," bury
corpses in order to establish their progeny in them; in the space of a few
hours an enormous body, a mole, a water-rat, or an adder, will completely
disappear, buried under the earth.
The Onthophagi purify the soil, "dividing all filth into tiny crumbs,
ridding the earth of its defilements."
A very small beetle, the Trox, has the imprescriptible mission of purging
the earth of the rabbits' fur rejected by the fox. (10/5.)
Here structure explains the function.
The intestine of the grub of the rose-beetle "is a veritable triturating
mill, which transforms vegetable matter into mould; in a month it will
digest a volume of matter equal to several thousand times the initial
volume of the grub."
The intestine of the Scarabaei is prolonged to a prodigious length in order
to "drain the excrement to the last atom in its manifold circuits. The
sheep has finely divided the vegetable matter; the grub, that incomparable
triturator, reduces it to the finest possible consistency; not a morsel is
left in which the magnifying glass can reveal a fibre."
To fulfil its hygienic mission the insect arrives in due season, and
multiplies its legions; "there are twenty thousand eggs in the flanks of
the house fly; immediately they are hatched these twenty thousand maggots
set to work, so that Linnaeus has said that three flies would suffice to
devour the body of a horse or a lion."
Feeding only upon wheat, a single weevil, the Calendar beetle, produces ten
thousand eggs, whence issue as many larvae, each of them devouring its
grain.
In all species the number of births is at first exaggerated, for all, the
obscure, the nameless, the most destructive, our pests as well as our most
precious helpers, have their utility and their part to play in the general
scheme of life, a raison d'être in the eternal renewal of things, which is
without reference to the vexatious or beneficent quality of their behaviour
to us.
Each has its rank assigned, each has its task, to one the flower, to
another the roots, to a third the leaves; the vine has its caterpillars,
its beetles, its butterflies; the clover, its moths and mites. (10/6.)
Man sees himself forced to submit to them, and spends himself in vain
efforts to carry on an often useless campaign. Nothing seems to affect
them, neither drought, nor rain, nor even the severest cold; and the eggs
and larvae, organizations apparently delicate in the extreme, are often
more tenacious of life than the adults. Fabre has proved this: let the
temperature suddenly fall twenty degrees: the eggs of Geotrupes and the
larvae of the cockchafer or the rose-beetle endure such vicissitudes of
temperature with impunity; contracted and stiffened into little masses of
ice, but not destroyed, they revive in spring no less than the eel fry, the
rotifers, or the tardigrades. One can scarcely believe that life still
persists in a state of suspense only in these little frozen creatures,
whose organization is already so complicated.
Then, of a sudden, the ravagers disappear; more often than not none knows
how or why; deliverance is at hand. What indeed would become of the world
were nothing to moderate such fecundity?
Again, each species has its trials which appear in time to moderate its
surplusage, and Fabre expounds for us, with a stern philosophy, the
terrible devices by which this repression is effected.
Each has its appointed enemy, which lives upon it or its offspring, and
which in turn becomes the prey of some smaller creature. The gentle itself,
"the king of the dead," has its parasites. While it swims in the
deliquescence of putrefying flesh a minute Chalcidian perforates its skin
with an imperceptible wound, and introduces its terrible eggs, whence in
the future will issue larvae which to-morrow will devour the devourers of
to-day.
None exists save to the detriment of others. Everywhere, even in the
smallest, we find "an atrocious activity, a cunning brigandage," a savage
extermination, which dominates a vast unconscious world of which the final
result is the restoration of equilibrium. (10/7.) It is only on these
antagonisms, on the enemies of our enemies, that we can found any hope of
seeing this or that pest disappear. A small Hymenopteron, almost invisible,
the Microgaster glomeratus, is entrusted with the destruction of the
cabbage caterpillar; the cochineal wages war to the death upon the green-
fly; the Ammophila is the predestined murderer of the harvest Noctuela,
whose misdeeds in a beetroot country often amount to a disaster. The
Odynerus has for its instinctive mission to arrest the excessive
multiplication of a lucerne weevil, no less than twenty-four of whose grubs
are necessary to rear the offspring of the brigand, and nearly sixty
gadflies are sacrificed to the growth of a single Bembex.
Everywhere craft is organized to triumph over force. Around each nest the
parasites lie in wait, "atrocious assassins of the child in the cradle,
watching at the doors for the favourable occasion to establish their family
at the expense of others. The enemy penetrates the most inaccessible
fortress; each has its tactics of war, devised with a terrible art. Of the
nest and the cocoon of the victim the intruder makes its own nest, its own
cocoon, and in the following year, instead of the master of the house, he
will emerge from underground as the usurping bandit, the devourer of the
inhabitant."
While the cicada is absorbed in laying her eggs an insignificant fly
labours to destroy them. How express the calm audacity of this pigmy,
following closely after the colossus, step by step; several at once almost
under the talons of the giant, which could crush them merely by treading on
them? But the cicada respects them, or they would long ago have
disappeared." (10/8.)
Fabre thus agrees with Pasteur, who in the world of the infinitely little
shows us the same antagonisms, the same vital competition, the same eternal
movement of flux and reflux, the same whirlpool of life, which is
extinguished only to reappear: tending always towards an equilibrium which
is incessantly destroyed. And it is thanks to this balancing that the
integral of life remains everywhere and always almost identical with
itself.
CHAPTER 11. HARMONIES AND DISCORDS.
Such indeed is the economy of nature that secret relations and astonishing
concordances exist throughout the whole vast weft of things. There are no
loose ends; everything is consequent and ordered. Hidden harmonies meet and
mingle.
Among the terebinth lice, "when the population is mature, the gall is ripe
also, so fully do the calendars of the shrub and the animal coincide"; and
the mortal enemy of the Halictus, the sinister midge of the springtime, is
hatched at the very moment when the bee begins to wander in search of a
location for its burrows.
The fantastic history of the larvae of the Anthrax furnishes us with one of
the most suggestive examples of these strange coincidences. (10/9.)
The Anthrax is a black fly, which sows its eggs on the surface of the nests
of the Mason-bee, whose larvae are at the moment reposing in their silken
cocoons.
"The grub of the Anthrax emerges and comes to life under the touch of the
sunlight. Its cradle is the rugged surface of the cell; it is welcomed into
the world by a literally stony harshness...Obstinately it probes the chinks
and pores of the nest; glides over it, crawls forward, returns, and
recommences. The radicle of the germinating seed is not more persevering,
not more determined to descend into the cool damp earth. What inspiration
impels it? What compass guides it? What does the root know of the fertility
of the soil?...The nurseling, the seed of the Anthrax, is barely visible,
almost escaping the gaze of the magnifying glass; a mere atom compared to
the monstrous foster-mother which it will drain to the very skin. Its mouth
is a sucker, with neither fangs nor jaws, incapable of producing the
smallest wound; it sucks in place of eating, and its attack is a kiss." It
practises, in short, a most astonishing art, "another variation of the
marvellous art of feeding on the victim without killing it until the end of
the meal, in order always to have a store of fresh meat. During the
fourteen days through which the nourishment of the Anthrax continues, the
aspect of the larva remains that of living flesh; until all its substance
has been literally transferred, by a kind of transpiration, to the body of
the nurseling, and the victim, slowly exhausted, drained to the last drop,
while retaining to the end just enough life to prove refractory to
decomposition, is reduced to the mere skin, which, being insufflated, puffs
itself out and resumes the precise form of the larva, there being nowhere a
point of escape for the compressed air."
Now the grub of the Anthrax "appears precisely at the exact moment when the
larva of the Chalicodoma is attacked by that lethargy which precedes
metamorphosis, and which renders it insensible, and during which the
substance of the grub about to be transfigured into a bee commences to
break down and resolve itself into a liquid pulp, for the processes of life
always liquefy the grub before achieving the perfect insect." (11/2.)
Here again the time-tables coincide.
But it is perhaps in the celebrated Odyssey of the grub of the Sitaris that
Fabre most urgently claims our admiration for the marvellous and
incomprehensible wisdom of the Unconscious!
Let us recapitulate the unheard-of series of events, the inextricable
complication of circumstances, which are required to condition the lowly
life of a Sitaris.
In the first place, this microscopic creature must be provided with talons,
or how could it adhere to the fleece of the Anthophora, on which it must
live as parasite for a certain length of time?
Then again, it must transfer itself from the male to the female bee in the
course of its travels abroad, or its destiny would be cut short.
Again, it must not miss the opportunity of embarking itself upon the egg
just at the propitious moment.
Then the volume of this egg must be so calculated as to represent an
allowance of food exactly proportioned to the duration of the first phase
of its metamorphosis. Moreover, the quantity of honey accumulated by the
bee must suffice for the whole of the remaining cycle of its larval
existence.
Let a single link of the chain be broken, and the entire species of the
Sitaris is no longer possible.
If every species has its law; if the Geotrupes remain faithful to filth,
although experience shows that they can accommodate themselves equally well
to the putrefaction of decayed leaves; if the predatory species--the
Cerceris, the Sphex, the Ammophila--resort only to one species of quarry to
nourish their larvae, although these same larvae accept all indifferently,
it is on account of those superior economic laws and secret alliances the
profound reasons for which as a rule escape us or are beyond the scope of
our theories.
For all things are produced and interlocked by the eternal necessity; link
engages in link, and life is only a plexus of solitary forces allied among
themselves by their very nature, the condition of which is harmony. And the
whole system of living creatures appears to us, through the work of the
great naturalist, as an immense organism, a sort of vast physiological
apparatus, of which all the parts are mutually interdependent, and as
narrowly controlled as all the cells of the human body.
Fabre goes on to present us with other facts, which at a first glance
appear highly immoral; I am referring to certain phases of sexual love
among the lower animals, and his ghoulish revelations concerning the
horrible bridals of the Arachnoids, the Millepoda, and the Locustidae.
The Decticus surrenders only to a single exploit of love; a victim of its
"strange genesics"; utterly exhausted by the first embrace, empty, drained,
extenuated, motionless in all its members, utterly worn out, it quickly
succumbs, a mere broken simulacrum, like the miserable lover of a monstrous
succubus who "loves him enough to devour him." (11/3.)
The female scorpion devours the male; "all is gone but the tail!"
The female Spider delights in the flesh of her lover.
The cricket also devours a small portion of her "debonair" admirer.
The Ephippigera "excavates the stomach of her companion and eats him."
But the horror of these nuptial tragedies is surpassed by the insatiable
lust, the monstrous conjunction, the bestial delights of the Mantis, that
"ferocious spectre, never wearied of embraces, munching the brains of its
spouse at the very moment of surrendering her flanks to him." (11/4.)
Whence these strange discords, these frightful appetites?
Fabre refers us to the remotest ages, to the depths of the geological
night, and does not hesitate to regard these cruelties as "remnants of
atavism," the lingering furies of an ancient strain, and he ventures a
profound and plausible explanation.
The Locusts, the Crickets, and the Scolopendrae are the last
representatives of a very ancient world, of an extinct fauna, of an early
creation, whose perverse and unbridled instincts were given free vent, when
creation was as yet but dimly outlined, "still making the earliest essays
of its organizing forces"; when the primitive Orthoptera, "the obscure
forebears of those of to-day, were "sowing the wild oats of a frantic rut,
"in the colossal forests of the secondary period; by the borders of the
vast lakes, full of crocodiles, and antediluvian marshes, which in Provence
were shaded by palms, and strange ferns, and giant Lycopodia, never as yet
enlivened by the song of a bird.
These monstrosities, in which life was making its essays, were subject to
singular physical necessities. The female reigned alone; the male did not
as yet exist, or was tolerated only for the sake of his indispensable
assistance. But he served also another and less obvious end; his substance,
or at least some portion of his substance, was an almost necessary
ingredient in the act of generation, something in the nature of a necessary
excitant of the ovaries, "a horrible titbit," which completed and
consummated the great task of fecundation. Such, in Fabre's eyes, was the
imperious physiological reason of these rude laws. This is why the love of
the males is almost equivalent to their suicide; the Gardener-beetle,
attacked by the female, attempts to flee, but does not defend himself; "it
is as though an invincible repugnance prevents him from repulsing or from
eating the eater." In the same way the male scorpion "allows himself to be
devoured by his companion without ever attempting to employ his sting," and
the lover of the Mantis "allows himself to be nibbled to pieces without any
revolt on his part."
A strange morality, but not more strange than the organic peculiarities
which are its foundation; a strange world, but perhaps some distant sun may
light others like it.
These terrible creatures are a source of dismay to Fabre. If all things
proceed from an underlying Reason, if the divine harmony of things
testifies everywhere to a sovereign Logic, how shall the proofs of its
excellence and its sovereign wisdom be found in such things as these?
Far from attributing to the order of the universe a supposed perfection,
far from considering nature as the most immediate expression of the Good
and the Beautiful, in the words of Tolstoy (11/5.), he sees in it only a
rough sketch which a hidden God, hidden, but close at hand, and living
eternally present in the heart of His creatures, is seeking to test and to
shape.
Living always with his eyes upon some secret of the marvels of God, whom he
sees in every bush, in every tree, "although He is veiled from our
imperfect senses" (11/6.), the vilest insect reveals to him, in the least
of its actions, a fragment of this universal Intelligence.
What marvels indeed when seen from above! But consider the Reverse--what
antinomies, what flagrant contradictions! What poor and sordid means! And
Fabre is astonished, in spite of all his candid faith, that the fatality of
the belly should have entered into the Divine plan, and the necessity of
all those atrocious acts in which the Unconscious delights. Could not God
ensure the preservation of life by less violent means? Why these
subterranean dramas, these slow assassinations? Why has Evil, THE POISON OF
THE GOOD (11/7.), crept in everywhere, even to the origin of life, like an
eternal Parasite?
Within this fatal circle, in which the devourer and the devoured, the
exploiter and the exploited, lead an eternal dance, can we not perceive a
ray of light?
For what is it that we see?
The victims are not merely the predestined victims of their persecutors.
They seek neither to struggle nor to escape nor to evade the inevitable;
one might say that by a kind of renunciation they offer themselves up whole
as a sacrifice!
What irresistible destiny impels the bee to meet half-way the Philanthus,
its terrible enemy! The Tarantula, which could so easily withstand the
Pompilus, when the latter rashly carries war into its lair, does not
disturb itself, and never dreams of using its poisoned fangs. Not less
absolute is the submission of the grasshopper before the Mantis, which
itself has its tyrant, the Tachytes.
Similarly those which have reason to fear for their offspring, if not for
themselves, do nothing to evade the enemy which watches for them; the
Megachile, although it could easily destroy it, is indifferent to the
presence of a miserable midge, "the bandit who is always there, meditating
its crime"; the Bembex, confronted with the Tachinarius, cannot control its
terror, but nevertheless resigns itself, while squeaking with fright.
If each creature is what it is only because it is a necessary part of the
plan of the supreme Artisan who has constructed the universe, why have some
the right of life and death and others the terrible duty of immolation?
Do not both obey, not the gloomy law of carnage, but a kind of sovereign
and exquisite sacrifice, some sort of unconscious idea of submission to a
superior and collective interest?
This hypothesis, which was one day suggested to Fabre by a friend of great
intellectual culture (11/8.), charmed and interested him keenly. I noticed
that he was more than usually attentive, and he seemed to me to be suddenly
reassured and appeased. For him it was as though a faint ray of light had
suddenly fallen among these impenetrable and distressing problems.
It seemed to him that by setting before our eyes the spectacle of so many
woes, universally distributed, and doubtless necessary, woes which do not
spare even the humblest of creatures, the Sovereign Intelligence intends to
exhort us to examine ourselves truly and to dispose us to greater love and
pity and resignation.
All his work is highly and essentially religious; and while he has given us
a taste for nature, he has not also endeavoured to give us, according to
the expression of Bossuet "the taste for God," or at least a sense of the
divine? In opposing the doctrine of evolution, which reduces the animal
world to the mere virtualities of the cell; in revealing to us all these
marvels which seem destined always to escape human comprehension; finally,
by referring us more necessarily than ever to the unfathomable problem of
our origins, Fabre has reopened the door of mystery, the door of the divine
Unknown, in which the religion of men must always renew itself. We should
belittle his thought, we should dwarf the man himself, were we to seek to
confine to any particular thesis his spiritualistic conception of the
universe.
Fabre recognizes and adores in nature only the great eternal Power, whose
imprint is everywhere revealed by the phenomena of matter.
For this reason he has all his life remained free from all superstition and
has been completely indifferent to dogmas and miracles, which to his mind
imply not only a profound ignorance of science, but also a gross and
complete miscomprehension of the divine Intelligence. He kneels upon the
ground or among the grasses only the more closely to adore that force, the
source of all order, the intuitive knowledge of which, innate in all
creatures, even in the tiny immovable minds of animals, is merely a
magnificent and gratuitous gift. The office in which he eagerly
communicates is that glorious and formidable Mass in which the ragged
sower, "noble in his tatters, a pontiff in shabby small-clothes, solemn as
a God, blesses the soil, more majestic than the bishop in his glory at
Easter-tide." (11/9.) It is there that he finds his "Ideal," in the incense
of the perfumes "which are softly exhaled from the shapely flowers, from
their censers of gold," in the heart of all creatures, "chaffinch and
siskin, skylark and goldfinch, tiny choristers" piping and trilling,
"elaborating their motets" to the glory of Him who gave them voice and
wings on the fifth day of Genesis. He fraternizes with all, with his dogs
and his cats, his tame tortoise, and even the "slimy and swollen frog"; the
"Philosopher" of the Harmas, whose murky eyes he loves to interrogate as he
paces his garden "by the light of the stars"; persuaded that all are
accomplishing a useful work, and that all creatures, from the humblest
insect which has only nibbled a leaf, or displaced a few grains of sand, to
man himself, are anointed with the same chrism of immortality.
And as he has always set the pleasures of study before all others, he can
imagine no greater recompense after death than to obtain from heaven
permission still to continue in their midst, during eternity, his life of
labour and effort.
CHAPTER 12. THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE.
We have noted the essential features of his precise and unfailing vision
and the value of the documents which record the work of Fabre, but the
writer merits no less attention than the observer and the philosopher.
In the domain of things positive, it is not always sufficient to gather the
facts, to record them, and to codify in bare formulae the results of
inquiry. Doubtless every essential discovery is able to stand by itself; in
what would an inventor profit, for example, by raising himself to the level
of the artist? "For the theorem lucidity suffices; truth issues naked from
the bottom of a well."
But the manner of speaking, describing, and depicting is none the less an
integral part of the truth when it is a matter of expounding and
transmitting the latter. To express it feebly is often to compromise it, to
diminish it; and even to betray it. There are terms which say better than
others what has to be said. "Words have their physiognomy; if there are
lifeless words, there are also picturesque and richly-coloured words,
comparable to the brush strokes which scatter flecks of light on the grey
background of the picture." There are particular terms of expression,
felicities which present things in a better light, and the writer must
search in his memory, his imagination, and his heart, for the fitting
accent; for the flexibility of language and the wealth of words which are
needful if he would fully succeed in the portrayal of living creatures; if
he would tender the living truth, reproduce in all its light and shade the
spectacle of the world, arouse the imagination, and faithfully interpret
the mysterious spirit which impregnates matter and is reflected in thought.
The artist then comes forward to co-ordinate all these scattered fragments,
to assemble them, to breathe vitality into them, to restore these inert
truths to life.
But what a strange manner of working was Fabre's; what a curious method of
composition! However full of ideas his mind might be, he was incapable of
expressing them if he remained in one place and assumed the ordinary
preliminary attitude of a man preparing to write. Seated and motionless,
his limbs at rest, pen in hand, with a blank page before him, it seemed to
him that all his faculties became of a sudden paralysed. He must first move
about; activity helped him to pursue his ideas; it was in action that he
recovered his ardour and uncovered the sources of inspiration. Just as he
never observed without enthusiasm, so he found it impossible to write
without exaltation, and it was precisely because he so ardently loved the
truth that he felt himself compelled to show it in all its beauty.
Moving like a circus-horse about the great table of his laboratory, he
would begin to tramp indefatigably round and round, so that his steps have
worn in the tiles of the floor an ineffaceable record of the concentric
track in which they moved incessantly for thirty years.
His mind would grow clear and active as he walked, smoking his pipe and
"using his marrow-bones." (12/1.) He was already at work; he was
"hammering" his future chapters in his brain; for the idea would be all the
more precise as the form was more finished and more irreproachable, more
closely identified with the thought; he would wait until the word quivered,
palpitated, and lived; until the transcription was no longer an illusion, a
phantom, a vision devoid of reality, but a faithful echo, a sincere
translation, a finished interpretation, reflecting entire the fundamental
essence of the thing; in a word, a work of art, a parallel to nature.
Then only would he sit before the little walnut-wood table "spotted with
ink and scarred with knife-cuts, just big enough to hold the inkstand, a
halfpenny bottle, and his open notebook": that same little table at which,
in other days, by force of meditation, he achieved his first degrees.
Then he would begin to write, "his pen dipped not in ink only" but in his
heart's blood (12/2.); first of all in ordinary ruled notebooks bound in
black cloth, in which he noted, day by day, hour by hour, the observations
of every moment, the results of his experiments, together with his thoughts
and reflections. Little by little those documents would come together which
elucidated and completed one another, and at last the book was written.
These notebooks, these copious records, are remarkable for the regularity
of the writing and the often impeccable finish of the first draught.
Although here and there the same data are transcribed several times in
succession, and each time struck through with a vigorous stroke of the pen,
there are whole pages, and many pages together, without a single erasure.
The handwriting, excessively small--one might think it had been traced by
the feet of a fly--becomes in later years so minute that one almost needs a
magnifying glass to decipher it.
These notebooks are not the final manuscript. The entomologist would write
a new and more perfect copy on loose sheets of paper, making one draught
after another, patiently fashioning his style and polishing his work,
although many passages were included without revision as they were written
in the first instance.
The greatest magician of modern letters, versed in all the artifices of the
French language, speaking one day of Fabre and his writings, made in my
hearing the assertion that he was not, properly speaking, an artist. He
might well be a great naturalist, a veteran of science, an observer of
genius, but he was by no means and would never be a writer according to the
canons of the craft.
But how many others, like him, in their time regarded as "pitiable in
respect of their language," charm us to-day, simply because they were
gifted with imagination and the power of giving life to their work! (12/3.)
To tell the truth, Fabre is absolutely careless of all literary procedure,
and solely preoccupied with bringing his style into harmony with his
thoughts; he is not in the least a manufacturer of literary phrases. There
is no trace of artistic writing in his books, and it is only his manner of
feeling and of expressing himself that makes him so dear to us.
What touches us in him is the accent, the simplicity, the measure, the good
sense, and the perfect equilibrium of each of these pages: simple, often
commonplace, even incorrect or trivial, but so alive, so human, that the
blood seems to flow in them. It is the lover in Fabre that draws us to him;
nothing quite like his work has been seen since the days of Jean de La
Fontaine.
He has liberated science; he laughs at the specialists who take refuge
behind their "barbarian terminologies," at the "jargon" of those "who see
the world only through the wrong end of the glass"; at the exaggerated
importance which they attribute to insignificant details, the narrowness of
classifications, and the chaos of systems; all that incoherent, remote, and
inaccessible science, which he, on the contrary, strives to render pleasant
and attractive.
This is why the great scientist has endeavoured to speak like other people,
preferring, to the harsh consonants of technical phrases which sound "like
insults" or have the air of "a magical invocation, which make certain
scientific works read like so much gibberish," the "naive and picturesque
appellation, the familiar, trivial name, the popular, living term which
directly interprets the exact signification of the habits of an insect, or
informs us fully of its dominant characteristic, or which, at least, leaves
nothing to conjecture."
He considers it useless and even inconvenient to abandon many charming
expressions, appropriate and significant as they are, which may be borrowed
from the good old French tongue; and in this he resembles the immortal de
Jussieu, who in his botanical classifications was careful not to discard
the old popular denominations which Theophrastus, Virgil, and Linnaeus had
thought fit to bestow upon plant and tree.
It is for the same reasons that he loves the Provençal tongue; that
beautiful idiom, that superb language, rich in music, in sonorous words, so
suggestive and so full of colour, many of whose terms, saying precisely
what they intend to say, have no equivalent in French. He has learned the
language, and reads it: in particular Roumanille, whose easy, familiar
style pleases him better than the grandiloquence of Mistral, although he
delights also in Calendal, whose lyrical powers fill him with enthusiasm.
>From this ancient tongue, which was early as familiar to him as the French,
he borrowed certain mannerisms, certain tricks of style, certain
neologisms, and also, to some extent, his simplicity of manner and the
cadence of his prose.
It was not without difficulty that he attained this mastery. Measure the
gulf between his first volumes and his last; in the first the style is
slightly nerveless and indefinite: it was only as he gradually advanced in
his career that he acquired what may be called his final manner, or
achieved, in his narratives, a perfect literary style. The most
substantially constructed, the most happily expressed of his pages were
written principally in his extreme old age. Not only is there no sign of
failing in these, but in his latest "Souvenirs" the perfection of form is
perhaps even more remarkable than the wealth of matter.
How vitally his scrupulous records impress the mind's eye; how firmly they
establish themselves in the memory!
Even if one has never seen the Pelopaeus, one readily conceives an
impression of "her wasp-like costume, and curving abdomen, suspended at the
end of a long thread." What exactitude in this snapshot, taken at the
moment when the insect is occupied in scooping out of the mire the lump of
mud intended for the construction of her nest: "like a skilled housekeeper,
with her clothing carefully tucked up that it may not be soiled, the wings
vibrating, the limbs rigidly straightened, the black abdomen well raised on
the end of its yellow stalk, she rakes the mud with the points of her
mandibles, skimming the shining surface." (12/4.)
He draws, in passing, this charming sketch of the gadfly, the pest of
horses, which nourishes itself with their blood:
"Gadflies of several species used to take refuge under the silken dome of
my umbrella, and there they would quietly rest, one here, one there, on the
tightly stretched fabric; I rarely lacked their company when the heat was
overpowering. To while away the hours of waiting, I used to love to watch
their great golden eyes, which would shine like carbuncles on the vaulted
ceiling of my shelter; I used to love to watch them slowly change their
stations, when the excessive heat of some point of the ceiling would force
them to move a little." (12/5.)
We follow all the manoeuvres of the Balaninus, the acorn-weevil, "burying
her drill" which "operates by means of little bites." The narrator calls
our attention to the slightest episodes, even to those accidents which
sometimes surprise the worker in the course of her labours; when, with the
rostrum buried deep in the acorn, her feet suddenly lose their hold. Then
the unhappy creature, unable to free herself, finds herself suspended in
the air, at right angles to her proboscis, far from any foothold or point
of vantage, at the extremity of her disproportionately long pike, that
"fatal stake." (12/6.)
As for the poplar-weevil, we can almost see it moving "in the subtlest
equilibrium, clinging with its hooked talons to the slippery surface of the
leaf"; we watch all the details of its methods and the progress of its
labours. We see the flexed leaf assume the vertical under the awl-stroke
which the insect applies to the pedicle, "when, partially deprived of sap,
the leaf becomes more flexible, more malleable; it is in a sense partly
paralysed, only half alive." Then we follow the rolling process; "the
imperturbable deliberation of the worker as it rolls its cigar, which
finally hangs perpendicularly at the end of the bent and wounded stem."
(12/7.)
Fabre, like a true artist, finds all sorts of expressions to describe the
tiny, fragile eggs of his insects; little shining pearls, delicious coffers
of nickel or amber, miniature pots of translucid alabaster, "which we might
think were stolen from the cupboard of a fairy."
He opens the enchanted alcoves wherein the puny grubs lie slumbering, "fat,
rounded puppets"; the tender larvae which "gape and swing their heads to
and fro" when the mother returns to the nest with her toothsome mouthful or
her crop swollen with honey.
What compassion, what tenderness, what sensitiveness in the affecting
picture of the mother Halictus, abandoned, deprived of her offspring,
bewildered and lost, when the terrible spring fly has destroyed her house:
bald, emaciated, shabby, careworn, already dogged by the small grey lizard!
(12/8.)
The tragedy of the wasps' nest at the approach of the first chills of
winter is the final fragment of an epic. At first there is a sort of
uneasiness, "a species of indifference and anxiety which broods over the
city"; already it has a presentiment of coming misfortune, of an
approaching catastrophe. Presently a wild excitement ensues; the foster-
mothers, "frightened, fierce, and restless," as though suddenly attacked by
an incomprehensible insanity, conceive an aversion for the young; "the
neuters extirpate the larvae and drag them out of the nest," and the drama
of destruction draws to a close with "the final catastrophe; the infirm and
the dying are dismembered, eviscerated, dissected in a heap in the
catacombs by maggots, woodlice, and centipedes." Finally the moth comes
upon the scene, its larvae "attacking the dwelling itself; gnawing and
destroying the joists and rafters, until all is reduced to a few pinches of
dust and shreds of grey paper." (12/9.)
What picturesque expressions he employs to depict, by means of some
significant feature, the striking peculiarities of the insect physiognomy!
"The gipsy who night and day for seven months goes to and fro with her
brats upon her back" is the Lycosa, the Tarantula with the black stomach,
the great spider of the wastes.
The larva of the great Capricornis, which gnaws the interior of old oak-
trees, "leaving behind it, in the form of dry-rot, the refuse of its
digestive processes," is "a scrap of intestine which eats its way as it
goes."
In "that hideous lout" the Scorpion he shows us a rough epitome of the
shapeless head, the truncated face of the spider.
The Tachinae, those "brazen diptera" which swarm on the sunny sand on the
watch for Bembex or Philanthus, in order to establish their offspring at
its expense, "are bandits clad in fustian, the head wrapped in a red
handkerchief, awaiting the hour of attack!"
The Languedocian Sphex, sprawling flat upon the vine leaves, grows dizzy
with the heat and frisks for very pleasure; "with its feet it taps rapidly
on its resting-place, and thus produces a drumming like that of a shower of
rain falling thickly on the leaves." Fabre takes a keen delight in the
production of these pictures, at once so exact and lifelike; but we must
not therefore suppose that his mind is incapable of the detailed
descriptions necessitated by the laborious processes of minute anatomy.
Like all sciences, entomology has its uninteresting aspects when we seek to
study it deeply. Yet with what interest and lucidity has Fabre succeeded in
expounding the complex morphoses of the obscure and miserable larva of the
Sitaris, the curious intestine of the Scarabaeus, the secret of the
spawning of the weevil, and the ingenious mechanisms of the musical
instruments of the Decticus and the Cicada. With what subtle art he
explains the song of the cricket, how the five hundred prisms of the
serrated bow set the four tympana in vibration; and how the song is
sometimes muffled by a process of muting. (12/10.)
Some of the images suggested to him by the forms of animals are so
beautiful that certain of his descriptions might well serve to inspire an
artist, or suggest new motives of decoration in the arts of enamelling,
gem-engraving, jewellery, etc.
Instead of eternally copying ancient things, or seeking inspiration in
lifeless texts, why not turn our attention to the numerous and interesting
motives which are scattered all around us, whose originality consists
precisely in the fact that they have never yet been employed? Why torture
the mind to produce more painful elaborations of awkward, frozen, poverty-
stricken combinations, when Nature herself is at hand, offering the
inexhaustible casket of her living marvels, full of the profoundest logic
and as yet unexamined?
If the bee by means of the hexagonal prism has anticipated all the
geometers in the problem of the economy of space and matter; if the Epeïra
and the mollusc have invented the logarithmic spiral and its transcendent
properties; if all creatures "inspired by an aesthetic which nothing
escapes, achieve the beautiful" (12/11.), surely human art, which can but
imitate and remember, has only to employ to its profit and transfigure into
ideal images the natural beauties so profusely furnished by the
Unconscious.
Modern art, influenced more especially by the subtle Japanese, is already
treading this path.
What artist could ever engrave on rare metals or model in precious
substances a more beautiful subject than the wonderful picture of the
Tarantula offering, at the length of her extended limbs, her white sac of
eggs to the sun; or the transparent nymph of the Onthophagus taurus, "as
though carved from a block of crystal, with its wide snout and its enormous
horns like those of the Aurochs"? (12/12.) What an undiscovered subject he
might find in the nymph of the Ergatus (12/13.), with its almost
incorporeal grace, as though made of "translucent ivory, like a communicant
in her white veils, the arms crossed upon the breast; a living symbol of
mystic resignation before the accomplishment of destiny"; or in the still
more mysterious nymph of the Scarabaeus sacer, first of all "a mummy of
translucent amber, maintained by its linen cerements in a hieratic pose;
but soon upon this background of topaz, the head, the legs, and the thorax
change to a sombre red, while the rest of the body remains white, and the
nymph is slowly transfigured, assuming that majestic costume which combines
the red of the cardinal's mantle with the whiteness of the sacerdotal alb."
On the other hand, what Sims or Bateman ever imagined weirder caricature
than the grotesque larva of the Oniticella, with its extravagant dorsal
hump; or the fantastic and alarming silhouette of the Empusa, with its
scaly belly raised crozierwise and mounted on four long stilts, its pointed
face, turned-up moustaches, great prominent eyes, and a "stupendous mitre":
the most grotesque, the most fantastic freaks that creation can ever have
evolved? (12/14.)
CHAPTER 13. THE EPIC OF ANIMAL LIFE.
Although in his portraits and descriptions Fabre is simple and exact, and
so full of natural geniality; although he can so handle his words as to
render them "adequate" to reproduce the moving pictures of the tiny
creatures he observes, his style touches a higher level, flashes with
colour, and grows rich with imagery when he seeks to interpret the feelings
which animate them: their loves, their battles, their cunning schemes, and
the pursuit of their prey; all that vast drama which everywhere accompanies
the travail of creation.
It is here in particular that Fabre shows us what horizons, as yet almost
unexplored, what profound and inexhaustible resources science is able to
offer poetry.
The breaking of egg or chrysalid is in itself a moving event; for to attain
to the light is for all these creatures "a prodigious travail."
The hour of spring has sounded. At the call of the field-cricket, the
herald of the spring, the germs that slumber in nymph or chrysalis have
broken through their spell.
What haste and ingenuity are required to emerge from the natal darkness, to
unwrap the swaddling-bands, to break the subterranean shells, to demolish
the waxen bulkheads, to perforate the soil or to escape from prisons of
silk!
The woodland bug, whose egg is a masterpiece, invents I know not what
magical centre-bit, what curious piece of locksmith's work, in order to
unlock its natal casket and achieve its liberty.
For days the grasshopper "butts its head against the roughness of the soil,
and wars upon the pebbles; by dint of frantic wriggling it escapes from the
womb of the earth, bursts its old coat, and is transfigured, opening its
eyes to the light, and leaping for the first time."
The Bombyx of the pine-tree "decks its brow with points of diamond, spreads
its wings, and erects its plumes, and shakes out its fleece to fly only in
the darkness, to wed the same night, and to die on the morrow."
What marvellous inventions, what machinery, what incredible contrivances,
"in order that a tiny fly can emerge from under ground"!
The Anthrax assumes a panoply of trepans, an assortment of gimlets and
knives, harpoons and grapnels, in order to perforate its ceiling of cement;
then the lugubrious black fly appears, all moist as yet with the humours of
the laboratory of life, steadies itself upon its trembling legs, dries its
wings, quits its suit of armour, and takes flight."
The blue-fly, buried in the depth of the sand, "cracks its barrel-shaped
coffin," and splits its mask, in order to disinter itself; the head divides
into two halves, between which we see emerging and disappearing by turns a
monstrous tumour, which comes and goes, swells and shrivels, palpitates,
labours, lunges, and retires, thus compressing and gradually undermining
the sand, until at last the newborn fly emerges from the depth of the
catacombs. (13/1.)
Certain young spiders, in order to emancipate themselves, to conquer space,
and disperse themselves about the world, resort to an ingenious system of
aviation. They gain the highest point of the thicket, and release a thread,
which, seized by the wind, carries them away suspended. Each shines like a
point of light against the foliage of the cypresses. There is a continuous
stream of tiny passengers, leaping and descending in scattered sheaves
under the caresses of the sun, like atomic projectiles, like the fountain
of fire at a pyrotechnic display. What a glorious departure, what an entry
into the world! Gripping its aeronautic thread, the insect ascends in
apotheosis! (13/2.)
But if all are called all are not chosen. "How many can move only at the
greatest peril under the rugged earth, proceeding from shock to shock, in
the harsh womb of universal life, and, arrested by a grain of sand, succumb
half-way"!
There are others whom slower metamorphoses condemn to vegetate still longer
in the subterranean night, before they are permitted to assume their
festival attire, and share in their turn in the gladness of creation.
Thus the Cicada is forced to labour for long gloomy years in the darkness
before it can emerge from the soil. At the moment when it issues from the
earth the larva, soiled with mire, "resembles a sewer-man; its eyes are
whitish, nebulous, squinting, blind." Then "it clings to some twig, it
splits down the back, rejects its discarded skin, drier than horny
parchment, and becomes the Cigale, which is at first of a pale grass-green
hue." Then,
"Half drunken with her joy, she feasts
In a hail of fire";
And all day long drinks of the sugared sap of tender bark, and is silent
only at night, sated with light and heat. The song, which forms part of the
majestic symphony of the harvest-tide, announces merely its delight in
existence. Having passed years underground, the cigale has only a month to
reign, to be happy in a world of light, under the caressing sun. Judge
whether the wild little cymbals can ever be loud enough "to celebrate such
felicity, so well earned and so ephemeral"! (13/3.)
All sing for happiness, each after its kind, through the calm of the summer
days. Their minds are intoxicated; it is their fashion of praying, of
adoring, of expressing "the joys of life: a full crop and the sun on the
back." Even the humble grasshopper rubs its flanks to express its joy,
raises and lowers its shanks till its wing-cases squeak, and is enchanted
with its own music, which it commences or terminates suddenly "according to
the alternations of sun and shade." Each insect has its rhythm, strident or
barely perceptible; the music of the thickets and fallows caressed by the
sun, rising and falling in waves of joyful life.
The insects make merry; they hold uproarious festival; and they mate
insatiably; even before forming a mutual acquaintance; in a furious rush of
living, for "love is the sole joy of the animal," and "to love is to die."
Hardly unwrapped, still dusty from the strenuous labour of deliverance,
"the female of the Scolia is seized by the male, who does not even give her
time to wash her eyes." Having slept over a year underground, the Sitares,
barely rid of their mummy-cases, taste, in the sunlight, a few minutes of
love, on the very site of their re-birth; then they die. Life surges,
burns, flares, sparkles, rushes "in a perpetual tide," a brief radiance
between two nights.
A world of a myriad fairies fills the rustling forest: day and night it
unfolds a thousand marvellous pictures; about the root of a bramble, in the
shadow of an old wall, on a slope of loose soil, or in the dense thickets.
"The insect is transfigured for the nuptial ceremony; and each hopes, in
its ritual, to declare its passion." Fabre had some thought of writing the
Golden Book of their bridals and their wedding festivals (13/4.); the
Kamasutra of their feasts and rules of love; and with what art, at once
frank and reserved, has he here and there handled this wonderful theme! In
the radiant garden of delight, where no detail of truth is omitted, but
where nothing shocks us, Fabre reveals himself as he is in his
conversation; evading the subject where it takes a licentious turn;
fundamentally chaste and extremely reserved.
At the foot of the rocks the Psyche "appears in the balcony of her boudoir,
in the rays of the caressing sun; lying on the cloudy softness of an
incomparable eider-down." She awaits the visit of the spouse, "the gentle
Bombyx," who, for the ceremony, "has donned his feathery plumes and his
mantle of black velvet." "If he is late in coming, the female grows
impatient; then she herself makes the advances, and sets forth in search of
her mate."
Drawn by the same voluptuous and overwhelming force, the cricket ventures
to leave his burrow. Adorned "in his fairest attire, black jacket, more
beauteous than satin, with a stripe of carmine on the thigh," he wanders
through the wild herbage, "by the discreet glimmer of twilight," until he
reaches the distant lodging of the beloved. There at last he arrives "upon
the sanded walk, the court of honour that precedes the entry." But already
the place is occupied by another aspirant. Then the two rivals fall upon
one another, biting one another's heads, "until it ends by the retreat of
the weaker, whom the victor insults by a bravura cry." The happy champion
bridles, assuming a proud air, as of one who knows himself a handsome
fellow, before the fair one, who feigns to hide herself behind her tuft of
aphyllantus, all covered with azure flowers. "With a gesture of a fore-limb
he passes one of his antennae through his mandibles as though to curl it;
with his long-spurred, red-striped legs he shuffles with impatience; he
kicks the empty air; but emotion renders him mute." (13/5.)
In the foliage of the ash-tree the lover of the female Cantharis thrashes
his companion, who makes herself as small as she can, hiding her head in
her bosom; he bangs her with his fists, buffets her with his abdomen,
"subjects her to an erotic storm, a rain of blows"; then, with his arms
crossed, he remains a moment motionless and trembling; finally, seizing
both antennae of the desired one, he forces her to raise her head "like a
cavalier proudly seated on horse and holding the reins in his hands."
The Osmiae "reply by a click of the jaws to the advances of their lovers,
who recoil, and then, doubtless to make themselves more valiant, they also
execute a ferocious mandibular grimace. With this byplay of the jaws and
their menacing gestures of the head in the empty air the lovers have the
air of intending to eat one another." Thus they preface their bridals by
displays of gallantry, recalling the ancient betrothal customs of which
Rabelais speaks; the pretenders were cuffed and derided and threatened with
a hearty pummelling. (13/6.)
On the arid hillsides, where the doubtful rays of the moon pierce the
storm-clouds and illumine the sultry atmosphere, the pale scorpions, with
short-sighted eyes, hideous monsters with misshapen heads, "display their
strange faces, and two by two, hand in hand, stalk in measured paces amid
the tufts of lavender. How tell their joys, their ecstasies, that no human
language can express...!" (13/7.)
However, the glow-worm, to guide the lover, lights its beacon "like a spark
fallen from the full moon"; but "presently the light grows feebler, and
fades to a discreet nightlight, while all around the host of nocturnal
creatures, delayed in their affairs, murmur the general epithalamium."
(13/8.)
But their happy time is soon over; tragedy is about to follow idyll.
One must live, and "the intestine rules the world."
All creatures that fill the world are incessantly conflicting, and one
lives only at the cost of another.
On the other hand, in order that the coming generations may see the light,
the present generations must think of the preservation of the young.
"Perish all the rest provided the brood flourish!" And in the depth of
burrows the future larvae who live only for their stomachs, "little ogres,
greedy of living flesh," must have their prey.
To hunger and maternity let us also add love, which "rules the world by
conflict."
Such are the components of the "struggle for existence," such as Fabre has
described it, but with no other motive than to describe what he has
observed and seen. Such are the ordinary themes of the grandiose battles
which he has scattered through his narratives, and never did circus or
arena offer more thrilling spectacles; no jungle ever hid more moving
combats in its thickets."
"Each has its ruses of war, its methods of attack, its methods of killing."
What tactics--"studied, scientific, worthy of the athletes of the ancient
palaestra"--are those which the Sphex employs to paralyse the Cricket and
the Cerceris to capture the Cleona, to secure them in a suitable place, so
as to operate on them more surely and at leisure!
Beside these master paralysers, so expert in the art of dealing slow death,
there are those which, with a precision no less scholarly, kill and wither
their victims at a single stroke, and without leaving a trace: "true
practitioners in crime."
On the rock-rose bushes, with their great pink flowers, "the pretty
Thomisus, the little crab-spider, clad in satin," watches for the domestic
bee, and suddenly kills it, seizing the back of the head, while the
Philanthus, also seizing it by the head, plunges its sting under the chin,
neither too high nor too low, but "exactly in the narrow joint of the
neck," for both insects know that in this limited spot, in which is
concentrated a small nervous mass, something like a brain, is "the weak
point, most vulnerable of all," the fault in the cuirass, the vital centre.
Others, like the Araneidae, intoxicate their prey, and their subtle bite,
"which resembles a kiss," in whatever part of the body it is applied,
"produces almost immediately a gradual swoon."
Thus the great hairy Bourdon, in the course of its peregrinations across
the wastes of thyme, sometimes foolishly strays into the lair of the
Tarantula, whose eyes glimmer like jewels at the back of his den. Hardly
has the insect disappeared underground than a sort of shrill rattling is
heard, a "true death-song," immediately followed by the completest silence.
"Only a moment, and the unfortunate creature is absolutely dead, proboscis
outstretched and limbs relaxed. The bite of the rattlesnake would not
produce a more sudden paralysis."
The terrible spider "crouching on the battlements of his castle, his heavy
belly in the sun, attentive to the slightest rustling, leaps upon whatever
passes, fly or Libellula, and with a single stroke strangles his victim,
and drains its body, drinking the warm blood."
"To dislodge him from his keep needs all the cunning strategy of the
Pompilus; a terrible duel, a hand-to-hand combat, stupendous, truly epic,
in which the subtle address and the ingenious audacity of the winged insect
eventually triumph over the dreadful spider and his poisoned fangs."
(13/9.)
On the pink heather "the timid spider of the thickets suspends by ethereal
cables the branching whorl of his snare, which the tears of the night have
turned into chaplets of jewels...The magical jewellery sparkles in the sun,
attracting mosquitoes and butterflies; but whosoever approaches too closely
perishes, a victim of curiosity." Above the funnel is the trap, "a chaos of
springs, a forest of cordage; like the rigging of a ship dismembered by the
tempest. The desperate creature struggles in the shrouds of the rigging,
then falls into the gloomy slaughter-house where the spider lurks ready to
bleed his prey."
Death is everywhere.
Each crevice of bark, each shadow of a leaf, conceals a hunter armed with a
deadly weapon, all his senses on the alert. Everywhere are teeth, fangs,
talons, stings, pincers, and scythes.
Leaping in the long grasses, the Decticus with the ivory face "crunches the
heads of grasshoppers in his mandibles."
A ferocious creature, the grub of the Hemerobius, disembowels plant-lice,
making of their skins a battle-dress, covering its back with the
eviscerated victims, "as the Red Indian ties about his loins the tresses of
his scalped enemies."
Caterpillars are surrounded by the implacable voracity of the Carabidae:
"The furry skins are gaping with wounds; their contents escape in knots of
entrails, bright green with their aliment, the needles of the pine-tree;
the caterpillars writhe, struggling with loop-like movements, gripping the
sand with their feet, dribbling and gnashing their mandibles. Those as yet
unwounded are digging desperately in the attempt to escape underground. Not
one succeeds. They are scarcely half buried before some beetle runs to them
and destroys them by an eviscerating wound."
At the centre of its net, which seems "woven of moonbeams," in the midst of
its snare, a glutinous trap of infernal ingenuity, or hidden at a distance
in its cabin of green leaves, the Epeïra fasciata waits and watches for its
prey. Let the terrible hornet, or the Libellula auripennis, flying from
stem to stem, fall into the limed snare; the insect struggles, endeavours
to unwind itself; the net trembles violently as though it would be torn
from its cables. Immediately the spider darts forward, running boldly to
the intruder. With rapid gestures the two hinder limbs weave a winding-
sheet of silk as they rotate the victim in order to enshroud it...The
ancient Retiarius, condemned to meet a powerful beast of prey, appeared in
the arena with a net of cordage lying upon his left shoulder; the animal
sprang upon him; the man, with a sudden throw, caught it in the meshes; a
stroke of the trident despatched it. Similarly the Epeïra throws its web,
and when there is no longer any movement under the white shroud the spider
draws closer; its venomous fangs perform the office of the trident.
(13/10.)
The Praying Mantis, that demoniac creature which alone among the insects
turns its head to gaze, "whose pious airs conceal the most atrocious
habits," remains on the watch, motionless, for hours at a time. Let a great
grasshopper chance to come by: the Mantis follows it with its glance,
glides between the leaves, and suddenly rises up before it; "and then
assumes its spectral pose, which terrifies and fascinates the prey; the
wing-covers open, the wings spring to their full width, forming a vast
pyramid which dominates the back; a sort of swishing sound is heard, like
the hiss of a startled adder; the murderous fore-limbs open to their full
extent, forming a cross with the body, and exhibiting the axillae
ornamented with eyes vaguely resembling those of the peacock's tail, part
of the panoply of war, concealed upon ordinary occasions. These are only
exhibited when the creature makes itself terrible and superb for battle.
Then the two grappling-hooks are thrown; the fangs strike, the double
scythes close together and hold the victim as in a vice." (13/11.)
There is no peace; night falls and the horrible conflict continues in the
darkness. Atrocious struggles, merciless duels, fill the summer nights. On
the stems of the long grasses, beside the furrows, the glow-worm
"anaethetizes the snail," instilling into it its venom, which stupefies and
produces sleep, in order to immobilize its prey before devouring it.
Having chorused their joy all the day long in the sunshine, in the evening
the Cicadae fall asleep among the olives and the lofty plane-trees. But
suddenly there is a sound as of a cry of anguish, short and strident; it is
the despairing lamentation of the cicada, surprised in repose by the green
grasshopper, that ardent hunter of the night, which leaps upon the cicada,
seizes it by the flank, and devours the contents of the stomach. After the
orgy of music comes night and assassination.
Such is the gloomy epic which goes forward among the flowers, amidst the
foliage, under the shadowy boughs, and on the dusty fallows. Such are the
sights that nature offers amid the profound peace of the fields, behind the
flowering of the sudden spring-tide and the splendours of the summer. These
murders, these assassinations are committed in a mute and silent world, but
"the ear of the mind" seems to hear
"A tiger's rage and cries as of a lion
Roaring remotely through this pigmy world."
Was it to these thrilling revelations that Victor Hugo intended to apply
these so wonderfully appropriate lines? Was it he who bestowed upon Fabre,
according to a poetic tradition, the name of "the Homer of the insects,"
which fits him so marvellously well?
It is possible, although Fabre himself can cite no evidence to support
these suggestions; but let us respect the legend, simply because it is
charming, and because it adds an exact and picturesque touch to the
portrait of Fabre.
In this drama of a myriad scenes, in which the little actors in their
rustic stage play each in his turn their parts at the mercy of occasion and
the hazard of encounter, the humblest creatures are personages of
importance.
Like the human comedy, this also has its characters privileged by birth,
clothed in purple, dazzling with embroidery, "adorned with lofty plumes,"
who strut pretentiously; "its idle rich," covered with robes of gold of
rustling splendour, who display their diamonds, their topazes and their
sapphires; who gleam with fire and shine like mirrors, magnificent of mien;
but their brains are "dense, heavy, inept, without imagination, without
ingenuity, deprived of all common sense, knowing no other anxiety than to
drink in the sunlight at the heart of a rose or to sleep off their draughts
in the shadow of a leaf.
Those who labour, on the contrary, do not attract the eye, and the most
obscure are often the most interesting. Necessitous poverty has educated
and formed them, has excited in them "feats of invention," unsuspected
talents, original industries; a thousand curious and unexpected callings,
and no subject of poetry equals in interest the detailed history of one of
these tiny creatures, by which we pass without observing them, amid the
stones, the brambles, and the dead leaves. It is these above all that add
an original and epic note to the vast symphony of the world.
But death also has its poetry. Its shadowy domains hold lessons no less
magnificent, and the most putrid carrion is to Fabre a "tabernacle" in
which a divine comedy is enacted.
The ant, that "ardent filibuster, comes first, and commences to dissect it
piecemeal."
The Necrophori "exhaling the odour of musk, and bearing red pompons at the
end of their antennae," are "transcendent alchemists."
The Sarcophagi, or grey flesh flies, "with red bloodshot eyes, and the
stony gaze of a knacker"; the Saprinidae, "with bodies of polished ebony
like pearls of jet"; the Silpha aplata, with large and sombre wing-cases in
mourning; the shiny slow-trotting Horn-beetle; the Dermestes, "powdered
with snow beneath the stomach"; the slender Staphylinus; the whole fauna of
the corpse, the whole horde of artisans of death, "intoxicating themselves
with purulence, probing, excavating, mangling, dissecting, transmuting, and
stamping out infection."
Fabre gives a curious exposition of "that strange art" by which the grub of
the grey bot-fly, the vulgar maggot, by means of a subtle pepsine,
disintegrates and liquefies solid matter; and it is because this singular
solvent has no effect upon the epidermis that the fly, in its wisdom,
chooses by preference the mucous membranes, the corner of the eye, the
entrance of the nostrils, the borders of the lips, the live flesh of
wounds, there to deposit its eggs.
With what penetration this original mind has analysed "the operation of the
crucible in which all things are fused that they may recommence" and has
expounded the marvellous lesson which is revealed by decomposition and
putridity!
CHAPTER 14. PARALLEL LIVES.
We have now seen what entomology becomes in the hands of the admirable
Fabre. The vast poem of creation has never had a more familiar and luminous
interpreter, and you will nowhere find other work like his.
How far he outstrips Buffon and his descriptions of animals--so general, so
vague, so impersonal--his records unreliable and his entire erudition of a
second-hand quality!
It is with Réaumur that we are first of all tempted to compare him; and
some have chosen to see in him only one who has continued Réaumur's work.
In reality he has eagerly read Réaumur, although at heart he does not
really enjoy his writings; he has drunk from this fruitful source, but he
owes him no part of his own rich harvest.
But there are many affinities between them; they have many traits in
common, despite the points of difference between them.
The illustrious son of Rochelle was born, like Fabre, with a love of all
natural things, and before attacking the myriad problems of physics and
natural history, wherein he was to shine by so many curious discoveries, he
also had prepared himself by a profound study of mathematics.
Luckier than Fabre, however, Réaumur enjoyed not only the advantages of
birth, but all the material conditions necessary to his ardent intellectual
activity. Fortune overwhelmed her favourite with gifts, and played no small
part in his glory by enabling him, from an early age, to profit by his
leisure and to give a free rein to his ruling passions. He was no less
modest than the sage of Sérignan; self-effacing before others, says one of
his biographers, so that they were never made to feel his superiority.
(14/1.)
In the midst of the beautiful and spacious gardens at the end of the
Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where he finally made his home, he also contrived
to create for himself a Harmas after his own heart.
It was there that in the as yet virgin domain of entomology he unravelled
the riddle of the marvellous republic of the bees, and was able to expound
and interpret a large number of those tiny lives which every one had
hitherto despised, and which indeed they continued to despise until the
days of Fabre, or at least regarded as absolutely unimportant. He was the
first to venture to suspect their connection with much "that most nearly
concerns us," or to point out "all the singular conclusions" which may be
drawn therefrom. (14/2.)
How many details he has enshrined in his interesting "Memoirs," and how
many facts we may glean from this great master! He, like Fabre, had the
gift of charming a great number of his contemporaries. Tremblay, Bonnet,
and de Geer owed their vocations to Réaumur, not to speak of Huber, whose
genius he inspired.
A physicist before all, and accustomed to delicate and meticulous though
comparatively simple tasks, he had admirably foreseen the extraordinary
complication of these inquiries; so much so that, with the modesty of the
true scientist that he was, he regarded his own studies, even the most
substantial, as mere indications, intended to point the way to those that
followed him.
As methodical, in short, as the author of the "Souvenirs," the scrupulous
Réaumur wrote nothing that he himself had not proved or verified with the
greatest care; and we may be sure that all that he records of his personal
and immediate observations he has really seen with his own eyes.
In the wilderness of error he had, like Fabre, an infallible compass in his
extraordinary common sense; and, equally skilled in extracting from the
false the little particle of truth which it often contains, he was no less
fond of listening at the gate of legends, of tracing the source of
traditions; rightly considering that before deriding them as old-wives'
tales we should first probe in all directions into their origin and
foundation. (14/3.)
He was also tempted to experiment, and he well knew that in such problems
as those he attacked observation alone is often powerless to reveal
anything. It is enough to recall here one of the most promising and
unexpected of the discoveries which resulted from his experiments. Réaumur
was the first to conceive the ingenious idea of retarding the hatching of
insects' eggs by exposing them to cold, thus anticipating the application
of cold to animal life and the discoveries of Charles Tellier, whose more
illustrious forerunner he was; at the same time he discovered the secret of
prolonging, in a similar fashion, the larval existence of chrysalids during
a space of time infinitely superior to that of their normal cycle; and what
is more, he succeeded in making them live a lethargic life for years and
even for a long term of years, thus repeating at will the miracle of the
Seven Sleepers. (14/4.)
Too much occupied, however, with the smaller aspect of things, he had not
the art of forcing Nature to speak, and in the province of psychical
aptitudes he was barely able to rise above the facts.
As he was powerless to enter into real communion with the tiny creatures
which he observed, although his observations were conducted with religious
admiration; as he saw always only the outside of things, like a physicist
rather than a poet or psychologist, he contented himself with noting the
functioning of their organs, their methods of work, their properties, and
the changes which they undergo; he did not interpret their actions. The
mystery of the life which quivers within and around them eludes him. This
is why his books are such dry reading. He is like a bright garden full of
rare plants; but it is a monotonous garden, without life or art, without
distant vistas or wide perspectives. His works are somewhat diffuse and
full of repetitions; entire monographs, almost whole volumes, are devoted
to describing the emerging of a butterfly; but they form part of the
library of the curious lover of nature; they are consulted with interest,
and will always be referred to, but it cannot be said that they are read.
After Réaumur, according to the dictum of the great Latreille, entomology
was confined to a wearisome and interminable nomenclature, and if we except
the Hubers, two unparalleled observers, although limited and circumscribed,
the only writer who filled the interregnum between Réaumur and Fabre was
Léon Dufour.
In the quiet little town whither he went to succeed his father, this
military surgeon, turned country doctor, lived a busy and useful life.
While occupied with his humble patients, whom he preferred to regard merely
as an interesting clinic, and while keeping the daily record of his medical
observations, he felt irresistibly drawn "to ferret in all the holes and
corners of the soil, to turn over every stone, large or small; to shrink
from no fatigue, no difficulty; to scale the highest peaks, the steepest
cliffs, to brave a thousand dangers, in order to discover an insect or a
plant. (14/5.)
A disciple of Latreille, he shone above all as an impassioned descriptive
writer.
No one was more skilled in determining a species, in dissecting the head of
a fly or the entrails of a grub, and no spectacle in the world was for him
so fascinating as the triple life of the insect; those magical
metamorphoses, which he justly considered as one of the most astonishing
phenomena in creation. (14/6.)
He saw further than Réaumur, and burned with the same fire as Fabre, for he
also had the makings of a great poet. His curiosity had assembled enormous
collections, but he considered, as Fabre considered, that collecting is
"only the barren contemplation of a vast ossuary which speaks only to the
eyes, and not to the mind or imagination," and that the true history of
insects should be that of their habits, their industries, their battles,
their loves, and their private and social life; that one must "search
everywhere, on the ground, under the soil, in the waters, in the air, under
the bark of trees, in the depth of the woods, in the sands of the desert,
and even on and in the bodies of animals."
Was not this in reality the ambitious programme which Fabre was later to
propose to himself when he entered into his Harmas and founded his living
laboratory of entomology; he also having set himself as his exclusive
object the study of "the insects, the habits of life, the labours, the
struggles and the propagation of this little world, which agriculture and
philosophy should closely consider"? (14/7.)
Dufour also had admirably grasped the place of the insect in the general
harmony of the universe, and he clearly perceived that parasitism, that
imbrication of mutually usurping lives, is "a law of equilibration, whose
object is to set a limit to the excessive multiplication of individuals of
the same type," that the parasites are predestined to an imprescriptible
mission, and that this mysterious law "defies all explanation."
On the other hand, he did not become very intimate with these tiny peoples;
his attention was dispersed over too many points; perhaps he was
fundamentally incapable of concentrating himself for a long period upon a
circumscribed object; perhaps he lacked that first condition of genius,
patience, so essential to such researches: although he enriched science by
an infinite multitude of precious facts and has recorded a quantity of
details concerning the habits of insects, he did not succeed in
representing any one of these innumerable little minds. He had an intense
feeling for nature, but he was not able to interpret it, and his immense
volume of work, scattered through nearly three hundred monographs, remains
ineffective.
Let us compare with his work the vast epic of the "Souvenirs." We become
familiar with the whole life of the least insect, and all its unending
related circumstances; we obtain sudden glimpses of insight into our own
organization, with its abysses and its lacunae, and also into those rich
provinces or faculties which we are only beginning to suspect in the depths
of our unconscious activity.
In the evening twilight, after the vast andante of the cicadae is hushed,
at the hour when the shining glow-worms "light their blue fires," and the
"pale Italian cricket, delirious with its nocturnal madness, chirrups among
the rosemary thickets," while in the distance sounds the melodious tinkle
of the bell-ringer frogs, replying from one hiding-place to another, the
old master shows us that profound and mysterious magic with which matter is
endowed by the faintest glimmer of life.
He shows us the intimate connection of things, the universal harmony which
so intimately allies all creatures; and he shows us also that everywhere
and all around us, in the smallest object, poetry exists like a hidden
flame, if only we know how to seek it.
And in revealing so many marvellous energies in even the lowest creatures,
he helps us to divine the infinity of phenomena still unguessed-at, which
the subtlety of the unknowable force which thrills through the whole
universe hides from us under the most trivial appearances.
For he has not told everything; this incommensurable region, which had
hitherto remained unworked, is far from being exhausted.
How many unknown and hidden things are still left to be gleaned! There will
be a harvest for all. Remember that "even the humblest species either has
no history, or the little that has been written concerning it calls for
serious revision" (14/8.); that a single bush, such as the bramble,
suffices to rear more than fifty species of insects, and that each species,
according to the just observation of Réaumur, "has its habits, its tricks
of cunning, its customs, its industries, its art, its architecture, its
different instincts, and its individual genius."
What a stupendous alphabet to decipher, of which we have as yet only
commenced to read the first few letters! When we are able to read it almost
entirely, when observers are more numerous and have concerted their
efforts, mutually illuminating, completing and correcting one another,
then, and then only, we shall succeed, if not in resolving some of those
high problems which have never ceased to interest mankind, at least in
seizing some reflected knowledge of ourselves, and in seeing a little
farther into the kingdom of the mind.
CHAPTER 15. THE EVENINGS AT SÉRIGNAN.
But it will doubtless be long before a new Fabre will resume, with the same
heroic ardour, the life of solitary labour, varied only by a few austere
recreations.
Rising at six o'clock, he would first of all pace the tiles of his kitchen,
breakfast in hand; so imperious in him was the need of action, if his mind
was to work successfully, that even at this moment of morning meditation
his body must already be in movement. Then, after many turns among the
bushes of the enclosure, all irised with drops of dew which were already
evaporating, he went straight to his cell: that is, to the silence of his
laboratory.
There, in unsociable silence, invisible to all, he worked hard and steadily
until noon; pursuing an observation or carrying out some experiment, or
recording what he saw or what he had seen the day before, or re-drafting
his records in their final form.
How many who have come hither to knock upon the door in these morning
hours, or to ring at the little gate, silent as the tomb, which gives upon
the private path frequented only by foot-passengers on their way to the
fields, have undertaken a fruitless journey! But without such discipline
would it have been possible to accomplish such a task as his?
At last he would leave his workroom; jaded, exhausted by the excessive
intensity of his work, "face pale and features drawn." (15/1.)
Now he is "at leisure: the half-day is over" (15/2.); and he can satisfy
his immense need not of repose, but of relaxation and distraction in less
severe occupations; for he is never at any time nor anywhere inactive;
incessantly making notes, with little stumps of pencil which he carries
about in his pockets, and on the first scrap of paper that comes to hand,
of all that passes through his mind. Those eternal afternoons, which
usually, in the depth of the French provinces, prove so dull and wearisome,
seem short enough to him. Now he will halt before his plants, now stoop to
the ground, the better to observe a passing insect; always in search of
some fresh subject of study; or now bending over his microscope. (15/3.)
Then he undertakes, for his later-born children at Sérignan, the duties
which he formerly performed for the elder family at Orange: he teaches them
himself; he has much to do with them, for their sake and for his own as
well, for he is jealous of possessing them, and he regrets parting with
them. They too have their tasks arranged in advance.
They are his assistants, his appointed collaborators, who keep and relieve
guard, undertaking, in his absence, some observation already in hand, so
that no detail may be lost, no incident of the story that unrolls itself
sometimes with exasperating slowness beneath the bell-covers of the
laboratory or on some bush in the garden. He inspires the whole household
with the fire of his own genius, and all those about him are almost as
interested as he.
At home, in the house, always wearing his eternal felt hat, and absorbed in
meditation, he speaks little, holding that every word should have its
object, and only employing a term when he has tested its weight and
meaning. Silence at mealtimes again is a rule that no one of his household
would infringe. But he unbends his brow when he receives a friend at his
hospitable table, where but lately his smiling wife would sit, full of
little attentions for him. (15/4.)
Frugal in all respects, he barely touches the dishes before him; avoiding
all meats, and saving himself wholly for the fruits; for is not man
naturally frugivorous, by his teeth, his stomach, and his bowels? Certain
dishes repel him, for reasons of sentiment rather than through any real
disgust; such as paté de foie gras, which reminds him too forcibly of the
so cruelly tortured goose; such cruelty is too high a price to pay for a
mere greasy mouthful. (15/5.) On the other hand, he drinks wine with
pleasure, the harsh, rough "wine of the country" of the plains of Sérignan.
He is also well able to appreciate good things and appetizing cookery; no
one ever had a finer palate; but he is happiest in seeing others appreciate
the pleasures of the table. Witness that breakfast worthy of Gargantua,
which he himself organized in honour of his guests, whom he had invited to
an excursion over the Ventoux Alp; where he seems expressly to have
commanded "that all should come in shoals." What a tinkling of bottles,
what piles of bread! There are green olives "flowing with brine," black
olives "seasoned with oil," sausages of Arles "with rosy flesh, marbled
with cubes of fat and whole peppercorns," legs of mutton stuffed with
garlic "to dull the keen edge of hunger"; chickens "to amuse the molars";
melons of Cavaillon too, with white pulp, not forgetting those with orange
pulp, and to crown the feast those little cheeses, so delightfully
flavoured, peculiar to Mont Ventoux, "spiced with mountain herbs," which
melt in the mouth. (15/6.)
But his greatest pleasure is his pipe; a briar, which in absence of mind he
is always allowing to go out, and always relighting.
Respectful of all traditions, he has kept up the observance of old customs;
no Christmas Eve has ever been passed under the roof of his Harmas without
the consecrated meats upon the table; the heart of celery, the nougat of
almonds, the dish of snails, and the savoury-smelling turkey. Then, stuck
into the Christmas bread (15/7.), the sprigs of holly, the verbouisset, the
sacred bush whose little starry flowers and coral berries, growing amid
evergreen leaves, affirm the eternal rebirth of indestructible nature.
At Sérignan Fabre is little known and little appreciated. To tell the
truth, folk regard him as eccentric; they have often surprised him in the
country lying on his stomach in the middle of a field, or kneeling on the
ground, a magnifying glass in hand, observing a fly or some one of those
insignificant creatures in which no sane person would deign to be
interested.
How should they know him, since he never goes into the village? When he did
once venture thither to visit his friend Charrasse, the schoolmaster, his
appearance was an event of which every one had something to say, so greatly
did it astonish the inhabitants. (15/8.)
Yet he never hesitates to place his knowledge at the service of all, and
welcomes with courtesy the rare pilgrims in whom a genuine regard is
visible, although he is always careful never to make them feel his own
superiority; but he very quickly dismisses, sometimes a trifle hastily,
those who are merely indiscreet or importunate; pedantic and ignorant
persons he judges instantaneously with his piercing eyes; with such people
he cannot emerge from his slightly gloomy reserve; he shuts himself up like
the snail, which, annoyed by some displeasing object, retires into its
shell, and remains silent in their presence.
Professors come to consult him: asking his advice as to their programmes of
instruction, or begging him to resolve some difficult problem or decide
some especially vexed question; and his explanations are so simple, so
clear, so logical that they are astonished at their own lack of
comprehension and their embarrassment. (15/9.)
But there are few who venture within the walls of that enclosure, which
seems to shut out all the temptations of the outer world; the only intimate
visitors to the Harmas are the village schoolmaster--first Laurent, then
Louis Charrasse (15/10.), and later Jullian--and a blind man, Marius.
This latter lost his sight at the age of twenty. Then, to earn a living, he
began to make and repair chairs, and in his misfortune, although blind and
extremely poor, he kept a calm and contented mind.
Fabre had discovered the sage and the blind man on his arrival at Sérignan,
and also Favier (15/11.), "that other native, whose jovial spirit was so
prompt to respond, and who helped to dig up the Harmas; to set up the
planks and tiles of the little kitchen-garden; a rude task, since this
scrap of uncultivated ground was then but a terrible desert of pebbles." To
Favier fell the care of the flowers, for the new owner was a great lover of
flowers. Potted plants, sometimes of rare species, were already, as to-day,
crowded in rows upon the terrace before the house, where all the summer
they formed a sort of vestibule in the open air, on either side of the
entrance; and these Fabre never ceased to watch over with constant and
meticulous care. Both spoke the same language, and the words they exchanged
were born of a like philosophy; for Favier also loved nature in his own
way, and at heart was an artist; and when, after the day's work, sitting
"on the high stone of the kitchen hearth, where round logs of green oak
were blazing," he would evoke, in his picturesque and figurative language,
the memories of an old campaigner, he charmed all the household and the
evening seemed to pass with strange rapidity.
When this precious servant and boon companion had disappeared, after two
years of digging, sowing, weeding, and hoeing, all was ready; the frame was
completed and the work could be commenced. It was then that Marius became
the master's appointed collaborator, and it is he who now constructs his
apparatus, his experimental cages; stuffs his birds, helps to ransack the
soil, and shades him with an umbrella while he watches under the burning
sun. Marius cannot see, but so intimate is his communion with his master,
so keen his enthusiasm for all that Fabre does, that he follows in his
mind's eye, and as though he could actually see them, all the doings at
which he assists, and whose inward reflection lights up his wondering
countenance.
Marius was not only rich in feeling and the gift of inner vision; he had
also a marvellously correct ear. He was a member of the "Fanfare" of
Sérignan, in which he played the big drum, and there was no one like him
for keeping perfect time and for bringing out the clash of the cymbals.
Charrasse was no less fervent a disciple; he worshipped science and all
beautiful things; and he could even conceive a noble passion for his
exhausting trade of school-teaching.
Like Marius, he ate "a bitter bread"; and Fabre would get on with them all
the better in that they, like himself, had lived a difficult life. "Man is
like the medlar," he liked to tell them; "he is worth nothing until he has
ripened a long time in the attic, on the straw."
"L'homme est comme la nèfle, il n'est rien qui vaille
S'il n'a mûri longtemps, au grenier, sur la paille."
These humble companions afforded him the simple conversation which he likes
so well; so natural, and so full of sympathy and common sense. They
customarily spent Thursday and Sunday afternoons at the Harmas; but these
beloved disciples might call at any hour; the master always welcomed them,
even in the morning, even when he was entirely absorbed in his work and
could not bear any one about him. They were his circle, his academy; he
would read them the last chapter written in the morning; he shared his
latest discoveries with them; he did not fear to ask advice of their
"fertile ignorance." (15/12.)
Charrasse was a "Félibre," versed in all the secrets of the Provençal
idiom, of which he knew all the popular terms, the typical expressions and
turns of speech; and Fabre loved to consult him, to read some charming
verses which he had just discovered, or to recite some delightful rustic
poem with which he had just been inspired; for in such occupations he found
one of his favourite relaxations, giving free vent to his fancy, a loose
rein to the poet that dwells within him. These poems the piety of his
brother has preserved in the collection entitled "Oubreto." It is at such a
moment that one should see his black eyes, full of fire; his power of
mimicry and expression, his impassioned features, lit up by inspiration,
truly idealized, almost transfigured, are at such times a thing to be
remembered.
Sometimes, again, in the shadow of the planes, on summer afternoons, when
the cigales were falling silent; or in the winter, before the blazing
fireplace, in that dining-room on the ground floor in which he welcomed his
visitors; when out of doors the mistral was roaring and raging, or the rain
clattering on the panes, the little circle was enlarged by certain new-
comers, his nephews, nieces, a few intimates, of whom, a little later, I
myself was often one. At such times his humour and imagination were given
full play, and it was truly a rare pleasure to sit there, sipping a glass
of mulled wine, during those delightful and earnest hours; to taste the
charm of his smiling philosophy, his picturesque conversation, full of
exact ideas, all the more profound in that they were founded on experience
and pointed or adorned by proverbs, adages, and anecdotes. Thanks to the
daily reading of the "Temps," which one of his friends regularly sends him,
Fabre is in touch with all the ideas of the day, and expresses his judgment
of them; for example, he does not conceal his scepticism with regard to
certain modern inventions, such as the aeroplane, whose novelty rather
disturbs his mind, and whose practical bearing seems to him to be on the
whole somewhat limited.
Thus even the most recent incidents find their way into the solitude of the
Harmas and help to sustain the conversation.
"The first time we resume our Sérignan evenings," he wrote to his nephew on
the morrow of one of these intimate gatherings, "we will have a little chat
about your Justinian, whom the recent drama of "Théodora" has just made the
fashion. Do you know the history of that terrible hussy and her stupid
husband? Perhaps not entirely; it is a treat I am keeping for you."
(15/13.)
The only subject which is hardly ever mentioned during these evenings at
Sérignan is politics, although Fabre, strange as it may seem, was one year
appointed to sit on the municipal council.
The son of peasants, who has emerged from the people yet has always
remained a peasant, has too keen a sense of injustice not to be a democrat;
and how many young men has he not taught to emancipate themselves by
knowledge? But above all he is proud of being a Frenchman; his mind, so
lucid, so logical, which has never gone abroad in search of its own
inspirations, and has never been influenced by any but those old French
masters, François Dufour and Réaumur, and the old French classics, has
always felt an instinctive repugnance, which it has never been able to
overcome, for all those ideas which some are surreptitiously seeking to put
forward in our midst in favour of some foreign trade-mark.
Although his visit to the court of Napoleon III left him with a rather
sympathetic idea of the Emperor, whose gentle, dreamy appearance he still
likes to recall, he detested the Empire and the "brigand's trick" which
established it.
On the day of the proclamation of the Republic he was seen in the streets
of Avignon in company with some of his pupils. He was agreeably surprised
at the turn events had taken, and delighted by the unforeseen result of the
war.
A spirit as proud and independent as his was naturally the enemy of any
species of servitude. State socialism of the equalitarian and communistic
kind was to him no less horrifying. Was not Nature at hand, always to
remind him of her eternal lessons?
"Equality, a magnificent political label, but scarcely more! Where is it,
this equality? In our societies shall we find even two persons exactly
equal in vigour, health, intelligence, capacity for work, foresight, and so
many other gifts which are the great factors of prosperity?...A single note
does not make a harmony: we must have dissimilar notes; discords even,
which, by their harshness, give value to the concords; human societies are
harmonious only thus, by the concourse of dissimilarities." (15/14.)
And what a puerile Utopia, what a disappointing illusion is that of
communism! Let us see under what conditions, at the price of what
sacrifices, nature here and there realizes it.
Among the bees "twenty thousand renounce maternity and devote themselves to
celibacy to raise the prodigious family of a single mother."
Among the ants, the wasps, the termites "thousands and thousands remain
incomplete and become humble auxiliaries of a few who are sexually gifted."
Would you by chance reduce man to the life of the Processional
caterpillars, content to nibble the pine-needles among which they live, and
which, satisfied to march continually along the same tracks, find within
reach an abundant, easy, and idle subsistence? All have the same size, the
same strength, the same aptitudes. No initiative. "What one does the others
do, with equal zeal, neither better nor worse." On the other hand, there is
"no sex, no love." And what would be a society in which there was no work
done for pleasure and from which love and the family were banished? What
would be the effect upon its progress, its welfare, its happiness? Would
not all that make the charm of life disappear for good? However imperfect
our present society may be, however mysterious its destinies, it is not in
socialism that Fabre foresees the perfection of future humanity, for to him
the true humanity does not as yet exist; it is making its way, it is slowly
progressing, and in this evolution he wishes with all his heart to believe.
Modern humanity is as yet only a shapeless grimacing caricature, and its
life is like a play written by madmen and played by drunken actors;
according to those profound words of the great poet, with which his mind is
in some sort imbued; which he often repeats, and which he has transcribed
at the head of one of his last records as an epigraph and a constant
reminder.
And you who groan over the distressing problem of depopulation, lend an ear
to the lesson of the Copris, "which trebles its customary batch of
offspring in times of abundance, and in times of dearth imitates the
artisan of the city who has only just enough to live on, or the bourgeois,
whose numerous wants are more and more costly to satisfy, limiting the
number of its offspring lest they should go in want, often reducing the
number of its children to a single one." (15/15.)
Instead of running after so many false appearances and false pleasures,
learn to return to simpler tastes, to more rustic manners; free yourselves
from a mass of factitious needs; steep yourself anew in the antique
sobriety, whose desires were sager; return to the fields, the source of
abundance, and the earth, the eternal foster-mother!
And in this appeal to return to nature, which perhaps since the time of
Rousseau has never been worded so eloquently, Fabre has in view if not the
strong, the predestined, who are called elsewhere, and who are actuated by
the sense of great tasks to be performed, at least all those of rural
origin, all those for whom the love of the family, the daily task, and a
peaceful heart are really the great things of life, the things that count,
the things that suffice.
He himself, although he was one of the strong, did not care to break any of
the ties that bound him to his origins. Like the Osmia, "which retains a
tenacious memory of its home," the beloved village of his childhood has
never been effaced from his memory, and for a long time the desire to leave
his bones there haunted him. His mind often returned to it; he thought that
there, better than anywhere else, he would find peace; that it would please
him to wander among the rocks, the trees, the stones which he had so loved,
in the old days, and that all these things would recognize him too.
One day, however, when I was begging him to make up his mind on this point-
-it was one of those peaceful evenings which are troubled under the plane-
trees only by the tinkling of the fountain--he confided to me that his
beloved Sérignan had at last, in his secret preferences, obliterated the
old longing. As he advanced in life, in fact, although he never forgot his
rude natal countryside, he felt that new links were daily binding him more
closely to those heaths and mountains on which his heart had been so often
thrilled with the intense joy of discovery, and that it was indeed in this
soil, to him so full of delight, amid its beautiful hymenoptera and
scarabaei, that he would wish to be buried.
Fabre is by no means the misanthrope that some have chosen to think him. He
delights in the society of women, and knows how to welcome them gracefully;
and more than any one he is sensitive to the pleasant and stimulating
impressions produced by the conversation of cultivated people.
He is no less fond of the arts, provided he finds in them a sincere
interpretation of life. This is why the theatre, with its false values, its
tinsel and affectation, has to him seemed a gross deformation of the
reality, ever since the day when at Ajaccio he attended a performance of
"Norma," in which the moon was represented by a round transparent disc, lit
from behind by a lantern hanging at the end of a string, whose oscillation
revealed by turns first the luminary and then the transparency. This was
enough to disgust him for ever with the theatre and the opera, whose
motionless choruses, contrasting with the sometimes frantic movement of the
music, left him with a memory of an insane and illogical performance.
Nevertheless, he adored music, of which he knew something, having learned
it, as he learned his drawing, without a master; but he preferred the naive
songs of the country, or the melody of a flute; to the most scholarly
concert-music. (15/16.) In the intimacy of the modest chamber which serves
as the family salon, with its few shabby and old-fashioned pieces of
furniture, he plays on an indifferent harmonium little airs of his own
composition, the subjects of which were at first suggested by his own
poetry. Like Rollinat, Fabre rightly considers that music should complete,
accentuate, and release that which poetry has perforce left incomplete or
indefinite. This is why he makes the bise laugh and sing and roar; why he
imitates the organ-tones of the wind in the pines, and seeks to reproduce
some of the innumerable rhythms of nature; the frenzy of the lizard, the
wriggling of the stickle-back, the jumping gait of the frog, the shrill hum
of the mosquito, the complaint of the cricket, the moving of the Scarabaei,
and the flight of the Libellulae.
Too busy by day to find time for much reading, it was at night that he
would shut himself up. Retiring early to his little chamber, with bare
walls and bare tile floor, and a window opening to the garden, he would lie
on his low bed, with curtains of green serge, and would often read far into
the night.
This philosopher, to whose books the philosophers of the future will resort
for new theories and original ideas, refuses to have any commerce with
other philosophers, disdaining their systems and preferring to go straight
to the facts. Even when he took up Darwin's "Origin of Species" he did
little more than open the book; so wearisome and uninteresting, he told me,
did he find the reading of it. On the other hand, he is full of the ancient
philosophers, and as he did not read them very extensively in his youth and
middle age, he has returned to them finally with love and predilection for
"these good old books." Unlike many thinkers of the day, he is persuaded
that we cannot with impunity dispense with classic studies; and he rightly
considers that science and the humanities are not rivals, but allies. Above
all he has a particular affection for Virgil; one may say that he is
steeped in his poetry; and he knows La Fontaine by heart. The style of the
latter is curiously like his own, and Fabre owns himself as his disciple;
certainly La Fontaine's is the most active influence which his work
reveals. He has a profound acquaintance with Rabelais, who was always his
"friend" and who constantly crops up in his conversation and his chance
remarks.
After these his intellectual foster-parents have been Courrier, Toussenel,
of whom he is passionately fond, and Rousseau, of whom he cares for little
but his "Lettres sur la botanique," full of such fresh impressions, in
which we feel not the literary man but the "craftsman"; he also cherishes
Michelet; so full of intuition, although he never handled actual things and
knew nothing of the practice of the sciences; not learned, but overflowing
with love; his magic pen, his powers of evocation, and his deft brushwork
delight Fabre, despite the poverty and insufficiency of his fundamental
facts (15/17.); sometimes Michelet had been his inspiration. The two do
really resemble one another; Michelet was no less fitted than Fabre to play
the confidant to Nature, and his heart was of the same mettle.
Since I have spoken of his favourites, let me also speak of his dislikes;
Racine, whom he cannot bear; Molière, whom he does not really like; Buffon,
whom he frankly detests for his too fluent prose, his ostentatious style,
and his vain rhetoric. The only naturalist whom he might really have
delighted in, had he possessed his works and been able to read them at
leisure, is Audubon, the enthusiastic painter of the birds of America. In
him he felt the presence of a mind and a temper almost identical with his
own.
CHAPTER 16. TWILIGHT.
How he has laboured in this solitude! For he considers that he is still far
from having completed his task. He feels more and more that he has scarcely
done more than sketch the history of this singular and almost unknown
world. "The more I go forward," he wrote to his brother in 1903, "the more
clearly I see that I have struck my pick into an inexhaustible vein, well
worthy of being exploited." (16/1.)
What studies he has undertaken, what observations he has carried out,
"almost at the same time, the same moment!" His laboratory is crowded with
these subjects of experiments. "As though I had a long future before me"--
he was then just eighty years old--"I continue indefatigably my researches
into the lives of these little creatures." (16/2.)
Work in solitude seems to him, more and more, the only life possible, and
he cannot even imagine any other.
"The outer world scarcely tempts me at all; surrounded by my little family,
it is enough for me to go into the woods from time to time, to listen to
the fluting of the blackbirds. The very idea of the town disgusts me.
Henceforth it would be impossible for me to live in the little cage of a
citizen. Here I am, run wild, and I shall be so till the end." (16/3.)
For him work has become more than ever an organic function, the true
corollary of life. "Away with repose! For him who would spend his life
properly there is nothing like work--so long as the machine will operate."
Is this not the great law for all creatures so long as life lasts?
Why should the man who has made a fortune, who has neither children nor
relations, and who may die tomorrow, continue to work for himself alone, to
employ his days and his energies in useless labours which will profit
neither himself nor his kind?
Ask of the Halictus, which, no longer capable of becoming a mother, makes
herself guardian of a city, in order still to labour within the measure of
her means.
Ask of the Osmia, the Megachile, the Anthidium, which "with no maternal
aim, for the sole joy of labour, strive to expend their forces in the
accomplishment of their vain tasks, until the forces of life fail."
Ask of the bee, which inaction leaves passive and melancholy so that she
presently dies of weariness; of the Chalicodoma, so eager a worker that she
will "let herself be crushed under the feet of the passer-by rather than
abandon her task."
Ask it of all nature, which knows neither halt nor repose, and who,
according to the profound saying of Goethe "has pronounced her malediction
upon all that retards or suspends her progress."
Let us then labour, men and beasts, "so that we may sleep in peace; grubs
and caterpillars in that torpor which prepares them for the transformation
into moths and butterflies, and ourselves in the supreme slumber which
dissolves life in order to renew it."
Let us work, in order to nourish within ourselves that divine intuition
thanks to which we leave our original impress upon nature; let us work, in
order to bring our humble contribution to the general harmony of things, by
our painful and meritorious labour; in order that we may associate
ourselves with God, share in His creation, and embellish and adorn the
earth and fill it with wonders. (16/4.)
Forward then! always erect, even amid the tombs, to forget our griefs.
Fabre finds no better consolation to offer his brother, who has lost almost
in succession his wife and his eldest daughter:
"Do not take it ill if I have not condoled with you on the subject of your
recent losses. Tried so often by the bitterness of domestic grief, I know
too well the inanity of such consolations to offer the like to my friends.
Time alone does a little cicatrize such wounds; and, let us add, work. Let
us keep on our feet and at work as long as we are able. I know no better
tonic." (16/5.)
And this exhortation to work, which recurs so often in the first letters of
his youth, was to be the last word of the last volume which so splendidly
terminates the incomparable series of his "Souvenirs": "Laboremus."
...
Age has killed neither his courage nor his energies, and he continues to
work with the same zeal at nearly ninety years of age, and with as much
eagerness as though he were destined to live for ever.
Although his physical forces are failing him, although his limbs falter,
his brain remains intact, and is giving us its last fruit in his studies on
the Cabbage caterpillar and the Glow-worm, which mark a sudden
rejuvenescence of thought on his part, and the commencement of a new cycle
of studies, which promise to be of the greatest originality.
To him the animal world has always been full of dizzy surprises, and the
insects led him "into a new and barely suspected region, which is ALMOST
ABSURD." (16/6.)
The glow-worms, motionless on their twigs of thyme, light their lamps of an
evening, in the cool of the beautiful summer nights. What do these fires
signify? How explain the mystery of this phosphorescence? Why this slow
combustion, "this species of respiration, more active than in the ordinary
state"? and what is the oxidizable substance "which gives this white and
gentle luminosity"? Is it a flame of love like that which lights the Agaric
of the olive-tree "to celebrate its nuptials and the emission of its
spores"? But what reason can the larva have for illuminating itself? Why is
the egg, already enclosed in the secrecy of the ovaries, already luminous?
"The soft light of the Agaric has confounded our ideas of optics; it does
not refract, it does not form an image when passed through a lens, it does
not affect ordinary photographic plates." (16/7.)
But here are other miracles:
"Another fungus, the Clathrix, with no trace of phosphorescence, affects
photographic plates almost as quickly as would a ray of sunlight. The
Clathrix tenebrosa does what the Agaricus olearius has no power to do."
(16/8.)
And if the beacon of the Glow-worm recalls the light of the Agaric, the
Clathrix reminds us of another insect, the Greater Peacock moth.
In the obscurity of a dark chamber this splendid moth emits phantasmal
radiations, perhaps intermittent and reserved for the season of nuptials,
signals invisible to us, and perceptible only to those children of the
night, who may have found this means to communicate one with another, to
call one another in the darkness, and to speak with one another. (16/9.)
Such are the interesting subjects which only yesterday were occupying this
great worker; the occult properties, the radiant energies of organic
matter; of phosphorescence, of light, the living symbols of the great
universal Eros.
But embarrassment long ago succeeded the ephemeral prosperity which marked
the first years of his installation at Sérignan, and that period of plenty
was followed by a period of difficulty, almost of indigence. His class-
books, which had succeeded marvellously, and from which the royalties had
quickly attained to nearly 640 pounds sterling, which was the average
figure for nearly ten years, were then no longer in vogue. Already the
times had changed. France was in the crisis of the anti-clerical fever.
Fabre made frequent allusions in his books of a spiritual nature, and many
primary inspectors could not forgive what they regarded as a blemish.
We must also mention the keen competition caused by the appearance of
similar books, usually counterfeit, and the more harmful for that; and as
their adoption depended entirely on the caprice of commissions or the
choice of interested persons, those of Fabre were gradually ceasing to
sell.
It was from 1894 especially that their popularity declined so rapidly:
"Despite all my efforts here I am more anxious than ever about the future,"
he wrote to his publisher on the 27th of January, 1899; "two more of my
books are about to disappear, a prelude to total shipwreck...I begin to
despair." (16/10.)
He was not the man to have saved much money; numerous charges were always
imposing themselves on him, and his first wife, careless of expenditure,
had been somewhat extravagant.
While his position as teacher deteriorated his "Souvenirs" brought him
little more than a nominal profit; for to most people he was still
completely unknown among the potentates who monopolize the attention of the
crowd.
"Work such as a Réaumur might be proud of will leave me a beggar, that goes
without saying, but at least I shall have left my grain of sand. I would
long ago have given up in despair, had I not, to give me courage, the
continual research after truth in the little world whose historian I have
become. I am hoarding ideas, and I make shift to live as I can." (16/11.)
Yet his reputation had long ago crossed the frontiers of his country. He
had been a corresponding member of the Institute of France since 1887, and
a Petit d'Ormoy prizeman. (16/12.) He was a member of the most celebrated
foreign academies, and the entomological societies of the chief capitals of
Europe; but his fame had not passed the walls of these academies and the
narrow boundaries of the little world of professional biologists and
philosophers.
Even in these circles, where he was almost exclusively read and
appreciated, he was little known, and although he was much admired,
although he was readily given credit for his admirable talent and
exceptional knowledge, his readers were far from realizing the real powers
of this world of life which he has called into being. His books are of
those whose fertilizing virtues remain long hidden, to shine only at a
distance, when much frothy writing, that has made a sudden noise in its
time, has fallen into oblivion.
Every two or three years, after much fond polishing, he would open the door
to yet another volume which was ready to go forth; adding astonishing
chapters of the history of insects, wonderful fragments of animal
psychology, but always obtaining only the same circumscribed success; that
is, exciting no public curiosity, and remaining unperceived in the midst of
general indifference.
His books interested only a select class, who, it is true, welcomed them
eagerly, and read them with wonder and delight. If they excited the
curiosity of a few philosophers, of scientists and inquirers, and here and
there determined a vocation, still more, perhaps, did they charm writers
and poets; they consoled Rostand at the end of a serious illness, their
virtue, in some sort healing, procuring him both moral repose and a
delightful relaxation. (16/13.) For all these, we may say, he has been one
of those ten or twelve authors whom one would wish to take with one into a
long exile, were they reduced to choosing no more before leaving
civilization for ever.
Yet we must admit that this work has certain undeniable faults. The title,
in the first place, has nothing alluring about it, and is calculated to
deter rather than to attract purchasers, by evoking vague ideas of
repulsive studies, too arduous or too special.
People have no idea of the wonderful fairyland concealed by this unpopular
title; no conception that these records are intended, not merely for the
scientist pure and simple, but in reality for every one.
Moreover, the first few volumes were in no way seductive. They boasted not
the most elementary drawings to help the reader; not the slightest woodcut
to give a direct idea of the insects described; of their shape, aspect, or
physiognomy; and a simple sketch, however poor, is often worth more than
long and laborious descriptions. The first volumes especially, printed
economically, at the least possible expense, were not outwardly attractive.
It is also true that he had never founded any great hopes on the sale of
such works.
Very few people are really interested in the lower animals, and Fabre has
been reproached with wasting his time over "childish histories, unworthy of
serious attention and unlikely to make money," of wasting in frivolous
occupations the time which is passing so quickly and can never return. And
why should he have still further wasted so many precious hours in executing
minute drawings whose reproduction would have involved an expenditure which
his publisher would not dare to venture upon, and which he himself could
not afford?
For this universal inquirer was well fitted for such a task, and all these
creatures which he had depicted he is capable of representing with brush
and pencil as faithfully as with his pen. He had it in him to be not only a
writer, but an excellent draughtsman, and even a great painter. He has
reproduced in water-colour, with loving care, the decorations of the
specimens of prehistoric pottery which his excavations have revealed, and
which he has endeavoured to reconstruct, with all the science of an
archaeologist. He has displayed the same skill in water-colour in that
astonishing iconography, in which he has detailed, with marvellous
accuracy, all the peculiarities of the mycological flora of the olive-
growing districts. (16/14.)
As for those "paltry figures" insufficient or flagrantly incorrect in
drawing, with which many people are satisfied, he regards them as
"intolerable" in his own books, and as absolutely contradicting the
rigorous accuracy of his text. (16/15.)
Of late years photography and the skill of his son Paul have supplied this
deficiency. He taught his son to fix the insects on the sensitive plate in
their true attitudes, in the reality of their most instantaneous gestures.
However valuable such documents may be, how much we should prefer fine
drawings, giving relief not only to forms and colours, but also to the most
characteristic features and the whole living physiognomy of the creature!
This is the function of art; but the great artist that was in Fabre was
capable in this domain of rivalling the magical talent of an Audubon.
Such work was relinquished, although so many romances of nature, so much
dishonest patch-work, won the applause due to success.
Fabre fell more and more into a state bordering on indigence, and finally
he was quite forgotten. An opponent of evolution, he was out of the
fashion. The encyclopaedias barely mentioned him. Lamarckians and
Darwinians, who still made so much noise in the world, ignored him; and no
one came now to open the gate behind which was ageing, in obscurity and
deserted, "one of the loftiest and purest geniuses which the civilized
world at that moment possessed; one of the most learned naturalists and one
of the most marvellous of poets in the modern and truly legitimate sense of
the word." (16/16.)
In the department of Vaucluse, where he lived for more than sixty years, in
Avignon itself, where he had taught for twenty years, the prefect Belleudy,
who had succeeded in approaching him, was astonished and distressed to find
"so great a mind so little known"; for even those about him scarcely knew
his name. (16/17.)
But what matter! The hermit of Sérignan was not discouraged; he was
disturbed only by the failure of his strength, and the fear that he could
not much longer exercise that divine faculty which had always consoled him
for all his sorrows and his disappointments. He could scarcely drag his
weary limbs across the pebbles of his Harmas; but he bore his eighty-seven
years with a fine disdain for age and its failings, and although the fire
of his glance and that whole, eager countenance still expressed his passion
for the truth, his abrupt gestures, touched with irony, his simple bearing,
and the extreme modesty of his whole person, spoke sufficiently of his
profound indifference toward outside contingencies, for the baubles of fame
and all the stupidities of life.
At a few miles' distance, in another village, that other great peasant,
Mistral, the singer of Provence, the poet of love and joy, the minstrel of
rustic labour and antique faiths, was pursuing, amid the homage of his
apotheosis, the incredible cycle of his splendid existence.
This glory had come to him suddenly; this fame "whose first glances are
sweeter than the fires of dawn," and which was never to desert him for
fifty long years.
The wind of favour which had sweetened his youth continued to propel him in
full sail. He had only to show himself to be at once surrounded,
felicitated, worshipped; and his mere presence would sway a crowd as the
black peaks of the high cypresses are swayed by the great wind that bears
his name. Like Fabre, he had remained faithful to his native soil; that
soil which the great naturalist had never been able to leave without at
once longing impatiently to return to its dusty olives where the cigale
sings, its ilex trees and its thickets; and so he lived far from the
cities, in a quiet village, with the same horizon of plains and hills that
were balmy with thyme, leading in his little home an equal life full of
wisdom and simplicity.
The hermit of Sérignan was the Lucretius of this Provence, which had
already found its Virgil. With a very different vision, each had the same
rustic tastes, the same love of the free spaces of wild nature and the
scenes of rural life. But Mistral, wherever he looked, saw human life as
happy and simple, through the prism of his creative imagination and the
optimism of his happy life. Fabre, on the contrary, behind the sombre
realities which he studied, saw only the ferocious engagement of confused
living forces, and a frightful tragedy.
Thus their two lives, which were like parallel lines, never meeting, were
in keeping with their work. And while Mistral, still young and triumphant
despite the years, was at Maillane overwhelmed with honours and
consideration, the poor great man of Sérignan lived an obscure and
inglorious existence.
He had the greatest trouble to live and rear his family, and almost his
sole income consisted of an uncertain sum of 120 pounds sterling annually,
which he had for some years received, in the guise of a pension, by the
generosity of the Institute, as the Gegner prize.
Finally his situation was so precarious that he decided to sell to a museum
that magnificent collection of water-colour plates in which he had
represented, life-size and with an astonishing truth of colour, all the
fungi which grow in Provence.
He wrote to Mistral on the subject, after the visit which the latter paid
him in the spring of 1908: the only visit of the kind. Before meeting in
Saint-Estelle, the Paradise of the Félibres, they had wished not to die
before at least meeting on this earth.
Fabre wrote to mistral the following letter, which I owe to the kindness of
the great poet:--
"I have never thought of profiting by my humble fungoid water-
colours...Fate will perhaps decide otherwise.
"In this connection, permit me to make a confession, to which your nobility
of character encourages me. Until latterly I had lived modestly on the
product of my school-books. To-day the weathercock has turned to another
quarter, and my books no longer sell. So here I am, more than ever in the
grip of that terrible problem of daily bread. If you think, then, that with
your help and that of your friends, my poor pictures might help me a
little, I have decided to let them go, but not without bitterness. It is
like tearing off a piece of my skin, and I still hold to this old skin,
shabby as it may be; a little for my own sake, much more for my family's,
and much more again for the sake of my entomological studies, studies which
I feel obliged to pursue, persuaded that for a long time to come no one
will care to resume them, so ungrateful is the calling." (16/18.)
At the instigation of the poet the prefect Belleudy took it upon him to
intercede with the Minister, from whom he finally wrung a grant of 40
pounds sterling, "in encouragement of the sciences." Finally he ventured to
reveal the situation to the General Council of Vaucluse, and to require it
to contribute at least its share, in order to ensure a peaceful and decent
old age to a man who was not only the greatest celebrity of the department,
but also one of the highest glories of the nation. He pleaded so well and
so nobly that the assembly granted Fabre an annual sum of 20 pounds
sterling, "as the public homage which his compatriots pay to his lofty
science and HIS EXCESSIVE MODESTY." (16/19.) At the same time, in a
generous impulse, the Council placed at his disposal all the scientific
equipment of the departmental laboratory of agricultural analysis, which
was no longer used; there was indeed talk of suppressing it.
Now that the burden of his days weighed so heavily on him, and his task was
virtually finished, everything, by the customary irony of things, was
coming his way simultaneously: not only what was necessary and
indispensable, but even something that was superfluous.
So one day all these delicate instruments, useless to a biologist who by
the very nature of his labours had done without them all his life, and had
never wearied of denying their utility, arrived at Sérignan. He did not
possess even one modest thermometer; and as for the superb microscope over
which he so often bent, the only costly instrument in his rustic
laboratory, it was a precious present which, at the instigation of Duruy,
Dumas the chemist had given him years before; but a simple lens very often
sufficed him. "The secrets of life," he somewhere writes, "are to be
obtained by simple, makeshift, inexpensive means. What did the best results
of my inquiry into instinct cost me? Only time, and above all, patience."
It was then that a few of his disciples, finally affected by such
abandonment, decided to celebrate his jubilee, hoping thus to reveal both
his name and his wonderful books to the crowd that knew nothing of him.
(16/20.)
It was time; a little longer, and, according to his racy phrase, "the
violins would have come too late." The old master is daily nearer his
decline; his sight, once so piercing, is now so obscured that he can barely
see to sign his name, in a small, tremulous hand, confused and illegible.
His muscles are so feeble now that he can walk only in short steps, on his
wife's arm, leaning on a cane; and he would soon be piteously exhausted
were not some seat available within immediate reach. Very soon now he will
no longer hope to make the tour of this Harmas, which his feet have trodden
daily for thirty years. In this failure of the body, all that survives are
the two sparkling cavities of his eyes and his extraordinary memory.
But he is far from being mournful: he feels only an immense lassitude, and
an infinite regret that perhaps he will not be able to bring his series of
"Souvenirs" to the point he had desired; not wishing to die until he has
pushed his career as far as is in his power; without having worked, on his
feet, until the very hour when the light of this world is suddenly
withdrawn, and his eyes open upon the infinite life, beyond the infinite
worlds of space.
The festival took place on the 3rd of April of the year 1910, and was
touching in its simplicity.
What an unforgettable day in the life of Fabre! That morning the gate of
the Harmas was left open to all, and many of the people of Sérignan who
invaded the garden were able to look for the first time on the face of
their fellow-citizen, who had so long lived among them, and whom they had
now, to their astonishment, discovered.
But among the crowd of friends and admirers who, coming from all parts,
pressed around the little pink house, the most amazed of all was Marius,
the blind cabinet-maker, unable to contain his intense delight at the
sudden burning of so much incense before his idol, for to him it had seemed
that this day of apotheosis would never dawn!
For nothing was certain, although the day of the jubilee had long been
fixed. In the first place there had been serious defections in the ranks of
the official personages who were to take part in the ceremony. Then the
weather was terrible for the time of year; the spring had commenced
gloomily, a season of floods and catastrophes. But on this morning the rain
of days had ceased to fall, and suddenly the sun appeared.
Among other compliments and marks of homage the old man was presented with
a golden plaque, on one side of which Sicard, who stood revealed as a
master of the burin, had engraved his portrait with rare fidelity. The
reverse was resplendent with one of the most beautiful syntheses which the
history of art has known; a surprising allegory, in which the imagination
of the artist evoked the man of science, the singer of the insects, the
landscape which had seen the birth of so many little lives, and the village
amid the olive-trees, in front of the sun-steeped Ventoux.
At this festival, the jubilee of a scientist, the scientists were least
numerous.
The banquet was given in the large room of a cafe in the midst of Sérignan;
in order, no doubt, that in this humble life even glory should be modest.
As Fabre could not walk, he was helped into the carriage of ceremony, which
was sent expressly from Orange, and the little procession, which was
swelled by the municipal choral society, spurred on by Marius, moved slowly
off along the sole central street.
It was a great family repast: one of those love-feasts in which all
communicate in a single thought.
Edmond Perrier brought the naturalist the homage of the Institute, and
expressed in unaffected terms the just admiration which he himself felt.
The better to praise him, he gave a summary of his admirable career, and
his immortal work. At the evocation of this long past of labour Fabre
regretted his poor vanished joys, "the sole moments of happiness in his
life."
Moved to tears, by his memories and by the simple and pious homage at last
rendered to his genius, he wept, and many, seeing him weep, wept with him.
Others spoke in the name of the great anonymous crowd of friends, of all
those who had found a source of infinite enjoyment in his works. At the
same time the greatest writers, the greatest poets sent on the same day, at
the same hour, their salutation or eloquent messages to the "Virgil of the
insects" (16/21.), to the "good magician who knew the language of the
myriad little creatures of the fields." (16/22.)
Doubtless he would sooner or later have received full justice; but without
this circumstance it is permissible to add that the end of his life would
have passed amidst the completest oblivion, and that he would have taken
leave of the world without attracting any particular attention. His death
would have occurred unperceived, and when the little vault of Vaison stone,
up in the small square enclosure of pebbles which serves as the village
cemetery, where those he has loved await him, came to be opened for the
last time, they would hardly have troubled to close it again.
Yet the honours paid him were far from being such as he merited.
Why, at this jubilee of the greatest of the entomologists, was not a single
appointed representative of entomology present? (16/22.)
The fact is that the majority of those who "amid the living seek only for
corpses," according to the expression of Bacon, unwilling to see in Fabre
anything more than an imaginative writer, and being themselves incapable of
understanding the beautiful and of distinguishing it in the true,
reproached him, perhaps with more jealousy than conviction, with having
introduced literature into the domains of science.
Other entomological specialists accuse him of presenting in the guise of
science discoveries which have been made by others. But in the first place,
as he has read very little, he certainly did not know all that had been
done by others; and what matter if he had discovered nothing essential
concerning this or that insect if the result of his study of it has been to
impregnate it with something new, or to touch it with the breath of life?
Others, finally, who wished to see with their own eyes the proof of his
statements, have reproached him with a few errors; but he observed so
skilfully that these errors, if any have really slipped into his books,
cannot be very serious.
He was one of the glories of the University, but it failed to add to the
brilliance of this ceremony, and it is to be regretted that the Government
could not amid its temporary preoccupations have done with all the
spontaneity that might have been looked for the one thing which might on
this memorable date have atoned for its unjust obliviousness. Since Duruy
had created Fabre a chevalier of the Empire more than forty years had gone
by, and in this long interval Fabre was absolutely ignored by the
authorities. While the State daily raises so many commonplace men to the
highest honours, it was afterwards needful to procure the intervention of
influential persons, to justify his worth and to prove his deserts, in
order to obtain his promotion through one degree of rank in that Legion of
Honour which his eminent services had so long adorned.
This tardy reparation at least had the result of shedding a twilight of
glory over the evening of his life, and from that day he suddenly appeared
in his true place and took his rank as a man of the first order. Everybody
began to read him, and presently no one was willing to seem ignorant of
him, for more of his "Souvenirs entomologiques" were sold in a few months
than had been disposed of in more than twenty years. (16/24.)
At last Fabre experienced not only glory and renown, but also popularity.
This was only justice, for his is essentially a popular genius. Has he not
striven all his life to place the marvels of science within reach of all?
And has he not written above all for the children of the people?
So at last people have learned the way to the Harmas; they go thither now
in crowds, to visit the enclosure and the modest laboratory, as to a
veritable place of pilgrimage which attracts from afar many fervent
admirers.
Some, it is true, go thither to see him simply as an object of curiosity;
but even among these there are those who on returning thence, full of
enthusiasm for what they have seen, find the flowers of the fields more
sweet and fragile, and the wild fragrance of the woods and hedges more
voluptuous, and the green of the trees more tender. They have learnt to
look at the earth and to "kneel in the grass."
Scientists come to chat with the scientist. Others come to salute the
primary schoolman, the lay instructor, the great pedagogue whose glory is
reflected upon all the primary schools of France.
Those who cannot visit him write, telling him of all the pleasure which
they owe him, thanking him for long and delightful hours passed in the
reading of his books, expressing the hope that he may yet live many years,
and still further increase the number of his "Souvenirs."
Some ask him a host of questions relating to entomology or philosophy;
others ask him for impossible answers to some of the fascinating and
mysterious problems which he has expounded; women confide in him their
little private griefs or their intimate sorrows, a naive form of homage;
but a thousand times more touching than any other, and one that shows how
profound has been the beneficent influence of his books upon certain
isolated minds, and what consolation can be derived from science when it
finds a sufficiently eloquent voice to interpret it.
As he can work no longer, these visits now fill his life, formally so
occupied; and in the midst of all the sympathy extended to him he is
sensible, not of the twilight, but of a sunrise; he feels that his work has
been good, that an infinity of minds are learning through him to regard
plants and animals with greater affection; and that the consideration of
men, finally directed upon his work, will not readily exhaust it, for it is
one of the Bibles of Nature.
NOTES.
NOTES TO INTRODUCTION.
Introduction/1. Letters to his brother, 1898-1900.
Introduction/2. I have made some valuable "finds" here; among other pieces
cited the fragment on "Playthings," the curious description of the
"Eclipse," and the poem on "Number" are here published for the first time.
Introduction/3. This negligence in the matter of correspondence is not
least among the causes which have mitigated against his popularity.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 1.
1/1. "It is a country that has very little charm." To his brother, 18th
August, 1846.
1/2. "Practicien, homme d'affaires ou de chicane": roughly, "practitioner,
man of business or law": so his father is described in his birth
certificate.
1/3. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 2nd series, chapter 4, and 7th series,
chapter 19.
1/4. Id., 8th series, chapter 8.
1/5. To his brother, 15th August, 1896.
1/6. Id. "As brothers, we are one only; but in virtue of our different
tastes we are two, and I am amused and interested where you might well be
bored."
1/7. Frédéric Fabre, like his brother, an ex-scholar of the normal primary
school of Vaucluse, was first of all teacher at Lapalud (Vaucluse), then
professor in the communal college of Orange. He was director of the primary
school attached to the normal school of Avignon, where he voluntarily
retired from teaching in 1859. He then became, successively, secretary to
the Chamber of Commerce of Avignon, director of the Vaucluse Docks, and
finally director of the Crillon Canal, which position he still occupies
(December, 1912).
1/8. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 10th series, chapter 9.
1/9. Among his innumerable manuscripts I have found a vast number of little
poems, which date from this period.
1/10. It was then that he gave up his position to his brother Frédéric, who
had continually followed closely in his steps, and who in turn had just
obtained the qualification of pupil-teacher and bursar (August, 1842).
1/11. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 10 series, chapter 21.
1/12. To his brother, 2nd and 9th of June, 1851.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2.
2/1. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 1st series, chapter 20, and 9th series,
chapter 13.
2/2. Id., 6th series, chapter 21.
2/3. To his brother, from Ajaccio, 10th June, 1850.
2/4. Id., id.
2/5. Id., from Carpentras, 15th August, 1846.
2/6. Id., from Ajaccio, 10th June, 1850.
2/7. Id., from Carpentras, 15th August, 1846.
2/8. Id., id.
2/9. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 1st series, chapter 14.
2/10. To his brother, from Carpentras, 3rd September, 1848.
2/11. Id., 8th September, 1848.
2/12. Id., id.
2/13. Id., 3rd September, 1848.
2/14. Id., id.
2/15. Letter to the Rector of the Nîmes Academy, 29th September, 1848.
2/16. To his brother, 29th September, 1848.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 3.
3/1. To his father, from Ajaccio, 14th April, 1850.
3/2. To his brother, from Ajaccio, 1851.
3/3. To his brother, from Ajaccio, 9th June, 1851.
"I have set to work upon a conchology of Corsica, which I hope soon to
publish."
3/4. The Helix Raspaillii.
3/5. To his brother, from Ajaccio, 10th June, 1850.
3/6. Id., id.
3/7. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 9th series, chapter 14.
3/8. Number, (Le Nombre--ARITHMOS), poem, Ajaccio, September, 1852.
3/9. To his brother, from Ajaccio, 2nd June, 1851.
3/10. Id., 10th October, 1852, and "Souvenirs entomologiques," 10th series,
chapter 21.
3/11. Fr. Mistral, "Mémoires."
Moquin-Tandon, born at Montpellier, was professor of Natural History at
Marseilles, at Toulouse, and in Paris.
3/12. To his brother, from Ajaccio, 10th October, 1852.
3/13. Id.
3/14. To his brother, from Carpentras, 3rd December, 1851.
"Our crossing was atrocious. Never have I seen so terrible a sea, and that
the packet-boat was not broken up by the force of the waves must have been
due to the fact that our time had not yet come. On two or three occasions I
thought my last moment was at hand; I leave you to imagine what a terrible
experience I had. In ordinary weather the packet by which we travelled
makes the voyage from Ajaccio to Marseilles in about eighteen hours; it is
said to be the fastest steamer on the Mediterranean. On this occasion it
took three days and two nights."
3/15. January, 1853.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 4.
4/1. To his brother, from Avignon, 1st August, 1854.
"I have arrived at Toulouse, where I have passed the best examination one
could possibly wish. I have been accepted as licentiate with the most
flattering compliments, and the expenses of the examination should be
returned to me. The examination was of a higher level than I had expected."
4/2. To M. -- (of the Institute), from Avignon, 1854.
(Letter communicated to M. Belleudy, prefect of Vaucluse, by M. Vollon,
painter.)
4/3. Id.
4/4. To his brother, from Ajaccio, 10th October, 1852.
4/5. Observations concerning the habits of the Cerceris and the cause of
the long preservation of the coleoptera with which it provisions its
larvae.--"Annales de Sc. natur.," 4th series, 1855.
4/6. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 10th series, chapter 22.
4/7. "I had only one idea: to free myself, to leave the lycée, where, not
being a fellow, I was treated as a subordinate. An inspector-general told
me frankly one day, 'You will never amount to anything if you are not a
fellow' (agrégé). 'These distinctions disgust me,' I replied."
(Conversations.)
4/8. To his brother, from Ajaccio, 14th January, 1850.
4/9. Inquiries respecting the tubercles of Himantoglossum hircinum. Thesis
in Botany, 1855.
4/10. Inquiries respecting the anatomy of the reproductive organs, and the
developments of the Myriapoda. Thesis in Zoology, 1855.
4/11. Prize for experimental physiology, 1856.
4/12. Letter to Léon Dufour, 1st February, 1857.
4/13. "The Origin of Species," 1857 (?), translated by Barbier, page 15.
4/14. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 1st series, chapter 1, and 5th series,
chapter 1.
4/15. Id., 1st series, chapter 16.
4/16. Id., 1st series, chapter one.
4/17. Henry Devillario, magistrate at Carpentras, where he performed his
duties as juge d'instruction until his death. A notable collector and
distinguished publicist.
Dr. Bordone, to-day at Frontignan. Vayssières, professor of Zoology in the
faculty of sciences at Marseilles.
4/18. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 1st series, chapter 13.
4/19. He was subject in his youth to violent headaches, "which sometimes
developed into a cerebral fever," as well as strange nervous troubles: "A
few days ago I was attacked, at night, with a sudden nervous illness, of a
terrifying nature, which I have not as yet been able to identify." To his
brother, 3rd September, 1848.
Severe disappointment or annoyance always had a great effect upon him; on
the occasion of his first marriage he fell into a sort of cataleptic
condition as a result of the opposition of his parents and relations, who
sought to oppose it. (Conversations with his brother.)
4/20. "Souvenirs entomologiques" 9th series, chapter 23.
4/21. Id., 10th series, chapter 22.
4/22. Letter to Lèon Dufour, 1st February, 1857.
"Steps have been taken to obtain for me the post of drawing-master (maître
des travaux graphiques). If they succeed, thanks to the little talent I
have for drawing, my salary will reach a reasonable figure, 120 pounds
sterling, and I can then, by giving up these abominable private lessons,
cultivate rather more seriously the studies into which you have initiated
me." Communicated by M. Achard.
4/23. "Souvenirs entomologiques" 10th series, chapter 22.
4/24. Oubreto Prouvençalo. La Cigale et la Fourmi.
4/25. Lavisse. A minister. Victor Duruy.
4/26. Letter to the municipal councillors of Avignon.
4/27. J. Stuart Mill, "Autobiography," chapter 6.
4/28. I have visited this house; nothing, at all events outside, has
changed in the least.
4/29. Mill collaborated in his "Flore du Vaucluse": "A virtuous man whose
recent loss we shall all deplore joined his efforts to mine in this
undertaking." Letter to the Mayor of Avignon, 1st December, 1833,
communicated by M. Félix Achard.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 5.
5/1. "Chimie agricole."
5/2. "Le Ciel." Lectures et Leçons pour tous.
5/3. "La Terre." Lectures et Leçons pour tous.
5/4. "La Chimie de l'oncle Paul." Lectures courantes pour toutes les
écoles.
5/5. "Histoire de la bûche."
5/6. "Les jouets. Le Toton" (manuscript).
The primitive fountain, the "antique appliance" transmitted by inheritance,
"the invention perhaps of some little unemployed herd-boy," consisted
originally of three apertures and three straws; two similar apertures on
one side, with two short straws, which dipped into the water, and a single
orifice on the other side for the longer straw which delivered the water.
Happening one day to use only two straws, one on each side, the little
Fabre perceived that the device worked just as well, and "so, quite
unconsciously, without thinking of it, I discovered the syphon, the true
syphon of the physicist." Loco cit.
5/7. "The chemistry course is a great success at home." To his brother,
from Orange, 1875.
5/8. To his son Émile, 4th November, 1879.
"The household; discussions as to domestic economy for use in girls'
schools."
5/9. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 2nd series, chapter 1.
5/10. To the Mayor of Avignon, 1st December, 1873. Communicated by M. Félix
Achard.
5/11. Letter to his brother, 1875.
5/12. Id.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 6.
6/1. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 2nd series, chapter 1. "L'Harmas."
6/2. Id., 6th series, chapter 5.
6/3. The Lumbricus phosporeus of Dugés. Fabre had already clearly perceived
that this curious phenomenon of phosphorescence appears at birth, and he
saw in it a process of oxidation, a species of respiration, especially
active in certain tissues.
Letter to Léon Dufour, 1st February, 1857. Communicated by M. Félix Achard.
6/4. To his brother, from Carpentras, 15th August, 1846.
6/5. He died at the age of 96.
6/6. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 1st series, chapter 21.
6/7. To his son Émile, 4th November, 1879.
6/8. To Henry Devillario, 30th March, 1883.
6/9. Id., 17th December, 1888.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 7.
7/1. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 8th series, chapter 12.
7/2. Id., 7th series, chapter 16.
7/3. Id., 1st series, chapter 4.
7/4. Id., 2nd series, chapter 3.
7/5. Id., 6th series, chapter 21.
7/6. Id., 1st series, chapter 19, and 2nd series, chapter 7.
7/7. Id., 7th series, chapter 23.
7/8. Maeterlinck, "The Bee."
7/9. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 7th series, chapter 2.
7/10. Id., 8th series, chapter 22.
7/11. Id., 6th series, chapter 6.
7/12. Id., 9th series, chapter 10.
7/13. Bergson, "l'Evolution créatrice."
7/14. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 10th series, chapter 6.
7/15. "Les Serviteurs" and "Les Auxiliaires."
7/16. François Raspail, born at Carpentras in 1794, was also a professor at
the college of Carpentras.
7/17. To his brother, 3rd September, 1848.
The improvement did not last long; the child died finally a short time
afterwards.
7/18. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 10th series, chapter 21.
7/19. Ed. Perrier. Private letter, 27th October, 1909.
"He is the finest of all our observers, and all scientists should bow to
the facts which he excels in discovering."
7/20. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 6th series, chapter 25.
7/21. Id., 10th series, chapter 16.
7/22. Id., 10th series, chapter 20.
7/23. Manuscripts, unpublished observations.
7/24. A common spectacle in Provence, but one which Fabre never wearied of
seeing.
7/25. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 6th series, chapter 17.
7/26. We know that the great naturalist was far from being charmed by the
song of the nightingale.
7/27. Manuscripts, unpublished observation. These remarks deal with the
solar eclipse of 28th May, 1900.
7/28. Among the insects which he has observed there are many which are not
always sufficiently characterized. "Insectes coléoptères observes aux
environs d'Avignon." Avignon, pub. Seguin, 1870.
7/29. Coleoptera observed in the neighbourhood of Avignon. A catalogue now
very scarce, a copy of which I owe to the kindness of Dr. Chobaut, of
Avignon.
7/30. Nomina si nescis, perit et cognitio rerum.
7/31. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 4th series, chapter 11.
7/32. Id., 9th series, chapter 19.
7/33. Id., 1st series, chapter 9.
7/34. "Jenner's Legend of the isolation of the young Cuckoo in the nest,"
by Xavier Raspail, "Bull. de la Soc. Zool. de France," 1903.
7/35. "Souvenirs entomologiques" 1st series, passim.
7/36. Id., 4th series, chapter 14.
7/37. Id., 1st series, chapter 7.
7/38. Id., 2nd series, chapter 2.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 8.
8/1. "Souvenirs entomologiques" 1st series, chapter 2.
8/2. Bergson, "l'Evolution créatrice."
8/3. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 2nd series, chapter 4.
8/4. Id., 5th series, chapter 8.
8/5. Id., 9th series, chapter 3.
8/6. Id., 1st series, chapter 22.
8/7. Id., 4th series, chapter 3.
8/8. Id., 4th series, chapter 3.
8/9. Id., 4th and 1st series, chapter 19.
8/10. Id., 9th series, chapter 24.
8/11. Id., 10th series, chapter 5.
8/12. Id., 4th series, chapter 6.
8/13. Id., 9th series, chapter 16.
8/14. Id., 2nd series, chapter 5.
8/15. Id., 5th series, chapter 7.
8/16. Id., 6th series, chapter 8.
8/17. Id., 3rd series, chapters 17, 18, 19 and 20.
8/18. Id., 2nd series, chapter 15.
8/19. Id., 3rd series, chapter 11.
8/20. Emerson.
8/21. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 4th series, chapter 9.
8/22. Unpublished observations.
8/23. "Mireille," 3rd canto.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 9.
9/1. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 8th series, chapter 21.
9/2. "Les Ravageurs," chapter 34, agriculture.
9/3. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 10th series, chapter 12.
9/4. Id., 1st series, chapter 2, and 10th series, chapter 13.
9/5. Id., 2nd series, chapter 17.
9/6. Id., 7th series, chapter 20.
9/7. Id., 2nd series, chapter 4.
9/8. At novitas mundi nec frigora dura ciebat,
Nec nimios aestus.
Lucretius, "De Natura rerum."
9/9. In this connection see the excellent introduction written by M. Edmond
Perrier to serve as preface to the work of M. de Romanes: "l'Intelligence
des animaux."
9/10. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 8th series, chapter 20.
9/11. To Henry Devillario, 30th March, 1883.
9/12. To Henry Devillario, 12th May, 1883.
9/13. To his brother, 1900.
9/14. Letters to his brother.
"I am not sulking; far from it...I have no lack of ink and paper; I am too
careful of them to lack them; but I do lack time...So you still think I am
sulking because I do not reply! But imagine, my dear and petulant brother,
that for several weeks I have been pursuing, with unequalled persistence,
some abominable conic problems proposed at the fellowship examination, and
once I have mounted my hobby-horse, good-bye to letters, good-bye to
replies, goodbye to everything." (Carpentras, 27th November, 1848.)
"You are right, seven times right to storm at me, to grumble at my silence,
and I admit, in all contrition, that I am the worst correspondent you could
find. To force myself to write a letter is to place myself on the rack, as
well you know...But why do you get it into your head, why do you tell me,
that I disdain you, that I forget you, that I ignore you, you, my best
friend?...For my silence blame only the multiplicity of tasks, which often
surpasses, not my courage, but my strength and my time." (Ajaccio, 1st
June, 1851.)
9/15. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 10th series, chapter 8.
9/16. Id., 9th series, chapter 2.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 10.
10/1. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 1st series, chapter 21.
10/2. Id., 9th series, chapter 2.
10/3. Id., 10th series, chapter 4.
10/4. Montaigne's Essays.
10/5. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 8th series, chapter 17.
10/6. "Les Ravageurs."
10/7. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 10th series, chapter 18, and "Merveilles
de l'instinct: la Chenille du chou."
10/8. Id., 8th series, chapter 17.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 11.
11/1. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 3rd series, chapter 8.
11/2. Id., 2nd series, chapter 14 et seq.
11/3. Id., 6th series, chapter 9.
11/4. Id., 5th series, chapter 19.
11/5. Tolstoy: "All that the human heart contains of evil should disappear
at the contact of nature, that most immediate expression of the beautiful
and the good." ("The Invaders.")
11/6. The "Livre d'histoires" and "Chimie agricole."
11/7. "Oubreto Provençalo. La Bise."
11/8. Id., "Le Semeur."
11/9. Id., "Le Crapaud."
NOTES TO CHAPTER 12.
12/1. "Oubreto Provençalo. Le Maréchal."
12/2. "Oubreto Provençalo."
12/3. In this connection see the admirable passage in Sainte-Beuve's "Port-
Royal," Book 2, chapter 14.
12/4. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 4th series, chapter 1.
12/5. Id., 1st series, chapter 17.
12/6. Id., 7th series, chapter 8.
12/7. Id., 7th series, chapter 10.
12/8. Id., 8th series, chapter 8.
12/9. Id., 8th series, chapter 20.
12/10. Id., 6th series, chapter 14.
12/11. Id., 8th series, chapter 18.
12/12. Id., 10th series, chapter 8.
12/13. Id., 10th series, chapter 6.
12/14. Id., 5th series, chapter 22.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 13.
13/1. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 10th series, chapter 17.
13/2. Id., 9th series, chapter 4, "l'Exode des arignées" (the Exodus of the
Spiders), and chapter 5, "l'Araignée crabe" (the Crab Spider).
13/3. Id., 5th series, chapter 17.
13/4. Id., 3rd series, chapter 8.
13/5. Id., 6th series, chapter 14.
"Oubreto. Le Grillon," and unpublished verses.
13/6. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 2nd series, chapter 16.
13/7. Id., 9th series, chapter 21.
13/8. "Les Merveilles de l'instinct: le Ver luisant" (Marvels of Instinct:
the Glow-worm).
13/9. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 2nd series, chapter 12.
13/10. Id., 8th series, chapter 22, and 9th series, chapter 11.
13/11. Id., 5th series, chapter 18.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 14.
14/1. Grandjean de Fouchy: eulogy of Réaumur, in "Recueils de l'Acad.des
sciences," volume 157 H, page 201, and Preface to the "Lettres inédites de
Réaumur," by G. Musset.
14/2. "Mémoires," passim, and volume 2, 1st mémoire.
14/3. Id., volume 3, 3rd mémoire.
14/4. Id., volume 2, 1st mémoire.
Ch. Tellier, "Le Frigorifique" (Refrigeration), story of a modern
invention, chapter 23; cold applied to the animal kingdom.
14/5. Léon Dufour: "Journal de sa vie."
Souvenirs and impressions of travel in the Pyrenees to Gavarnie, Héas, the
"Montagnes maudites," etc. Entomological excursions on the dunes of
Biscarosse and Arcachon.
14/6. Id., direction of entomological studies.
14/7. "Souvenirs entomologiques" 2nd series, chapter 1: "L'Harmas."
14/8. Id., 5th series, chapter 11.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 15.
15/1. Louis Charrasse, private letter, 20th February, 1912, and "Le Bassin
du Rhône," March, 1911.
15/2. "Oubreto. Le Crapaud."
15/3. It was only in the afternoon that he devoted himself, when needful,
to microscopic researches, on account of the better inclination of the
light.
15/4. He lost it at the end of last spring.
15/5. "Les Serviteurs. Le Canard."
15/6. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 1st series, chapter 13: an ascent of Mont
Ventoux.
15/7. The name given to Christmas in Provence.
15/8. Louis Charrasse, private letters.
15/9. Id.
15/10. 1888-1892.
15/11. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 2nd series, chapter 2.
15/12. Louis Charrasse, private letter.
15/13. Letter to his nephew, Antonin Fabre, 4th January, 1885.
15/14. "Souvenirs entomologiques," 6th series, chapter 19.
15/15. Id., 6th series, chapter 2.
15/16. Id., 6th series, chapter 11.
15/17. Conversations.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 16.
16/1. Letter to his brother, 4th February, 1900.
16/2. To his brother, 18th July, 1908. At this time the eighth volume of
his "Souvenirs" had just appeared, and the ninth was in hand.
16/3. Id.
16/4. "Chimie agricole."
16/5. To his brother, 10th October, 1898.
16/6. Private letter, 30th March, 1908.
16/7. Id.
16/8. Id.
16/9. Unpublished experiments.
16/10. To Charles Delagrave, 27th January, 1899.
16/11. To his brother, 4th February, 1900.
16/12. This prize was awarded to Fabre in 1899. The amount of the prize is
400 pounds sterling. It is one of the chief prizes of the Institute.
16/13. Edmond Rostand. Private letter, 7th April, 1910: "His books have
been my delight during a very long convalescence."
16/14. This magnificent atlas, the gem of Fabre's collections, comprises
nearly 700 plates, and a large body of explanatory and descriptive matter.
16/15. To Charles Delagrave, undated.
16/16. Maeterlinck. Private letter, 17th November, 1909.
"Les 4 Chemins,
"Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes).
"You overwhelm me with pleasure and do me the greatest honour in allowing
my name to be inscribed among those of the committee which proposes to
celebrate the jubilee of Henri Fabre...Henri Fabre is, indeed, one of the
chiefest and purest glories that the civilized world at present possesses;
one of the most learned naturalists and the most wonderful of poets in the
modern and truly legitimate sense of the word. I cannot tell you how
delighted I am by the chance you offer me of expressing in this way one of
the profoundest admirations of my life."
16/17. J. Belleudy, prefect of Vaucluse. Private letter, 29th September,
1909.
"It pains me to see so great a mind, so eminent a scientist, such a master
of French literature, so little known. Two years ago, when the Gegner prize
was awarded to him, I felt that I must speak of him to certain of those
about me; and they had hardly heard his name!"
16/18. Letter to Frédéric Mistral, 4th July, 1908.
16/19. Council General of Vaucluse, session of August, 1908. The words of
the recorder, M. Lacour, mayor of Orange, to-day deputy for Vaucluse, a
personal friend and ardent admirer of the old master.
16/20. Edmond Rostand. Private letter, 20th November, 1909.
"I am, sir, not only greatly touched, but also and above all delighted that
you have thought of including me among the friends who wish to fete Henri
Fabre. Thanks for having considered that my name would assist your
undertaking. The "Souvenirs entomologiques" have long ago made me intimate
with his charming, profound, and moving genius. I owe them an infinity of
delightful hours. Perhaps also I ought to thank them for having encouraged
one of my sons to pursue the vocation which he entered. If, in order to
honour Henri Fabre, you run the pious risk of disturbing, for a moment, the
studious retreat in which, for so many years, he has pursued his life and
his work, it is an act of justice toward this great scientist, who thinks
as a philosopher, sees as an artist, and feels and expresses himself as a
poet."
Romain Rolland. Private letter, 7th January, 1910.
"You cannot imagine what pleasure you have given me by requesting me to
associate myself in the glorification of J.H. Fabre. He is one of the
Frenchmen whom I most admire. The impassioned patience of his ingenious
observations delights me as much as the masterpieces of art. For years I
have read and loved his books. During my last holidays, of three volumes
that I travelled with two were volumes of his "Souvenirs entomologiques."
You will honour me and delight me by counting me as one of you."
16/21. Edmond Rostand. Telegram.
16/22. Romain Rolland.
INDEX.
Achard, M.
Agaricus, luminosity of.
"Agricultural Chemistry."
Ajaccio, Fabre at.
Ammophila.
Anthidium.
Anthophora.
Anthrax.
Arachne clotho.
Arachnoids, cannibalism of.
Audubon.
Avignon, Fabre at.
suggested agronomic station at.
Balaninus.
Balzac.
Bees.
Belleudy, M.
Bembex.
Bergson.
Bernard, Claude.
Blanchard.
Blue fly.
Bombyx.
Bordone.
Bossuet.
Bourdon.
Buffon.
Buprestis.
Calendal.
Calendar-beetle.
Calosoma sycophanta.
Candolle, de.
Cannibalism.
Cantharides.
Cantharis, courtship of.
Capricornis.
Carabidae.
Carpentras.
fauna of.
Caterpillars, poisonous.
Centipedes.
Cerceris.
Chalcidia.
Chalicodoma.
Charrasse, Louis.
Chermes.
Cicada (Cigale).
Cicadelina.
Cicindela.
Cione.
Clathrix.
Clythris.
Clytus.
Cleona opthalmica.
Coincidence in life of parasites.
Coleoptera of Avignon.
Conchology, Fabre studies.
Copris.
Corsica.
Courrier.
Crickets, courtship of.
Crioceris.
Cuckoo.
Curves, properties of.
Darwin, Charles, Fabre an opponent of.
praises Fabre.
corresponds with Fabre.
Darwin, Erasmus.
Decticus.
Delagrave, Charles.
Dermestes.
Devillario, Henry.
Dorthesia.
Dufour, Léon.
Dumas.
Dung-beetles.
Duruy, Victor.
sends for Fabre to attend Court.
fall of.
Dyticus.
"Earth, The."
Eclipse of sun.
Education in France.
Ephippigera.
Epeïra.
Emerson.
Empusa.
Ergatus.
Eucera.
Eumenes.
Evil.
Evolution.
Fabre, Aglaë.
Fabre, Antoine.
Fabre, Antonia.
Fabre, Antonin.
Fabre, Émile.
Fabre, Frédéric.
Fabre, Henri.
birthplace.
childhood.
boyhood.
school days.
a primary teacher.
marriage and loss of first child.
professor of physics at Ajaccio.
professor at Avignon.
takes up entomology.
salary.
poverty.
as teacher.
character.
his pupils.
goes to Court and is decorated.
writes textbooks for schools.
portraits of.
meets J.S. Mill.
denounced for subversive teaching.
evicted.
settles at Orange, money difficulties solved by Mill.
breaks with the University.
continues his series of textbooks.
repays Mill money lent.
dismissed from Requien Museum.
researches concerning madder.
leaves Orange.
work at Sérignan.
second marriage.
his workshop.
methods of work.
attitude toward evolution.
corresponds with Darwin.
ideas as to origin of species.
methods of work.
compared with Réaumur.
life at Sérignan.
love of music.
old age.
poverty.
jubilee celebrated.
Fabre, Henri, of Avignon.
Fabre, Jules.
Fabre, Paul.
Fabre, Mme (mother of Henri).
Fabre, Mme (1st wife).
Fabre, Mme (2nd wife).
Fabre, Mme Antoine.
Favier.
Female education.
Frog, bellringer.
Gadfly.
Gegner prize.
Geometry, Fabre's love of.
Geotrupes.
Glow-worm.
Goat caterpillar.
Goethe.
Grasshopper.
Halictus.
Harmas, the.
Heat, takes place of food.
Helix raspaillii.
Hemerobius, curious garment of.
Horace.
Horn-beetle.
Horus Apollo.
Huber.
Hugo, Victor.
Hyper-metamorphism.
Instinct.
Intelligence, function of.
Janin, Jules.
Jullian.
Jussieu, de.
La Fontaine.
Lamarck.
Lapalud.
Latreille.
Larra.
Leibnitz.
Leucopsis.
Libellula.
Linnaeus.
Locust.
"Log, Story of the."
Lycosa.
Madder, Fabre's researches concerning.
Magendie.
Malaval.
Mantis.
Maquis, the Corsican.
Marius.
Mason-bee.
Medicine, Fabre's inclination toward.
Megachile.
Meloë.
Michelet.
Mill, J.S.
helps Fabre in difficulties.
death of.
Mill, Mrs.
Millipedes.
Mimicry.
Mind, of animals.
Minotaurus.
Mistral.
corresponds with Fabre.
Mitscherlich.
Montyon prize.
Moquin-Tandon.
Mushrooms, recipe for cooking.
Napoleon III.
Necrophorus.
Number, properties of.
poem.
Odynerus.
Oniticella.
Onthophagus.
Orange, Fabre at.
Orchids, Fabre on.
"Origin of Species."
Orthoptera, primitive.
Osmia, control of sex.
courtship of.
Pasteur.
Peacock moth.
Pelopaeus.
Perrier, Ed.
Philanthus.
Phryganea.
Pieris.
"Plant, The."
Pliny.
Poems, Fabre's.
Polygons, properties of.
Pompilus.
Potato.
Processional caterpillar.
Psyche.
Rabelais.
Raspail.
Racine.
Réaumur.
compared with Fabre.
Requien of Avignon.
Requien Museum.
Rhynchites.
Ricard, Pierre, schoolmaster.
Rose-beetle.
Roumanille.
Saint-Léons.
Saprinidae.
Sarcophagus.
Scarabaeus sacer.
Scolia.
Scolopendra.
Scorpion.
Sérignan.
Fabre settles at.
evenings at.
Sicard's portraits of Fabre.
Silkworm moth.
Sisyphus.
Sitaris.
"Sky, The."
"Souvenirs entomologiques."
Spaeriaceae.
Sphex.
Spiders, aeronautic.
Sport, Fabre's love of.
Staphylinus.
Tachina.
Tachinarius.
Tachytes.
Tarantula.
Taylor, Harriett (Mrs. J.S. Mill).
Taylor, Miss.
Terebinth louse.
Theophrastus.
Thomisus.
Tolstoy.
Toussenel.
Trox.
Vanessa.
"Vaucluse, Flora of the."
Vaucluse, General Council of, grants Fabre a pension.
Vayssières, M.
Ventoux Alp.
banquet on the.
Vezins.
Villard, Marie (Mme Henri Fabre).
Virgil.
Volucella.
Wasps' nest in winter.
Weevils, sloe.
poplar.
acorn and poplar.
Woodland bug.
Xylocopa.
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Fabre, Poet of Science by Legros
