CHAPTER II

[Contents]CHAPTER IITHE URCHIN OF MALAVALJean-Henri Fabre was born at Saint-Léons, the market-town and administrative centre of the canton of Vezins. In witness of which behold this extract from the register of baptisms, a certified copy transcribed by the Abbé Lafon, curé of Saint-Léons:In the year 1823, on the 22nd September, was baptised Jean-Henri-Casimir Fabre, of the aforesaid Saint-Léons, the legitimate son of Antoine Fabre and Victoire Salgues, inhabitants of the same place:—His godfather was Pierre Ricard, primary schoolmaster. In proof of which—Fabre, vicar.1Jean-Henri Casimir’s mother, by birth Victoire Salgues, was the daughter of the bailiff of Saint-Léons. His father, Antoine Fabre, was born in a littlemasin the parish of Lavaysse, Malaval, where his parents were still cultivating the old family property[11]which since then has passed to the head of the Vaissière family.It was thus at Malaval that the future entomologist “passed his earliest childhood,” as he told me when writing to me ten years ago.2There was no wallowing in abundance at Saint-Léons. In order to relieve the poor household of one mouth, he was confided to the care of his grandmother and sent to Malaval. “There, in solitude, amid the geese, the calves, and the sheep, my mind first awoke to consciousness. What went before is for me shrouded in impenetrable darkness.”The spot which was the scene of this first awakening deserves description. When one follows the road from Laissac to Vezins, a short distance after passing Vaysse-Rodié, just as one has almost reached the crest of the height which by reason of its rocky helmet is called thepuech del Roucas, on the line of the watershed dividing the limestone basin of the Aveyron from the granitic basin[12]of the Viaur, on turning sharply to the right one sees before one the austereMalavallis, dominated on the one hand by the height of Lavaysse with its ancient church, and enlivened a little on the other side by the tiny hamlet of Malaval, which consists, to-day, of two farm-houses; one whiter, more cheerful-looking, and on lower ground; the other standing higher, greyer in hue, and more difficult to discover in the shade of the oak-trees and thickets of broom and blackthorn which form a dense mantle of green about it. It was there, amid these trees, in this house, three thousand feet above the sea, in sight of the sturdy belfry of Lavaysse, that Jean-Henri Fabre was “born into the true life,” the life of the mind. Here, on this hillside, which directly faces the east, he made his earliest discoveries; here, one fine morning, as he will presently tell us, he discovered the sun; here, he saw not only the dawn of day, but also “that inward dawn, so far swept clear of the clouds of unconsciousness as to leave him a lasting memory.”Nothing could take the place of the picturesqueness and sincerity of the narrative in which he has related these earliest impressions of his childhood:[13]My grandparents3were people whose quarrel with the alphabet was so great that they had never opened a book in their lives; and they kept a lean farm on the cold granite ridge of the Rouergue[14]table-land. The house, standing alone amidst the heath and broom, with no neighbour for many a mile around and visited at intervals by the wolves, was to them the hub of the universe. But for a[15]few surrounding villages, whither the calves were driven upon fair-days, the rest was only very vaguely known by hearsay. In this wild solitude, the mossy fens, with their quagmires oozing with iridescent pools, supplied the cows, the principal source of wealth, with plentiful pasture. In summer, on the short sward of the slopes, the sheep were penned day and night, protected from beasts of prey by a fence of hurdles propped up with pitchforks. When the grass was cropped close at one spot, the fold was shifted elsewhither. In the centre was the shepherd’s rolling hut, a straw cabin. Two watch-dogs, equipped with spiked collars, were answerable for tranquillity if the thieving wolf appeared in the night from out the neighbouring woods.Padded with a perpetual layer of cow-dung, in which I sank to my knees, broken up shimmering puddles of dark-brown liquid manure, the farmyard also boasted a numerous population. Here the lambs skipped, the geese trumpeted, the fowls scratched the ground, and the sow grunted with her swarm of little pigs hanging to her dugs.The harshness of the climate did not give husbandry the same chances. In a propitious season they would set fire to a stretch of moorland bristling with gorse and send the swing-plough across the ground enriched by the cinders from the fire. This yielded a few acres of rye, oats, and potatoes. The best corners were kept for hemp, which furnished the distaffs and spindles of the house with[16]the material for cloth, and was looked upon as grandmother’s private crop.Grandfather, therefore, was, before all, a herdsman versed in the love of cows and sheep, but completely ignorant of aught else. How dumbfounded he would have been to learn that, in the remote future, one of his family would become enamoured of those insignificant animals to which he had never vouchsafed a glance in his life! Had he guessed that that lunatic was myself, the scapegrace seated at the table by his side, what a smack of the head I should have caught, what a wrathful look!“The idea of wasting one’s time with that nonsense!” he would have thundered.For the patriarch was not given to joking. I can still see his serious face, his unclipped head of hair, often brought back behind his ears with a flick of the thumb and spreading its ancient Gallic mane over his shoulders. I see his little three-cornered hat, his small-clothes buckled at the knees, his wooden shoes, stuffed with straw, that echoed as he walked. Ah, no! Once childhood’s games were past, it would never have done to rear the Grasshopper and unearth the Dung-beetle from his natural surroundings.Grandmother, pious soul, used to wear the eccentric headdress of the Rouergue Highlanders: a large disk of black felt, stiff as a plank, adorned in the middle with a crown a finger’s-breadth high and hardly wider across than a six-franc piece. A black ribbon fastened under the chin maintained[17]the equilibrium of this elegant, but unstable circle. Pickles, hemp, chickens, curds and whey, butter; washing the clothes, minding the children, seeing to the meals of the household: say that and you have summed up the strenuous woman’s round of ideas. On her left side, the distaff, with its load of tow; in her right hand, the spindle turning under a quick twist of her thumb, moistened at intervals with her tongue: so she went through life, unweariedly, attending to the order and the welfare of the house. I see her in my mind’s eye, particularly on winter evenings, which were more favourable to family talk. When the hour came for meals, all of us, big and little, would take our seats round a long table, on a couple of benches, deal planks supported by four rickety legs. Each found his wooden bowl and his tin spoon in front of him. At one end of the table there always stood an enormous rye-loaf, the size of a cartwheel, wrapped in a linen cloth with a pleasant smell of washing, and there it remained until nothing was left of it. With a vigorous stroke, grandfather would cut off enough for the needs of the moment; then he would divide the piece among us with the one knife which he alone was entitled to wield. It was now each one’s business to break up his bit with his fingers and to fill his bowl as he pleased.Next came grandmother’s turn. A capacious pot bubbled lustily and sang upon the flames in the hearth, exhaling an appetising savour of bacon and turnips. Armed with a long metal ladle, grandmother[18]would take from it, for each of us in turn, first the broth, wherein to soak the bread, and next the ration of turnips and bacon, partly fat and partly lean, filling the bowl to the top. At the other end of the table was the pitcher, from which the thirsty were free to drink at will. What appetites we had, and what festive meals those were, especially when a cream-cheese, home-made, was there to complete the banquet!Near us blazed the huge fire-place, in which whole tree-trunks were consumed in the extreme cold weather. From a corner of that monumental, soot-glazed chimney, projected, at a convenient height, a slate shelf, which served to light the kitchen when we sat up late. On this we burnt slips of pine-wood, selected among the most translucent, those containing the most resin. They shed over the room a lurid red light, which saved the walnut-oil in the lamp.When the bowls were emptied and the last crumb of cheese scraped up, grandam went back to her distaff, on a stool by the chimney-corner. We children, boys and girls, squatting on our heels and putting out our hands to the cheerful fire of furze, formed a circle round her and listened to her with eager ears. She told us stories, not greatly varied, it is true, but still wonderful, for the wolf often played a part in them. I should have very much liked to see this wolf, the hero of so many tales that made our flesh creep; but the shepherd always refused to take me into his straw hut, in the middle of the fold, at night.[19]When we had done talking about the horrid wolf, the dragon, and the serpent, and when the resinous splinters had given out their last gleams, we went to sleep the sweet sleep that toil gives. As the youngest of the household, I had a right to the mattress, a sack stuffed with oat-chaff. The others had to be content with straw.I owe a great deal to you, dear grandmother: it was in your lap that I found consolation for my first sorrows. You have handed down to me, perhaps, a little of your physical vigour, a little of your love of work; but certainly you were no more accountable than grandfather for my passion for insects.And yet in me, the observer, the inquirer into things, began to take shape almost in infancy. Why should I not describe my first discoveries? They are ingenuous in the extreme, but will serve notwithstanding to tell us something of the way in which tendencies first show themselves.I was five or six years old. That the poor household might have one mouth less to feed, I had been placed in grandmother’s care. Here, in solitude, my first gleams of intelligence were awakened amidst the geese, the calves, and the sheep. Everything before that is impenetrable darkness. My real birth was at the moment when the dawn of personality rises, dispersing the mists of unconsciousness and leaving a lasting memory. I can see myself plainly, clad in a soiled frieze frock flapping against my bare heels; I remember the handkerchief hanging from my waist by a bit of[20]string, a handkerchief often lost and replaced by the back of my sleeve.There I stand one day, a pensive urchin, with my hands behind my back and my face turned to the sun. The dazzling splendour fascinates me. I am the Moth attracted by the light of the lamp. With what am I enjoying the glorious radiance: with my mouth or my eyes? That is the question put by my budding scientific curiosity. Reader, do not smile! the future observer is already practising and experimenting. I open my mouth wide and close my eyes: the glory disappears. I open my eyes and shut my mouth: the glory reappears. I repeat the performance, with the same result. The question’s solved: I have learnt by deduction that I see the sun with my eyes. What a discovery! That evening I told the whole house all about it. Grandmother smiled fondly at my simplicity: the others laughed at it. ’Tis the way of the world.Another find. At nightfall, amidst the neighbouring bushes, a sort of jingle attracted my attention, sounding very faintly and softly through the evening silence. Who is making that noise? Is it a little bird chirping in his nest? We must look into the matter, and that quickly. True, there is the wolf, who comes out of the woods at this time, so they tell me. Let’s go all the same, but not too far: just there, behind that clump of broom. I stand on the look-out for long, but all in vain. At the faintest sound of movement in the brushwood, the jingle ceases. I try[21]again next day and the day after. This time my stubborn watch succeeds. Whoosh! A grab of my hand and I hold the singer. It is not a bird; it is a kind of Grasshopper whose hind-legs my playfellows have taught me to relish: a poor recompense for my prolonged ambush. The best part of the business is not the two haunches with the shrimpy flavour, but what I have just learnt. I now know, from personal observation, that the Grasshopper sings. I did not publish my discovery for fear of the same laughter that greeted my story about the sun.Oh, what pretty flowers, in a field close to the house! They seem to smile to me with their great violet eyes. Later on I see, in their place, bunches of big red cherries. I taste them. They are not nice, and they have no stones. What can those cherries be? At the end of the summer, grandfather walks up with a spade and turns my field of observation topsy-turvy. From under ground there comes, by the basketful and sackful, a sort of round root. I know that root; it abounds in the house; time after time I have cooked it in the peat-stove. It is the potato. Its violet flower and its red fruit are pigeon-holed in my memory for good and all.With an ever-watchful eye for animals and plants, the future observer, the little six-year-old monkey, practised by himself, all unawares. He went to the flower, he went to the insect, even as the Large White Butterfly goes to the cabbage, and the Red Admiral to the thistle.[22]It would be impossible to describe more delightfully the gradual development of tastes and aptitudes in the dawn of life.The same freshness of impression and the same affinity for natural objects will be found in another recollection of the same period: the recollection of “a certain harmonica,” whose music to the “ear of a child of six” sounded as sweet and strange as that of the frog whom he heard emitting his limpid note in the neighbourhood of the solitary farm as the last light of evening faded from the heights. “A series of glass slips, of unequal length, fixed upon two tightly-stretched tapes, and a cork on the end of a wire, which served as a striker”: such was the instrument which some one brought the child from the latest fair. “Imagine an untutored hand striking at random upon this key-board, with the most riotous unexpectedness of octaves, discords, and inverted harmonies”: such was the chiming of the bell-ringer frogs on the sunken lanes of Malaval. “As a song it had neither head nor tail; but the purity of the sound was delightful.” How much more delightful, in the first radiance of his spontaneous childhood, this little scrap of a fellow who was beginning to play his part in the great concert of the world,[23]in which he was one day to fill so notable a place and to sing a new song to the glory of the Master of Nature!4[24]1Those journals which claim him as a native of Sérignan are therefore mistaken. “At Sérignan (Vaucluse), hisnative countryside, the peasants familiarly call himMoussu Fabré”(Univers, March 3, 1910).↑2In the reminiscences of his childhood, which are intermingled with his entomological memoirs, Fabre does not mention a single proper name, whether of person or place; only the vague expression, “the table-land of the Rouergue,” which he once incidentally employs, might give an attentive reader a hint as to the place of his origin.Souvenirs,VI., p. 38;The Life of the Fly, chap. v., “Heredity.”↑3These paternal grandparents, of whom our hero has retained so vivid a recollection, bore the names of Jean-Pierre Fabre and Elisabeth Poujade. Patient searching of the archives, assisted, fortunately, by the goodwill of M. Toscan, registrar to the Justice of the Peace for Vezins, has enabled us to reproduce their marriage contract, which is full of information hitherto unpublished, and curious details of domestic life which will not fail to interest the reader:“In the year 1791 and on the 15th day of the month of February, in the locality of Ségur, province of Aveiron, in the presence of me, Raymond Rous, man of law and notary royal … have been devised and concluded the following articles of marriage betweenPierre-Jean Fabre, legitimate son of Pierre Fabre, landowner and farmer, and Anne Fages, husband and wife of the village of Malaval, on the one part, andElisabeth Poujade, legitimate daughter of Antoine Poujade, landowner, and Françoise Azémar, husband and wife of the village of Mont, parish ofNotre-Dame d’Arques, on the other part—the said parties acting, namely, the said future husband with the knowledge and consent of his father and mother here present, and the said future wife, she being absent, but the said Poujade for her, being here present stipulating and accepting—havein the first placepromised that the said marriage shall be solemnised before the Church at the first demand of one of the parties, under penalty of all expenses, damages, and interests—in the second place, the said Fabre and Fages, husband and wife, favouring and contemplating the present marriage have given and are giving by donation, declared between living persons, to the aforesaid their son, the future husband, all and each of their possessions, movable and immovable, present and future, under the clauses, conditions, and reserves hereafter following: firstly, to be fed at the same table of the same victuals as the said donor; secondly, and in case of incompatibility,[14]they reserve to themselves the same income as Jean Fabre and Françoise Fabre, father and mother of the donor, reserved to themselves in the marriage contract of the said Fabre received by M. Dufieu, notary …; thirdly, to settle upon their other children a portion such as by law shall pertain to them out of their possessions in money when they accept a settlement; and in case Françoise and Anne Fabre should not desire so to do, they shall enjoy the annual pension … of threesetierseach of rye, two quarters each of oats, five pounds each of butter, and five pounds each of cheese; the use of their usual bed, and of their spinning-wheel; the use of their clothes-press and the small articles of furniture necessary according to their condition; … the said Fages, the mother, reserves to herself the sum of thirty francs to be paid once at her will to employ and dispose as she shall see fit.In the third place, the said Poujade, the father, favouring and contemplating the present marriage, has given and constituted as the dowry of his daughter, the future wife, to take the place of any right to a portion which she might claim against his goods and those of the mother aforesaid, a clothes-press with apparel valued at a hundred livres, a heifer and a cow valued the two at eighty francs, two sheep, and the sum of fifteen hundred livres, the said sum being made up of one hundred and fifty livres of the maternal parent’s and the rest of the paternal parent’s money.…“Devised and rehearsed in the presence of the sieur Joseph Déjean, burgher of Moulin-Savi, and the sieur André Bourles, practitioner of Ségur, signed by the aforesaid Fabre, father and son, and the aforesaid Poujade, father, and not the aforesaid Fages, who, being requested to sign, has stated that she is not able to do so.…“Forwarded by us, the notary undersigned, holder of the draft at Ségur, the 12th April 1807.“Rous,notary.”↑4This account of the naturalist’s childhood is drawn principally fromThe Souvenirs, vi., 32–45; seeThe Life of the Fly, chap, v., “Heredity.”↑

CHAPTER IITHE URCHIN OF MALAVAL

Jean-Henri Fabre was born at Saint-Léons, the market-town and administrative centre of the canton of Vezins. In witness of which behold this extract from the register of baptisms, a certified copy transcribed by the Abbé Lafon, curé of Saint-Léons:In the year 1823, on the 22nd September, was baptised Jean-Henri-Casimir Fabre, of the aforesaid Saint-Léons, the legitimate son of Antoine Fabre and Victoire Salgues, inhabitants of the same place:—His godfather was Pierre Ricard, primary schoolmaster. In proof of which—Fabre, vicar.1Jean-Henri Casimir’s mother, by birth Victoire Salgues, was the daughter of the bailiff of Saint-Léons. His father, Antoine Fabre, was born in a littlemasin the parish of Lavaysse, Malaval, where his parents were still cultivating the old family property[11]which since then has passed to the head of the Vaissière family.It was thus at Malaval that the future entomologist “passed his earliest childhood,” as he told me when writing to me ten years ago.2There was no wallowing in abundance at Saint-Léons. In order to relieve the poor household of one mouth, he was confided to the care of his grandmother and sent to Malaval. “There, in solitude, amid the geese, the calves, and the sheep, my mind first awoke to consciousness. What went before is for me shrouded in impenetrable darkness.”The spot which was the scene of this first awakening deserves description. When one follows the road from Laissac to Vezins, a short distance after passing Vaysse-Rodié, just as one has almost reached the crest of the height which by reason of its rocky helmet is called thepuech del Roucas, on the line of the watershed dividing the limestone basin of the Aveyron from the granitic basin[12]of the Viaur, on turning sharply to the right one sees before one the austereMalavallis, dominated on the one hand by the height of Lavaysse with its ancient church, and enlivened a little on the other side by the tiny hamlet of Malaval, which consists, to-day, of two farm-houses; one whiter, more cheerful-looking, and on lower ground; the other standing higher, greyer in hue, and more difficult to discover in the shade of the oak-trees and thickets of broom and blackthorn which form a dense mantle of green about it. It was there, amid these trees, in this house, three thousand feet above the sea, in sight of the sturdy belfry of Lavaysse, that Jean-Henri Fabre was “born into the true life,” the life of the mind. Here, on this hillside, which directly faces the east, he made his earliest discoveries; here, one fine morning, as he will presently tell us, he discovered the sun; here, he saw not only the dawn of day, but also “that inward dawn, so far swept clear of the clouds of unconsciousness as to leave him a lasting memory.”Nothing could take the place of the picturesqueness and sincerity of the narrative in which he has related these earliest impressions of his childhood:[13]My grandparents3were people whose quarrel with the alphabet was so great that they had never opened a book in their lives; and they kept a lean farm on the cold granite ridge of the Rouergue[14]table-land. The house, standing alone amidst the heath and broom, with no neighbour for many a mile around and visited at intervals by the wolves, was to them the hub of the universe. But for a[15]few surrounding villages, whither the calves were driven upon fair-days, the rest was only very vaguely known by hearsay. In this wild solitude, the mossy fens, with their quagmires oozing with iridescent pools, supplied the cows, the principal source of wealth, with plentiful pasture. In summer, on the short sward of the slopes, the sheep were penned day and night, protected from beasts of prey by a fence of hurdles propped up with pitchforks. When the grass was cropped close at one spot, the fold was shifted elsewhither. In the centre was the shepherd’s rolling hut, a straw cabin. Two watch-dogs, equipped with spiked collars, were answerable for tranquillity if the thieving wolf appeared in the night from out the neighbouring woods.Padded with a perpetual layer of cow-dung, in which I sank to my knees, broken up shimmering puddles of dark-brown liquid manure, the farmyard also boasted a numerous population. Here the lambs skipped, the geese trumpeted, the fowls scratched the ground, and the sow grunted with her swarm of little pigs hanging to her dugs.The harshness of the climate did not give husbandry the same chances. In a propitious season they would set fire to a stretch of moorland bristling with gorse and send the swing-plough across the ground enriched by the cinders from the fire. This yielded a few acres of rye, oats, and potatoes. The best corners were kept for hemp, which furnished the distaffs and spindles of the house with[16]the material for cloth, and was looked upon as grandmother’s private crop.Grandfather, therefore, was, before all, a herdsman versed in the love of cows and sheep, but completely ignorant of aught else. How dumbfounded he would have been to learn that, in the remote future, one of his family would become enamoured of those insignificant animals to which he had never vouchsafed a glance in his life! Had he guessed that that lunatic was myself, the scapegrace seated at the table by his side, what a smack of the head I should have caught, what a wrathful look!“The idea of wasting one’s time with that nonsense!” he would have thundered.For the patriarch was not given to joking. I can still see his serious face, his unclipped head of hair, often brought back behind his ears with a flick of the thumb and spreading its ancient Gallic mane over his shoulders. I see his little three-cornered hat, his small-clothes buckled at the knees, his wooden shoes, stuffed with straw, that echoed as he walked. Ah, no! Once childhood’s games were past, it would never have done to rear the Grasshopper and unearth the Dung-beetle from his natural surroundings.Grandmother, pious soul, used to wear the eccentric headdress of the Rouergue Highlanders: a large disk of black felt, stiff as a plank, adorned in the middle with a crown a finger’s-breadth high and hardly wider across than a six-franc piece. A black ribbon fastened under the chin maintained[17]the equilibrium of this elegant, but unstable circle. Pickles, hemp, chickens, curds and whey, butter; washing the clothes, minding the children, seeing to the meals of the household: say that and you have summed up the strenuous woman’s round of ideas. On her left side, the distaff, with its load of tow; in her right hand, the spindle turning under a quick twist of her thumb, moistened at intervals with her tongue: so she went through life, unweariedly, attending to the order and the welfare of the house. I see her in my mind’s eye, particularly on winter evenings, which were more favourable to family talk. When the hour came for meals, all of us, big and little, would take our seats round a long table, on a couple of benches, deal planks supported by four rickety legs. Each found his wooden bowl and his tin spoon in front of him. At one end of the table there always stood an enormous rye-loaf, the size of a cartwheel, wrapped in a linen cloth with a pleasant smell of washing, and there it remained until nothing was left of it. With a vigorous stroke, grandfather would cut off enough for the needs of the moment; then he would divide the piece among us with the one knife which he alone was entitled to wield. It was now each one’s business to break up his bit with his fingers and to fill his bowl as he pleased.Next came grandmother’s turn. A capacious pot bubbled lustily and sang upon the flames in the hearth, exhaling an appetising savour of bacon and turnips. Armed with a long metal ladle, grandmother[18]would take from it, for each of us in turn, first the broth, wherein to soak the bread, and next the ration of turnips and bacon, partly fat and partly lean, filling the bowl to the top. At the other end of the table was the pitcher, from which the thirsty were free to drink at will. What appetites we had, and what festive meals those were, especially when a cream-cheese, home-made, was there to complete the banquet!Near us blazed the huge fire-place, in which whole tree-trunks were consumed in the extreme cold weather. From a corner of that monumental, soot-glazed chimney, projected, at a convenient height, a slate shelf, which served to light the kitchen when we sat up late. On this we burnt slips of pine-wood, selected among the most translucent, those containing the most resin. They shed over the room a lurid red light, which saved the walnut-oil in the lamp.When the bowls were emptied and the last crumb of cheese scraped up, grandam went back to her distaff, on a stool by the chimney-corner. We children, boys and girls, squatting on our heels and putting out our hands to the cheerful fire of furze, formed a circle round her and listened to her with eager ears. She told us stories, not greatly varied, it is true, but still wonderful, for the wolf often played a part in them. I should have very much liked to see this wolf, the hero of so many tales that made our flesh creep; but the shepherd always refused to take me into his straw hut, in the middle of the fold, at night.[19]When we had done talking about the horrid wolf, the dragon, and the serpent, and when the resinous splinters had given out their last gleams, we went to sleep the sweet sleep that toil gives. As the youngest of the household, I had a right to the mattress, a sack stuffed with oat-chaff. The others had to be content with straw.I owe a great deal to you, dear grandmother: it was in your lap that I found consolation for my first sorrows. You have handed down to me, perhaps, a little of your physical vigour, a little of your love of work; but certainly you were no more accountable than grandfather for my passion for insects.And yet in me, the observer, the inquirer into things, began to take shape almost in infancy. Why should I not describe my first discoveries? They are ingenuous in the extreme, but will serve notwithstanding to tell us something of the way in which tendencies first show themselves.I was five or six years old. That the poor household might have one mouth less to feed, I had been placed in grandmother’s care. Here, in solitude, my first gleams of intelligence were awakened amidst the geese, the calves, and the sheep. Everything before that is impenetrable darkness. My real birth was at the moment when the dawn of personality rises, dispersing the mists of unconsciousness and leaving a lasting memory. I can see myself plainly, clad in a soiled frieze frock flapping against my bare heels; I remember the handkerchief hanging from my waist by a bit of[20]string, a handkerchief often lost and replaced by the back of my sleeve.There I stand one day, a pensive urchin, with my hands behind my back and my face turned to the sun. The dazzling splendour fascinates me. I am the Moth attracted by the light of the lamp. With what am I enjoying the glorious radiance: with my mouth or my eyes? That is the question put by my budding scientific curiosity. Reader, do not smile! the future observer is already practising and experimenting. I open my mouth wide and close my eyes: the glory disappears. I open my eyes and shut my mouth: the glory reappears. I repeat the performance, with the same result. The question’s solved: I have learnt by deduction that I see the sun with my eyes. What a discovery! That evening I told the whole house all about it. Grandmother smiled fondly at my simplicity: the others laughed at it. ’Tis the way of the world.Another find. At nightfall, amidst the neighbouring bushes, a sort of jingle attracted my attention, sounding very faintly and softly through the evening silence. Who is making that noise? Is it a little bird chirping in his nest? We must look into the matter, and that quickly. True, there is the wolf, who comes out of the woods at this time, so they tell me. Let’s go all the same, but not too far: just there, behind that clump of broom. I stand on the look-out for long, but all in vain. At the faintest sound of movement in the brushwood, the jingle ceases. I try[21]again next day and the day after. This time my stubborn watch succeeds. Whoosh! A grab of my hand and I hold the singer. It is not a bird; it is a kind of Grasshopper whose hind-legs my playfellows have taught me to relish: a poor recompense for my prolonged ambush. The best part of the business is not the two haunches with the shrimpy flavour, but what I have just learnt. I now know, from personal observation, that the Grasshopper sings. I did not publish my discovery for fear of the same laughter that greeted my story about the sun.Oh, what pretty flowers, in a field close to the house! They seem to smile to me with their great violet eyes. Later on I see, in their place, bunches of big red cherries. I taste them. They are not nice, and they have no stones. What can those cherries be? At the end of the summer, grandfather walks up with a spade and turns my field of observation topsy-turvy. From under ground there comes, by the basketful and sackful, a sort of round root. I know that root; it abounds in the house; time after time I have cooked it in the peat-stove. It is the potato. Its violet flower and its red fruit are pigeon-holed in my memory for good and all.With an ever-watchful eye for animals and plants, the future observer, the little six-year-old monkey, practised by himself, all unawares. He went to the flower, he went to the insect, even as the Large White Butterfly goes to the cabbage, and the Red Admiral to the thistle.[22]It would be impossible to describe more delightfully the gradual development of tastes and aptitudes in the dawn of life.The same freshness of impression and the same affinity for natural objects will be found in another recollection of the same period: the recollection of “a certain harmonica,” whose music to the “ear of a child of six” sounded as sweet and strange as that of the frog whom he heard emitting his limpid note in the neighbourhood of the solitary farm as the last light of evening faded from the heights. “A series of glass slips, of unequal length, fixed upon two tightly-stretched tapes, and a cork on the end of a wire, which served as a striker”: such was the instrument which some one brought the child from the latest fair. “Imagine an untutored hand striking at random upon this key-board, with the most riotous unexpectedness of octaves, discords, and inverted harmonies”: such was the chiming of the bell-ringer frogs on the sunken lanes of Malaval. “As a song it had neither head nor tail; but the purity of the sound was delightful.” How much more delightful, in the first radiance of his spontaneous childhood, this little scrap of a fellow who was beginning to play his part in the great concert of the world,[23]in which he was one day to fill so notable a place and to sing a new song to the glory of the Master of Nature!4[24]

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

Jean-Henri Casimir’s mother, by birth Victoire Salgues, was the daughter of the bailiff of Saint-Léons. His father, Antoine Fabre, was born in a littlemasin the parish of Lavaysse, Malaval, where his parents were still cultivating the old family property[11]which since then has passed to the head of the Vaissière family.

It was thus at Malaval that the future entomologist “passed his earliest childhood,” as he told me when writing to me ten years ago.2There was no wallowing in abundance at Saint-Léons. In order to relieve the poor household of one mouth, he was confided to the care of his grandmother and sent to Malaval. “There, in solitude, amid the geese, the calves, and the sheep, my mind first awoke to consciousness. What went before is for me shrouded in impenetrable darkness.”

The spot which was the scene of this first awakening deserves description. When one follows the road from Laissac to Vezins, a short distance after passing Vaysse-Rodié, just as one has almost reached the crest of the height which by reason of its rocky helmet is called thepuech del Roucas, on the line of the watershed dividing the limestone basin of the Aveyron from the granitic basin[12]of the Viaur, on turning sharply to the right one sees before one the austereMalavallis, dominated on the one hand by the height of Lavaysse with its ancient church, and enlivened a little on the other side by the tiny hamlet of Malaval, which consists, to-day, of two farm-houses; one whiter, more cheerful-looking, and on lower ground; the other standing higher, greyer in hue, and more difficult to discover in the shade of the oak-trees and thickets of broom and blackthorn which form a dense mantle of green about it. It was there, amid these trees, in this house, three thousand feet above the sea, in sight of the sturdy belfry of Lavaysse, that Jean-Henri Fabre was “born into the true life,” the life of the mind. Here, on this hillside, which directly faces the east, he made his earliest discoveries; here, one fine morning, as he will presently tell us, he discovered the sun; here, he saw not only the dawn of day, but also “that inward dawn, so far swept clear of the clouds of unconsciousness as to leave him a lasting memory.”

Nothing could take the place of the picturesqueness and sincerity of the narrative in which he has related these earliest impressions of his childhood:[13]

My grandparents3were people whose quarrel with the alphabet was so great that they had never opened a book in their lives; and they kept a lean farm on the cold granite ridge of the Rouergue[14]table-land. The house, standing alone amidst the heath and broom, with no neighbour for many a mile around and visited at intervals by the wolves, was to them the hub of the universe. But for a[15]few surrounding villages, whither the calves were driven upon fair-days, the rest was only very vaguely known by hearsay. In this wild solitude, the mossy fens, with their quagmires oozing with iridescent pools, supplied the cows, the principal source of wealth, with plentiful pasture. In summer, on the short sward of the slopes, the sheep were penned day and night, protected from beasts of prey by a fence of hurdles propped up with pitchforks. When the grass was cropped close at one spot, the fold was shifted elsewhither. In the centre was the shepherd’s rolling hut, a straw cabin. Two watch-dogs, equipped with spiked collars, were answerable for tranquillity if the thieving wolf appeared in the night from out the neighbouring woods.

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

The harshness of the climate did not give husbandry the same chances. In a propitious season they would set fire to a stretch of moorland bristling with gorse and send the swing-plough across the ground enriched by the cinders from the fire. This yielded a few acres of rye, oats, and potatoes. The best corners were kept for hemp, which furnished the distaffs and spindles of the house with[16]the material for cloth, and was looked upon as grandmother’s private crop.

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

“The idea of wasting one’s time with that nonsense!” he would have thundered.

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

Grandmother, pious soul, used to wear the eccentric headdress of the Rouergue Highlanders: a large disk of black felt, stiff as a plank, adorned in the middle with a crown a finger’s-breadth high and hardly wider across than a six-franc piece. A black ribbon fastened under the chin maintained[17]the equilibrium of this elegant, but unstable circle. Pickles, hemp, chickens, curds and whey, butter; washing the clothes, minding the children, seeing to the meals of the household: say that and you have summed up the strenuous woman’s round of ideas. On her left side, the distaff, with its load of tow; in her right hand, the spindle turning under a quick twist of her thumb, moistened at intervals with her tongue: so she went through life, unweariedly, attending to the order and the welfare of the house. I see her in my mind’s eye, particularly on winter evenings, which were more favourable to family talk. When the hour came for meals, all of us, big and little, would take our seats round a long table, on a couple of benches, deal planks supported by four rickety legs. Each found his wooden bowl and his tin spoon in front of him. At one end of the table there always stood an enormous rye-loaf, the size of a cartwheel, wrapped in a linen cloth with a pleasant smell of washing, and there it remained until nothing was left of it. With a vigorous stroke, grandfather would cut off enough for the needs of the moment; then he would divide the piece among us with the one knife which he alone was entitled to wield. It was now each one’s business to break up his bit with his fingers and to fill his bowl as he pleased.

Next came grandmother’s turn. A capacious pot bubbled lustily and sang upon the flames in the hearth, exhaling an appetising savour of bacon and turnips. Armed with a long metal ladle, grandmother[18]would take from it, for each of us in turn, first the broth, wherein to soak the bread, and next the ration of turnips and bacon, partly fat and partly lean, filling the bowl to the top. At the other end of the table was the pitcher, from which the thirsty were free to drink at will. What appetites we had, and what festive meals those were, especially when a cream-cheese, home-made, was there to complete the banquet!

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

When the bowls were emptied and the last crumb of cheese scraped up, grandam went back to her distaff, on a stool by the chimney-corner. We children, boys and girls, squatting on our heels and putting out our hands to the cheerful fire of furze, formed a circle round her and listened to her with eager ears. She told us stories, not greatly varied, it is true, but still wonderful, for the wolf often played a part in them. I should have very much liked to see this wolf, the hero of so many tales that made our flesh creep; but the shepherd always refused to take me into his straw hut, in the middle of the fold, at night.[19]When we had done talking about the horrid wolf, the dragon, and the serpent, and when the resinous splinters had given out their last gleams, we went to sleep the sweet sleep that toil gives. As the youngest of the household, I had a right to the mattress, a sack stuffed with oat-chaff. The others had to be content with straw.

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

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

I was five or six years old. That the poor household might have one mouth less to feed, I had been placed in grandmother’s care. Here, in solitude, my first gleams of intelligence were awakened amidst the geese, the calves, and the sheep. Everything before that is impenetrable darkness. My real birth was at the moment when the dawn of personality rises, dispersing the mists of unconsciousness and leaving a lasting memory. I can see myself plainly, clad in a soiled frieze frock flapping against my bare heels; I remember the handkerchief hanging from my waist by a bit of[20]string, a handkerchief often lost and replaced by the back of my sleeve.

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

Another find. At nightfall, amidst the neighbouring bushes, a sort of jingle attracted my attention, sounding very faintly and softly through the evening silence. Who is making that noise? Is it a little bird chirping in his nest? We must look into the matter, and that quickly. True, there is the wolf, who comes out of the woods at this time, so they tell me. Let’s go all the same, but not too far: just there, behind that clump of broom. I stand on the look-out for long, but all in vain. At the faintest sound of movement in the brushwood, the jingle ceases. I try[21]again next day and the day after. This time my stubborn watch succeeds. Whoosh! A grab of my hand and I hold the singer. It is not a bird; it is a kind of Grasshopper whose hind-legs my playfellows have taught me to relish: a poor recompense for my prolonged ambush. The best part of the business is not the two haunches with the shrimpy flavour, but what I have just learnt. I now know, from personal observation, that the Grasshopper sings. I did not publish my discovery for fear of the same laughter that greeted my story about the sun.

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

With an ever-watchful eye for animals and plants, the future observer, the little six-year-old monkey, practised by himself, all unawares. He went to the flower, he went to the insect, even as the Large White Butterfly goes to the cabbage, and the Red Admiral to the thistle.[22]

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

The same freshness of impression and the same affinity for natural objects will be found in another recollection of the same period: the recollection of “a certain harmonica,” whose music to the “ear of a child of six” sounded as sweet and strange as that of the frog whom he heard emitting his limpid note in the neighbourhood of the solitary farm as the last light of evening faded from the heights. “A series of glass slips, of unequal length, fixed upon two tightly-stretched tapes, and a cork on the end of a wire, which served as a striker”: such was the instrument which some one brought the child from the latest fair. “Imagine an untutored hand striking at random upon this key-board, with the most riotous unexpectedness of octaves, discords, and inverted harmonies”: such was the chiming of the bell-ringer frogs on the sunken lanes of Malaval. “As a song it had neither head nor tail; but the purity of the sound was delightful.” How much more delightful, in the first radiance of his spontaneous childhood, this little scrap of a fellow who was beginning to play his part in the great concert of the world,[23]in which he was one day to fill so notable a place and to sing a new song to the glory of the Master of Nature!4[24]

1Those journals which claim him as a native of Sérignan are therefore mistaken. “At Sérignan (Vaucluse), hisnative countryside, the peasants familiarly call himMoussu Fabré”(Univers, March 3, 1910).↑2In the reminiscences of his childhood, which are intermingled with his entomological memoirs, Fabre does not mention a single proper name, whether of person or place; only the vague expression, “the table-land of the Rouergue,” which he once incidentally employs, might give an attentive reader a hint as to the place of his origin.Souvenirs,VI., p. 38;The Life of the Fly, chap. v., “Heredity.”↑3These paternal grandparents, of whom our hero has retained so vivid a recollection, bore the names of Jean-Pierre Fabre and Elisabeth Poujade. Patient searching of the archives, assisted, fortunately, by the goodwill of M. Toscan, registrar to the Justice of the Peace for Vezins, has enabled us to reproduce their marriage contract, which is full of information hitherto unpublished, and curious details of domestic life which will not fail to interest the reader:“In the year 1791 and on the 15th day of the month of February, in the locality of Ségur, province of Aveiron, in the presence of me, Raymond Rous, man of law and notary royal … have been devised and concluded the following articles of marriage betweenPierre-Jean Fabre, legitimate son of Pierre Fabre, landowner and farmer, and Anne Fages, husband and wife of the village of Malaval, on the one part, andElisabeth Poujade, legitimate daughter of Antoine Poujade, landowner, and Françoise Azémar, husband and wife of the village of Mont, parish ofNotre-Dame d’Arques, on the other part—the said parties acting, namely, the said future husband with the knowledge and consent of his father and mother here present, and the said future wife, she being absent, but the said Poujade for her, being here present stipulating and accepting—havein the first placepromised that the said marriage shall be solemnised before the Church at the first demand of one of the parties, under penalty of all expenses, damages, and interests—in the second place, the said Fabre and Fages, husband and wife, favouring and contemplating the present marriage have given and are giving by donation, declared between living persons, to the aforesaid their son, the future husband, all and each of their possessions, movable and immovable, present and future, under the clauses, conditions, and reserves hereafter following: firstly, to be fed at the same table of the same victuals as the said donor; secondly, and in case of incompatibility,[14]they reserve to themselves the same income as Jean Fabre and Françoise Fabre, father and mother of the donor, reserved to themselves in the marriage contract of the said Fabre received by M. Dufieu, notary …; thirdly, to settle upon their other children a portion such as by law shall pertain to them out of their possessions in money when they accept a settlement; and in case Françoise and Anne Fabre should not desire so to do, they shall enjoy the annual pension … of threesetierseach of rye, two quarters each of oats, five pounds each of butter, and five pounds each of cheese; the use of their usual bed, and of their spinning-wheel; the use of their clothes-press and the small articles of furniture necessary according to their condition; … the said Fages, the mother, reserves to herself the sum of thirty francs to be paid once at her will to employ and dispose as she shall see fit.In the third place, the said Poujade, the father, favouring and contemplating the present marriage, has given and constituted as the dowry of his daughter, the future wife, to take the place of any right to a portion which she might claim against his goods and those of the mother aforesaid, a clothes-press with apparel valued at a hundred livres, a heifer and a cow valued the two at eighty francs, two sheep, and the sum of fifteen hundred livres, the said sum being made up of one hundred and fifty livres of the maternal parent’s and the rest of the paternal parent’s money.…“Devised and rehearsed in the presence of the sieur Joseph Déjean, burgher of Moulin-Savi, and the sieur André Bourles, practitioner of Ségur, signed by the aforesaid Fabre, father and son, and the aforesaid Poujade, father, and not the aforesaid Fages, who, being requested to sign, has stated that she is not able to do so.…“Forwarded by us, the notary undersigned, holder of the draft at Ségur, the 12th April 1807.“Rous,notary.”↑4This account of the naturalist’s childhood is drawn principally fromThe Souvenirs, vi., 32–45; seeThe Life of the Fly, chap, v., “Heredity.”↑

2In the reminiscences of his childhood, which are intermingled with his entomological memoirs, Fabre does not mention a single proper name, whether of person or place; only the vague expression, “the table-land of the Rouergue,” which he once incidentally employs, might give an attentive reader a hint as to the place of his origin.Souvenirs,VI., p. 38;The Life of the Fly, chap. v., “Heredity.”↑

3These paternal grandparents, of whom our hero has retained so vivid a recollection, bore the names of Jean-Pierre Fabre and Elisabeth Poujade. Patient searching of the archives, assisted, fortunately, by the goodwill of M. Toscan, registrar to the Justice of the Peace for Vezins, has enabled us to reproduce their marriage contract, which is full of information hitherto unpublished, and curious details of domestic life which will not fail to interest the reader:“In the year 1791 and on the 15th day of the month of February, in the locality of Ségur, province of Aveiron, in the presence of me, Raymond Rous, man of law and notary royal … have been devised and concluded the following articles of marriage betweenPierre-Jean Fabre, legitimate son of Pierre Fabre, landowner and farmer, and Anne Fages, husband and wife of the village of Malaval, on the one part, andElisabeth Poujade, legitimate daughter of Antoine Poujade, landowner, and Françoise Azémar, husband and wife of the village of Mont, parish ofNotre-Dame d’Arques, on the other part—the said parties acting, namely, the said future husband with the knowledge and consent of his father and mother here present, and the said future wife, she being absent, but the said Poujade for her, being here present stipulating and accepting—havein the first placepromised that the said marriage shall be solemnised before the Church at the first demand of one of the parties, under penalty of all expenses, damages, and interests—in the second place, the said Fabre and Fages, husband and wife, favouring and contemplating the present marriage have given and are giving by donation, declared between living persons, to the aforesaid their son, the future husband, all and each of their possessions, movable and immovable, present and future, under the clauses, conditions, and reserves hereafter following: firstly, to be fed at the same table of the same victuals as the said donor; secondly, and in case of incompatibility,[14]they reserve to themselves the same income as Jean Fabre and Françoise Fabre, father and mother of the donor, reserved to themselves in the marriage contract of the said Fabre received by M. Dufieu, notary …; thirdly, to settle upon their other children a portion such as by law shall pertain to them out of their possessions in money when they accept a settlement; and in case Françoise and Anne Fabre should not desire so to do, they shall enjoy the annual pension … of threesetierseach of rye, two quarters each of oats, five pounds each of butter, and five pounds each of cheese; the use of their usual bed, and of their spinning-wheel; the use of their clothes-press and the small articles of furniture necessary according to their condition; … the said Fages, the mother, reserves to herself the sum of thirty francs to be paid once at her will to employ and dispose as she shall see fit.In the third place, the said Poujade, the father, favouring and contemplating the present marriage, has given and constituted as the dowry of his daughter, the future wife, to take the place of any right to a portion which she might claim against his goods and those of the mother aforesaid, a clothes-press with apparel valued at a hundred livres, a heifer and a cow valued the two at eighty francs, two sheep, and the sum of fifteen hundred livres, the said sum being made up of one hundred and fifty livres of the maternal parent’s and the rest of the paternal parent’s money.…“Devised and rehearsed in the presence of the sieur Joseph Déjean, burgher of Moulin-Savi, and the sieur André Bourles, practitioner of Ségur, signed by the aforesaid Fabre, father and son, and the aforesaid Poujade, father, and not the aforesaid Fages, who, being requested to sign, has stated that she is not able to do so.…“Forwarded by us, the notary undersigned, holder of the draft at Ségur, the 12th April 1807.“Rous,notary.”↑

“In the year 1791 and on the 15th day of the month of February, in the locality of Ségur, province of Aveiron, in the presence of me, Raymond Rous, man of law and notary royal … have been devised and concluded the following articles of marriage betweenPierre-Jean Fabre, legitimate son of Pierre Fabre, landowner and farmer, and Anne Fages, husband and wife of the village of Malaval, on the one part, andElisabeth Poujade, legitimate daughter of Antoine Poujade, landowner, and Françoise Azémar, husband and wife of the village of Mont, parish ofNotre-Dame d’Arques, on the other part—the said parties acting, namely, the said future husband with the knowledge and consent of his father and mother here present, and the said future wife, she being absent, but the said Poujade for her, being here present stipulating and accepting—havein the first placepromised that the said marriage shall be solemnised before the Church at the first demand of one of the parties, under penalty of all expenses, damages, and interests—in the second place, the said Fabre and Fages, husband and wife, favouring and contemplating the present marriage have given and are giving by donation, declared between living persons, to the aforesaid their son, the future husband, all and each of their possessions, movable and immovable, present and future, under the clauses, conditions, and reserves hereafter following: firstly, to be fed at the same table of the same victuals as the said donor; secondly, and in case of incompatibility,[14]they reserve to themselves the same income as Jean Fabre and Françoise Fabre, father and mother of the donor, reserved to themselves in the marriage contract of the said Fabre received by M. Dufieu, notary …; thirdly, to settle upon their other children a portion such as by law shall pertain to them out of their possessions in money when they accept a settlement; and in case Françoise and Anne Fabre should not desire so to do, they shall enjoy the annual pension … of threesetierseach of rye, two quarters each of oats, five pounds each of butter, and five pounds each of cheese; the use of their usual bed, and of their spinning-wheel; the use of their clothes-press and the small articles of furniture necessary according to their condition; … the said Fages, the mother, reserves to herself the sum of thirty francs to be paid once at her will to employ and dispose as she shall see fit.In the third place, the said Poujade, the father, favouring and contemplating the present marriage, has given and constituted as the dowry of his daughter, the future wife, to take the place of any right to a portion which she might claim against his goods and those of the mother aforesaid, a clothes-press with apparel valued at a hundred livres, a heifer and a cow valued the two at eighty francs, two sheep, and the sum of fifteen hundred livres, the said sum being made up of one hundred and fifty livres of the maternal parent’s and the rest of the paternal parent’s money.…

“Devised and rehearsed in the presence of the sieur Joseph Déjean, burgher of Moulin-Savi, and the sieur André Bourles, practitioner of Ségur, signed by the aforesaid Fabre, father and son, and the aforesaid Poujade, father, and not the aforesaid Fages, who, being requested to sign, has stated that she is not able to do so.…

“Forwarded by us, the notary undersigned, holder of the draft at Ségur, the 12th April 1807.

“Rous,notary.”↑

4This account of the naturalist’s childhood is drawn principally fromThe Souvenirs, vi., 32–45; seeThe Life of the Fly, chap, v., “Heredity.”↑

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