CHAPTER XI

[Contents]CHAPTER XITHE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON (CONTINUED)In sketching for the reader’s benefit, the characteristic features of the Avignon naturalist, always busy with his researches, and always on the alert for fresh discoveries, we venture to flatter ourselves that we have placed before him one of the most accomplished and attractive types of that harmonious synthesis of industry and genius, which alone is capable of engendering great achievements, and which was so ably defined by the Latin poet in the words:“… Ego nec studium sine divite venâ,Nec rude quid possit video ingenium. Alterius sicAltera poscit opem res et conjurat amice.”1It will be no less interesting to see by what varied and concurrent circumstances, by what personal interventions, a virtuosity and an activity so well co-ordinated were stimulated, directed and controlled, sustained and protected[144]against all causes of deviation or discouragement.Not in vain does a man breathe at birth the air of the mountain-tops; not in vain does he live his earliest summers with the vision of the heights before him. He retains as it were a nostalgia for the heights, and a wild longing to climb them. It will not surprise us to learn that the child of the Haut-Rouergue, transplanted, by the vicissitudes of life, from the Lévézou mountains to the Provençal plains, should calm his brain, burning with the stress of study, by gazing at Mont Ventoux, and anticipating his approaching expedition to the mountain of his dreams.2We shall not be surprised to find that he never allowed himself to be repulsed by the difficulties of the enterprise, and that more than a score of ascents failed to produce satiety, whereas many another found his courage and his interest evaporate almost at the outset.3For the ascent of Mont Ventoux is a difficult task, more difficult than that of the majority of our mountains:One might best compare the Ventoux with a heap of stones broken up for road-mending purposes.[145]Raise this heap suddenly to a height of a mile and a quarter, increase its base in proportion, cover the white of the limestone with the black stain of the forests, and you have a clear idea of the general aspect of the mountain. This accumulation of rubbish—sometimes small chips, sometimes huge blocks—rises from the plain without preliminary slopes or successive terraces that would render the ascent less arduous by dividing it into stages. The climb begins at once by rocky paths, the best of which is worse than the surface of a road newly strewn with stones, and continues, becoming ever rougher and rougher, right to the summit, the height of which is 6270 feet. Green swards, babbling brooks, the spacious shade of venerable trees, all the things, in short, that lend such charm to other mountains, are here unknown and are replaced by an interminable bed of limestone broken into scales, which slip under our feet with a sharp, almost metallic “click.” By way of cascades the Ventoux has rills of stones; the rattle of falling rocks takes the place of the whispering waters.4But the unsatisfied eagerness that draws the exile from our cool green hills to repeat, again and again, the ascent of the rocky Provençal height, is based on something more than sensitiveness to impressions and a pre-established harmony; he is also strongly attracted[146]by the peculiar and unique variety of the flora growing upon its slopes:Thanks to its isolated position, which leaves it freely exposed on every side to atmospheric influences; thanks also to its height, which makes it the topmost point of France within the frontiers of either the Alps or the Pyrenees, our bare Provençal mountain, Mont Ventoux, lends itself remarkably well to the study of the climatic distribution of plants. At its base the tender olive thrives, with all that multitude of semi-ligneous plants, such as the thyme, whose aromatic fragrance calls for the sun of the Mediterranean regions; on the summit, mantled with snow for at least half the year, the ground is covered with a northern flora, borrowed to some extent from Arctic shores. Half a day’s journey in an upward direction brings before our eyes a succession of the chief vegetable types which we should find in the course of a long voyage from south to north along the same meridian.5To any one with any love of plants, to any one with blood in his veins, the expedition was a tempting one. So we see him set out for the twenty-third time in company with two colleagues6and five others. Let us join them if we wish to make the acquaintance of the[147]botanist of Mont Ventoux as well as the botany; for Fabre is one who throws himself wholly into all that he does, and his history can no more be divorced from that of his plants than from that of his beloved insects.It is four o’clock in the morning. At the head of the caravan walks Triboulet, with his Mule and his Ass: Triboulet, the Nestor of the Ventoux guides. My botanical colleagues inspect the vegetation on either side of the road by the cold light of the dawn; the others talk. I follow the party with a barometer slung from my shoulder and a note-book and pencil in my hand.My barometer, intended for taking the altitude of the principal botanical halts, soon becomes a pretext for attacks on the gourd with the rum. No sooner is a noteworthy plant observed than somebody cries:“Quick, let’s look at the barometer!”And we all crowd around the gourd, the scientific instrument coming later. The coolness of the morning and our walk make us appreciate these references to the barometer so thoroughly that the level of the stimulant falls even more swiftly than that of the mercury. In the interests of the immediate future I must consult Torricelli’s tube a little less often.As the temperature grows too cold for them, first the oak and the ilex disappear by degrees; then the vine and the almond-tree; and next the mulberry,[148]the walnut-tree, and the white oak. Box becomes plentiful. We enter upon a monotonous region extending from the end of the cultivated fields to the lower boundary of the beech-woods, where the predominant plant isSatureia montana, the winter savory, known here by its popular name ofpébré d’asé, Ass’s pepper, because of the acrid flavour of its tiny leaves, impregnated with essential oil. Certain small cheeses forming part of our stores are powdered with this strong spice. Already more than one of us is biting into them in imagination and casting hungry glances at the provision bags carried by the Mule. Our hard morning exercise has brought appetite, and more than appetite, a devouring hunger, what Horace callslatrans stomachus. I teach my colleagues how to stay this rumbling stomach until they reach the next halt; I show them a little sorrel-plant, with arrow-head leaves, theRumex scutatus, or French sorrel; and, practising what I preach, I pick a mouthful. At first they laugh at my suggestion. I let them laugh and soon see them all occupied, each more eagerly than his fellow, in plucking the precious sorrel.While chewing the acid leaves we come to the beeches. These are first big, solitary bushes, trailing on the ground; soon after, dwarf trees, clustering close together; and, finally, mighty trunks, forming a dense and gloomy forest, whose soil is a mass of rough limestone blocks. Bowed down in winter by the weight of the snow, battered all the year round by the fierce gusts of the Mistral, many of[149]the trees have lost their branches and are twisted into grotesque postures, or even lie flat on the ground. An hour or more is spent in crossing this wooded zone, which from a distance shows against the sides of the Ventoux like a black belt. Then once more the beeches become bushy and scattered. We have reached their upper boundary and, to the great relief of all of us, despite the sorrel-leaves, we have also reached the stopping-place selected for our lunch.We are at the source of the Grave, a slender stream of water caught, as it bubbles from the ground, in a series of long beech-trunk troughs, where the mountain shepherds come to water their flocks. The temperature of the spring is 45° F.; and its coolness is a priceless boon for us who have come from the sultry oven of the plain. The cloth is spread on a charming carpet of Alpine plants, with glittering among them the thyme-leaved paronychia, whose wide, thin bracts look like silver scales. The food is taken out of the bags, the bottles extracted from their bed of hay. On this side are the joints, the legs of mutton stuffed with garlic, the stacks of loaves; on that, the tasteless chickens, for our grinders to toy with presently, when the edge has been taken off our appetite. At no great distance, set in a place of honour, are the Ventoux cheeses spiced with winter savory, the littlepébré d’asécheeses, flanked by Arles sausages, whose pink flesh is mottled with cubes of bacon and whole peppercorns. Over here, in this corner, are green olives still dripping with brine and black[150]olives soaking in oil; in that other, Cavaillon melons, some white, some orange, to suit every taste; and, down there, a jar of anchovies which make you drink hard and so keep your strength up. Lastly, the bottles are cooling in the ice-cold water of the trough over there. Have we forgotten anything? Yes, we have not mentioned the crowning side-dish, the onions, to be eaten raw with salt. Our two Parisians—for we have two among us, my fellow-botanists—are at first a little startled by this very invigorating bill of fare; soon they will be the first to burst into praises.7But we will pass over the remarks made at breakfast and the incidents of the last stage of the climb; we will make direct for the summit of Mont Ventoux, where the leader of the expedition will give us a glimpse of the delights that await the naturalist at the end of his climb when he has taken the precaution to make it at the right moment:Would you do some really fruitful botanising? Be there in the first fortnight of July; above all, be ahead of the grazing herds: where the sheep has browsed you will gather none but wretched leavings. While still spared by the hungry flocks, the top of the Ventoux in July is a literal bed of flowers; its loose stony surface is studded with[151]them. My memory recalls, all streaming with the morning dew, those elegant tufts ofAndrosace villosa, with its pink-centred white blooms; the Mont-Cenis violet, spreading its great blue blossoms over the chips of limestone; the spikenard valerian, which blends the sweet perfume of its flowers with the offensive odour of its roots; the wedge-leaved globularia, forming close carpets of bright green dotted with blue capitula; the Alpine forget-me-not, whose blue rivals that of the skies; the Candolla candy-tuft, whose tiny stalk bears a dense head of little white flowers and goes winding among the loose stones.8Our naturalist is evidently fascinated by so many beauties, of such delicate quality. Will he not be tempted to forsake his insects for the flowers? Will not the botanical wealth of the Ventoux make him forget the entomological wonders of the “Sunken Road”? No; he is saved from such an error by God and the good genius that watches over the destiny of him who is to become the prince of entomologists. Even in his lectures on botanical subjects the insects are given their due; and now from time to time they claim his attention and seduce him from the spectacle of the vegetable curiosities which form the principal motive of[152]the expedition; it is now the Ammophila and now the Decticus9that crosses the path of the naturalist in search of plants and flowers, recalling, by some of the most curious problems of entomology, the first beginnings of his vocation and the great task of his life.But the silent language of the tiny creatures destined to be his most intimate companions through life was seconded, at an opportune moment, by the more expressive language of human speech. Here we have one of those events that were landmarks in Fabre’s life, marking the starting-point of a fresh phase in the evolution of his ideas and his labours. He alone can describe for us the actual nature and exact significance of this incident:One winter evening, when the rest of the household was asleep, as I sat reading beside a stove whose ashes were still warm, my book made me forget for a while the cares of the morrow: these heavy cares of a poor professor of physics who, after piling up diplomas and for a quarter of a century performing services of uncontested merit, was receiving for himself and his family a stipend of sixteen hundred francs, or less than the wages of a groom in a decent establishment. Such was the[153]disgraceful parsimony of the day where education was concerned; such was the edict of our government red-tape: I was an irregular, the offspring of my solitary studies. And so I was forgetting the poverty and anxieties of a professor’s life amid my books, when I chanced to turn over the pages of an entomological essay that had fallen into my hands I forget how.It was a monograph by the then father of entomology, the venerable scientist Léon Dufour, on the habits of a Wasp that hunted Buprestis beetles. Certainly, I had not waited till then to interest myself in insects; from my early childhood I had delighted in Beetles, Bees, and Butterflies; as far back as I can remember, I see myself in ecstasy before the splendour of a Ground-beetle’s wing-cases or the wings ofPapilio machaon, the Swallowtail. The fire was laid; the spark to kindle it was absent. Léon Dufour’s essay provided that spark.10New lights burst forth: I received a sort of mental revelation. So there was more in science than the arranging of pretty Beetles in a cork box and giving them names and classifying them; there was something much finer: a close and loving study of insect life, the examination of the structure and especially the faculties of each species. I read of a magnificent instance of this, glowing with excitement as I did so. Some time after, aided by[154]those lucky circumstances which he who seeks them eagerly is always able to find, I myself published an entomological article, a supplement to Léon Dufour’s. This first work of mine won honourable mention from the Institute of France, and was awarded a prize for experimental physiology. But soon I received a far more welcome recompense, in the shape of a most eulogistic and encouraging letter from the very man who had inspired me. From his home in the Landes the revered master sent me a warm expression of his enthusiasm and urged me to go on with my studies. Even now, at that sacred recollection, my old eyes fill with happy tears. O fair days of illusion, of faith in the future, where are you now?11Moquin-Tandon converted Fabre to the study of animals and plants. Dufour converted him to the study of insects, and taught him to publish the results of his entomological studies.Dufour’s little work was a revelation; a flash of light revealing his vocation. It was like the electric impulse that bursts the seed about to open, that sends the genius ready to unfold its wings soaring into the heavens.It was to the chance perusal of a certain passage that another prince of science owed[155]the awakening of his genius. We are speaking of Pasteur, whom we shall presently see in his dealings with Fabre. “It was through reading a note by the Russian chemist, Mitscherlich, on the comparison of the specific characters of certain crystals that Pasteur became interested in those investigations of the subject of molecular dissymmetry which were the starting-point of so many wonderful discoveries.”12Does it not seem that there must be a special Providence for the elect of science?In Dufour’s memoir, which gave Fabre so decisive an impulsion toward entomology, a singular fact is mentioned: the naturalist of the Landes found in the nest of a species of Wasp known as the Cerceris some small beetles of the Buprestis family, which, although apparently dead, remained as fresh as though alive during the period occupied by the rearing of the larvæ for whose nourishment they are destined to serve.Dufour supposed that these Buprestes were simply dead, and, “in order to explain this marvellous preservation of their flesh, which makes an insect that for several weeks has been motionless as a corpse a kind of game that does not become high but remain[156]as fresh as at the moment of capture during the greatest heat of summer, he presumed the use of a liquid antiseptic, acting in the same manner as the preparations used to preserve anatomical specimens. This liquid could only be the venom of the Hymenopteron inoculated into the victim’s body. The tiny drop of poisonous humour that accompanies the sting, the lancet employed in the inoculation, is supposed to perform the office of a kind of pickle or preservative liquid for preserving the flesh set aside for the nourishment of the larvæ.”But Fabre was burning with curiosity to observe for himself a phenomenon which an old practitioner like Dufour proclaims the most curious and extraordinary known to the history of the insect kingdom.13He did not hesitate to go to Carpentras, to search for the Buprestis-hunting wasp, which does not occur in the neighbourhood of Avignon. A minute inspection of the Cerceris’ victims enabled him to prove that, not only was the flesh intact, but the joints were flexible, the viscera were moist, defalcation persisted, and vestiges of irritability even were present, all of which facts were scarcely compatible[157]“with the supposition of an animal absolutely dead, the hypothesis of a true corpse rendered incorruptible by the effect of a liquid preservative.” He was thus led to conclude that the insect was not dead, but only benumbed and reduced to a state of immobility.Fascinated and intrigued by Dufour’s discovery, Fabre wished to see the process for himself, and as a result he made the first and the finest of his own entomological discoveries, which he was later on to enrich by more precise and more remarkable details.But at the same time he was forced to realise how incomplete and superficial were the observations of the man whom he nevertheless revered as the first among his masters.How often was he to find occasion for revising the statements of his predecessors! They were not merely incomplete; they were often erroneous, even when they had the greatest names to recommend them.Must we then ignore all that has been said and written and wholly repudiate the inheritance of the centuries and the scientists of the past? Heaven preserve us from such stupidity! But while it would not be reasonable or even possible to make a clean sweep of all that has been acquired by our[158]predecessors, it is none the less prudent not to accept, in blind confidence, the whole heritage of the past, but to subject to the control of facts the statements even of the masters when these appear at all extravagant. Otherwise we run the risk, if not of perpetrating error by repeating it on our own responsibility, at all events of following a false trail on which we may lose much time and which may finally lead us to envy the lot of those who are able to attack their subject, from the very first, with minds empty of all information and any preconceived ideas. This was brought well home to Fabre by the repeated experience of errors which had escaped the most learned authors and erroneous methods suggested by the best books. And the persuasive effect of the highly symptomatic example afforded by an absolutely unrivalled master was even more eloquent.Unexpectedly, one fine day [writes Fabre], Pasteur rang my door-bell: the Pasteur who was presently to acquire so great a celebrity. His name was known to me. I had read his beautiful essay on the dissymmetry of tartaric acid; I had followed with the keenest interest his researches concerning the generation of the Infusoria.Every period has its scientific craze; to-day it is evolution; then it was spontaneous generation. By[159]his glass bulbs, made sterile or fertile at will, by his experiments, magnificent in their rigorous simplicity, Pasteur exploded for ever the insanity which professed to see life arising from a chemical conflict in a mass of putrescence.Aware of this dispute, so victoriously elucidated, I gave my illustrious visitor the best of welcomes. The scientist had come to me in the first place for certain information. I owed this notable honour to my quality of colleague as a teacher of physics and chemistry. Ah, but what a humble, obscure colleague!Pasteur’s tour through the district of Avignon was in connection with sericulture. For some years the silk-worm nurseries had been at sixes and sevens, ravaged by unknown plagues. The silkworms, without appreciable cause, became masses of putrid deliquescence, or hardened into stony lumps. The peasant, in dismay, saw one of his chief sources of income disappearing; after much expense and trouble he had to throw his litters on the dung-heap.A few words were exchanged concerning the prevailing evil; then, without further preamble:“I wanted to see some cocoons,” said my visitor; “I have never seen any; I know them only by name. Could you get me some?”“Nothing simpler. My landlord is himself a dealer in cocoons, and he lives across the road. If you’ll be good enough to wait a moment, I will bring you what you want.”[160]A few long strides and I had reached my neighbour’s house, where I stuffed my pockets with cocoons. On my return I offered them to the scientist. He took one, turned it over and over in his fingers; curiously he examined it, as we should some singular object which had come from the other end of the world. He shook it against his ear.“It rattles!” he said, quite surprised. “There is something inside!”“Why, yes!”“But what?”“The chrysalis.”“What’s that, the chrysalis?”“I mean the sort of mummy into which the caterpillar turns before it becomes a moth.”“And in every cocoon there is one of those things?”“Of course; it’s to protect the chrysalis that the caterpillar spins.”“Ah!”And without more ado, the cocoons went into the pocket of the scientist, who was to inform himself at leisure concerning this great novelty, the chrysalis. This magnificent assurance impressed me. Knowing nothing of caterpillar, cocoon, chrysalis, or metamorphosis, Pasteur had come to regenerate the silkworm. The ancient gymnasts presented themselves naked for the contest. This ingenious thinker, who was to fight the plague of the silk-worm nurseries, had also hastened to battle wholly naked: that is, devoid of the simplest[161]notions of the insect he was to save from danger. I was astounded; more, I was filled with wonder.14The fact is indeed so extraordinary that it may well appear incredible, but it receives authentic confirmation from the wholly concordant account of Duclaux, Pasteur’s pupil and historiographer, as well as from the honesty of the naturalist, who is assuredly incapable of having invented the story for our amusement.I still remember the day [says Duclaux] when Pasteur, returning to the laboratory, said to me with a touch of excitement in his voice:“Do you know what M. Dumas has just asked of me? To go to the Midi, to study the silk-worm disease.”I don’t know what I replied; probably what he himself replied to his illustrious master: Then there is a silk-worm disease? There are provinces that are being ruined by it? All this was happening so far from Paris, and we were so far from Paris in the laboratory!…Pasteur hesitated. He was not a physiologist. But Dumas’ insistence, the attraction of the unknown, and an inward voice urged him to accept. So he left for the Midi; it was early in June 1865. He was invested with an official mission which confronted him with a plague that had to be conquered[162]and obliged him to render an account of the attempts made and the results obtained.To be sent to fight a fire and not to know what fire is and to have no fire-engine or hose! It needed Pasteur to accept and to shoulder such a responsibility!… To his complaint that he had no knowledge of the matter, Dumas had replied:“So much the better! You will have no ideas on the subject but those that will come to you as a result of your own observations!”This reply is not always a paradox, but one has to be careful to whom one makes it!15In this case the choice was not mistaken, and the lesson was as profitable to Pasteur as it was to Fabre, to whom he was about to hand it on, all unsuspecting.When Pasteur was called upon to regeneratesericulture, the silk-worm disease had been known for twenty years. During that period much research had been undertaken and many efforts had been made, in France as well as in Italy, to discover the nature of the affection and to fight it. But “of all this story, a mixture of truth and falsehood, Pasteur knew nothing when he began his researches.” More—and this was what astonished Fabre—he knew nothing of the physiology or the rearing of the silk-worm. “For[163]the first time he has seen a cocoon, and has learned that there is something in the cocoon, a rough model of the future moth,” … and he is about to revolutionise the hygiene of the silk-worm nurseries and is preparing to revolutionise medicine and general hygiene in the same way,16by showing that the maladies of silk-worms and most of our human maladies arise from the development in the tissues of a microscopic living entity, a microbe, the cause of the malady. And while his other discoveries won for him only fame and the admiration of his contemporaries, this will give him immortality and place him in the front rank of the benefactors of humanity. Decidedly ignorance may have its advantages.Encouraged by the magnificent example of Pasteur (continues the entomologist), I have made it a rule to adopt the method of ignorance in my investigations of the instincts. I read very little. Instead of turning over the leaves of books, an expensive method which is not within my means, instead of consulting others, I set myself obstinately face to face with my subject until I contrive to make it speak. I know nothing. So much the better; my interrogation will be all the freer, to-day tending in one direction, to-morrow in another, according to the information acquired. And[164]if by chance I do open a book, I am careful to leave a section of my mind wide open to doubt.17Beginning with that arising out of Dufour’s memoir, repeated experiences taught Fabre not to be too greatly influenced, in his conceptions of natural objects, by faith in his reading or even in the assertions of his masters. To go still further, Pasteur’s example made him appreciate the advantage of coming fresh to the facts, of confronting them in a state of ignorance, of receiving impressions from them alone, and of having no ideas but those that truly emanate from the reality.Without going to extremes, Fabre benefited by this twofold lesson. No one had a greater respect for his masters; he quotes them readily and is chary neither of praising their works nor of expressing his gratitude to them;18but no one was ever more independent in his researches and his conclusions, which are often the very contrary of theirs. If he revered his masters he revered the truth still more, and he might well have made his own the celebrated maxim:Amicus Plato, magis amica veritas.[165]Let us add that while no one was ever more interested in authors and their writings, to purchase which he often sacrificed his last coppers, and even his daily bread, no one was more resolutely determined to give the first place to the language of facts, and direct intercourse with the tiny living creatures whom he had chosen for his own. So much so that, if we wish fully to describe his method, we must complete the maxim which we have just quoted by this other, which forms its exact counterpart:Amicus liber, magis amica natura.[166]1Horace,Ars Poetica, 409et seq.↑2Souvenirs,III., p. 193.↑3Ibid.,I., p. 182.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xi., “An Ascent of Mont Ventoux.”↑4Souvenirs,I., pp. 182–3.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xi., “An Ascent of Mont Ventoux.”↑5Souvenirs,I., p. 180.↑6Th. Delacour and Bernard Valot of theJardin des Plantes.↑7Souvenirs,I., pp. 181–186.The Hunting Wasps, chap, xi., “An Ascent of Mont Ventoux.”↑8Souvenirs,I., pp. 192–193.↑9Souvenirs,VI., p. 166;I., p. 187.↑10Léon Dufour (1780–1865) was an Army surgeon who in 1823 went through the Spanish campaign, and on returning to France settled in his native town, Saint-Sever, where he devoted himself chiefly to entomology.↑11Souvenirs,I., pp. 39–41.The Hunting Wasps, chap, i., “The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris.”↑12Fabre, Poet of Science, p. 58.↑13Souvenirs,I., pp. 41, 44.The Hunting Wasps, chap.I., “The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris.”↑14Souvenirs,IX., pp. 326–328.↑15Duclaux,Pasteur, Histoire d’un Esprit, pp. 182–93.↑16Souvenirs,IX., p. 330.↑17Souvenirs,IX., pp. 330–331.↑18Souvenirs,I., p. 40, 73;II., pp. 78, 83, 181, 214, 234, 235, 283;V., pp. 76, 188, 229, etc.↑

CHAPTER XITHE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON (CONTINUED)

In sketching for the reader’s benefit, the characteristic features of the Avignon naturalist, always busy with his researches, and always on the alert for fresh discoveries, we venture to flatter ourselves that we have placed before him one of the most accomplished and attractive types of that harmonious synthesis of industry and genius, which alone is capable of engendering great achievements, and which was so ably defined by the Latin poet in the words:“… Ego nec studium sine divite venâ,Nec rude quid possit video ingenium. Alterius sicAltera poscit opem res et conjurat amice.”1It will be no less interesting to see by what varied and concurrent circumstances, by what personal interventions, a virtuosity and an activity so well co-ordinated were stimulated, directed and controlled, sustained and protected[144]against all causes of deviation or discouragement.Not in vain does a man breathe at birth the air of the mountain-tops; not in vain does he live his earliest summers with the vision of the heights before him. He retains as it were a nostalgia for the heights, and a wild longing to climb them. It will not surprise us to learn that the child of the Haut-Rouergue, transplanted, by the vicissitudes of life, from the Lévézou mountains to the Provençal plains, should calm his brain, burning with the stress of study, by gazing at Mont Ventoux, and anticipating his approaching expedition to the mountain of his dreams.2We shall not be surprised to find that he never allowed himself to be repulsed by the difficulties of the enterprise, and that more than a score of ascents failed to produce satiety, whereas many another found his courage and his interest evaporate almost at the outset.3For the ascent of Mont Ventoux is a difficult task, more difficult than that of the majority of our mountains:One might best compare the Ventoux with a heap of stones broken up for road-mending purposes.[145]Raise this heap suddenly to a height of a mile and a quarter, increase its base in proportion, cover the white of the limestone with the black stain of the forests, and you have a clear idea of the general aspect of the mountain. This accumulation of rubbish—sometimes small chips, sometimes huge blocks—rises from the plain without preliminary slopes or successive terraces that would render the ascent less arduous by dividing it into stages. The climb begins at once by rocky paths, the best of which is worse than the surface of a road newly strewn with stones, and continues, becoming ever rougher and rougher, right to the summit, the height of which is 6270 feet. Green swards, babbling brooks, the spacious shade of venerable trees, all the things, in short, that lend such charm to other mountains, are here unknown and are replaced by an interminable bed of limestone broken into scales, which slip under our feet with a sharp, almost metallic “click.” By way of cascades the Ventoux has rills of stones; the rattle of falling rocks takes the place of the whispering waters.4But the unsatisfied eagerness that draws the exile from our cool green hills to repeat, again and again, the ascent of the rocky Provençal height, is based on something more than sensitiveness to impressions and a pre-established harmony; he is also strongly attracted[146]by the peculiar and unique variety of the flora growing upon its slopes:Thanks to its isolated position, which leaves it freely exposed on every side to atmospheric influences; thanks also to its height, which makes it the topmost point of France within the frontiers of either the Alps or the Pyrenees, our bare Provençal mountain, Mont Ventoux, lends itself remarkably well to the study of the climatic distribution of plants. At its base the tender olive thrives, with all that multitude of semi-ligneous plants, such as the thyme, whose aromatic fragrance calls for the sun of the Mediterranean regions; on the summit, mantled with snow for at least half the year, the ground is covered with a northern flora, borrowed to some extent from Arctic shores. Half a day’s journey in an upward direction brings before our eyes a succession of the chief vegetable types which we should find in the course of a long voyage from south to north along the same meridian.5To any one with any love of plants, to any one with blood in his veins, the expedition was a tempting one. So we see him set out for the twenty-third time in company with two colleagues6and five others. Let us join them if we wish to make the acquaintance of the[147]botanist of Mont Ventoux as well as the botany; for Fabre is one who throws himself wholly into all that he does, and his history can no more be divorced from that of his plants than from that of his beloved insects.It is four o’clock in the morning. At the head of the caravan walks Triboulet, with his Mule and his Ass: Triboulet, the Nestor of the Ventoux guides. My botanical colleagues inspect the vegetation on either side of the road by the cold light of the dawn; the others talk. I follow the party with a barometer slung from my shoulder and a note-book and pencil in my hand.My barometer, intended for taking the altitude of the principal botanical halts, soon becomes a pretext for attacks on the gourd with the rum. No sooner is a noteworthy plant observed than somebody cries:“Quick, let’s look at the barometer!”And we all crowd around the gourd, the scientific instrument coming later. The coolness of the morning and our walk make us appreciate these references to the barometer so thoroughly that the level of the stimulant falls even more swiftly than that of the mercury. In the interests of the immediate future I must consult Torricelli’s tube a little less often.As the temperature grows too cold for them, first the oak and the ilex disappear by degrees; then the vine and the almond-tree; and next the mulberry,[148]the walnut-tree, and the white oak. Box becomes plentiful. We enter upon a monotonous region extending from the end of the cultivated fields to the lower boundary of the beech-woods, where the predominant plant isSatureia montana, the winter savory, known here by its popular name ofpébré d’asé, Ass’s pepper, because of the acrid flavour of its tiny leaves, impregnated with essential oil. Certain small cheeses forming part of our stores are powdered with this strong spice. Already more than one of us is biting into them in imagination and casting hungry glances at the provision bags carried by the Mule. Our hard morning exercise has brought appetite, and more than appetite, a devouring hunger, what Horace callslatrans stomachus. I teach my colleagues how to stay this rumbling stomach until they reach the next halt; I show them a little sorrel-plant, with arrow-head leaves, theRumex scutatus, or French sorrel; and, practising what I preach, I pick a mouthful. At first they laugh at my suggestion. I let them laugh and soon see them all occupied, each more eagerly than his fellow, in plucking the precious sorrel.While chewing the acid leaves we come to the beeches. These are first big, solitary bushes, trailing on the ground; soon after, dwarf trees, clustering close together; and, finally, mighty trunks, forming a dense and gloomy forest, whose soil is a mass of rough limestone blocks. Bowed down in winter by the weight of the snow, battered all the year round by the fierce gusts of the Mistral, many of[149]the trees have lost their branches and are twisted into grotesque postures, or even lie flat on the ground. An hour or more is spent in crossing this wooded zone, which from a distance shows against the sides of the Ventoux like a black belt. Then once more the beeches become bushy and scattered. We have reached their upper boundary and, to the great relief of all of us, despite the sorrel-leaves, we have also reached the stopping-place selected for our lunch.We are at the source of the Grave, a slender stream of water caught, as it bubbles from the ground, in a series of long beech-trunk troughs, where the mountain shepherds come to water their flocks. The temperature of the spring is 45° F.; and its coolness is a priceless boon for us who have come from the sultry oven of the plain. The cloth is spread on a charming carpet of Alpine plants, with glittering among them the thyme-leaved paronychia, whose wide, thin bracts look like silver scales. The food is taken out of the bags, the bottles extracted from their bed of hay. On this side are the joints, the legs of mutton stuffed with garlic, the stacks of loaves; on that, the tasteless chickens, for our grinders to toy with presently, when the edge has been taken off our appetite. At no great distance, set in a place of honour, are the Ventoux cheeses spiced with winter savory, the littlepébré d’asécheeses, flanked by Arles sausages, whose pink flesh is mottled with cubes of bacon and whole peppercorns. Over here, in this corner, are green olives still dripping with brine and black[150]olives soaking in oil; in that other, Cavaillon melons, some white, some orange, to suit every taste; and, down there, a jar of anchovies which make you drink hard and so keep your strength up. Lastly, the bottles are cooling in the ice-cold water of the trough over there. Have we forgotten anything? Yes, we have not mentioned the crowning side-dish, the onions, to be eaten raw with salt. Our two Parisians—for we have two among us, my fellow-botanists—are at first a little startled by this very invigorating bill of fare; soon they will be the first to burst into praises.7But we will pass over the remarks made at breakfast and the incidents of the last stage of the climb; we will make direct for the summit of Mont Ventoux, where the leader of the expedition will give us a glimpse of the delights that await the naturalist at the end of his climb when he has taken the precaution to make it at the right moment:Would you do some really fruitful botanising? Be there in the first fortnight of July; above all, be ahead of the grazing herds: where the sheep has browsed you will gather none but wretched leavings. While still spared by the hungry flocks, the top of the Ventoux in July is a literal bed of flowers; its loose stony surface is studded with[151]them. My memory recalls, all streaming with the morning dew, those elegant tufts ofAndrosace villosa, with its pink-centred white blooms; the Mont-Cenis violet, spreading its great blue blossoms over the chips of limestone; the spikenard valerian, which blends the sweet perfume of its flowers with the offensive odour of its roots; the wedge-leaved globularia, forming close carpets of bright green dotted with blue capitula; the Alpine forget-me-not, whose blue rivals that of the skies; the Candolla candy-tuft, whose tiny stalk bears a dense head of little white flowers and goes winding among the loose stones.8Our naturalist is evidently fascinated by so many beauties, of such delicate quality. Will he not be tempted to forsake his insects for the flowers? Will not the botanical wealth of the Ventoux make him forget the entomological wonders of the “Sunken Road”? No; he is saved from such an error by God and the good genius that watches over the destiny of him who is to become the prince of entomologists. Even in his lectures on botanical subjects the insects are given their due; and now from time to time they claim his attention and seduce him from the spectacle of the vegetable curiosities which form the principal motive of[152]the expedition; it is now the Ammophila and now the Decticus9that crosses the path of the naturalist in search of plants and flowers, recalling, by some of the most curious problems of entomology, the first beginnings of his vocation and the great task of his life.But the silent language of the tiny creatures destined to be his most intimate companions through life was seconded, at an opportune moment, by the more expressive language of human speech. Here we have one of those events that were landmarks in Fabre’s life, marking the starting-point of a fresh phase in the evolution of his ideas and his labours. He alone can describe for us the actual nature and exact significance of this incident:One winter evening, when the rest of the household was asleep, as I sat reading beside a stove whose ashes were still warm, my book made me forget for a while the cares of the morrow: these heavy cares of a poor professor of physics who, after piling up diplomas and for a quarter of a century performing services of uncontested merit, was receiving for himself and his family a stipend of sixteen hundred francs, or less than the wages of a groom in a decent establishment. Such was the[153]disgraceful parsimony of the day where education was concerned; such was the edict of our government red-tape: I was an irregular, the offspring of my solitary studies. And so I was forgetting the poverty and anxieties of a professor’s life amid my books, when I chanced to turn over the pages of an entomological essay that had fallen into my hands I forget how.It was a monograph by the then father of entomology, the venerable scientist Léon Dufour, on the habits of a Wasp that hunted Buprestis beetles. Certainly, I had not waited till then to interest myself in insects; from my early childhood I had delighted in Beetles, Bees, and Butterflies; as far back as I can remember, I see myself in ecstasy before the splendour of a Ground-beetle’s wing-cases or the wings ofPapilio machaon, the Swallowtail. The fire was laid; the spark to kindle it was absent. Léon Dufour’s essay provided that spark.10New lights burst forth: I received a sort of mental revelation. So there was more in science than the arranging of pretty Beetles in a cork box and giving them names and classifying them; there was something much finer: a close and loving study of insect life, the examination of the structure and especially the faculties of each species. I read of a magnificent instance of this, glowing with excitement as I did so. Some time after, aided by[154]those lucky circumstances which he who seeks them eagerly is always able to find, I myself published an entomological article, a supplement to Léon Dufour’s. This first work of mine won honourable mention from the Institute of France, and was awarded a prize for experimental physiology. But soon I received a far more welcome recompense, in the shape of a most eulogistic and encouraging letter from the very man who had inspired me. From his home in the Landes the revered master sent me a warm expression of his enthusiasm and urged me to go on with my studies. Even now, at that sacred recollection, my old eyes fill with happy tears. O fair days of illusion, of faith in the future, where are you now?11Moquin-Tandon converted Fabre to the study of animals and plants. Dufour converted him to the study of insects, and taught him to publish the results of his entomological studies.Dufour’s little work was a revelation; a flash of light revealing his vocation. It was like the electric impulse that bursts the seed about to open, that sends the genius ready to unfold its wings soaring into the heavens.It was to the chance perusal of a certain passage that another prince of science owed[155]the awakening of his genius. We are speaking of Pasteur, whom we shall presently see in his dealings with Fabre. “It was through reading a note by the Russian chemist, Mitscherlich, on the comparison of the specific characters of certain crystals that Pasteur became interested in those investigations of the subject of molecular dissymmetry which were the starting-point of so many wonderful discoveries.”12Does it not seem that there must be a special Providence for the elect of science?In Dufour’s memoir, which gave Fabre so decisive an impulsion toward entomology, a singular fact is mentioned: the naturalist of the Landes found in the nest of a species of Wasp known as the Cerceris some small beetles of the Buprestis family, which, although apparently dead, remained as fresh as though alive during the period occupied by the rearing of the larvæ for whose nourishment they are destined to serve.Dufour supposed that these Buprestes were simply dead, and, “in order to explain this marvellous preservation of their flesh, which makes an insect that for several weeks has been motionless as a corpse a kind of game that does not become high but remain[156]as fresh as at the moment of capture during the greatest heat of summer, he presumed the use of a liquid antiseptic, acting in the same manner as the preparations used to preserve anatomical specimens. This liquid could only be the venom of the Hymenopteron inoculated into the victim’s body. The tiny drop of poisonous humour that accompanies the sting, the lancet employed in the inoculation, is supposed to perform the office of a kind of pickle or preservative liquid for preserving the flesh set aside for the nourishment of the larvæ.”But Fabre was burning with curiosity to observe for himself a phenomenon which an old practitioner like Dufour proclaims the most curious and extraordinary known to the history of the insect kingdom.13He did not hesitate to go to Carpentras, to search for the Buprestis-hunting wasp, which does not occur in the neighbourhood of Avignon. A minute inspection of the Cerceris’ victims enabled him to prove that, not only was the flesh intact, but the joints were flexible, the viscera were moist, defalcation persisted, and vestiges of irritability even were present, all of which facts were scarcely compatible[157]“with the supposition of an animal absolutely dead, the hypothesis of a true corpse rendered incorruptible by the effect of a liquid preservative.” He was thus led to conclude that the insect was not dead, but only benumbed and reduced to a state of immobility.Fascinated and intrigued by Dufour’s discovery, Fabre wished to see the process for himself, and as a result he made the first and the finest of his own entomological discoveries, which he was later on to enrich by more precise and more remarkable details.But at the same time he was forced to realise how incomplete and superficial were the observations of the man whom he nevertheless revered as the first among his masters.How often was he to find occasion for revising the statements of his predecessors! They were not merely incomplete; they were often erroneous, even when they had the greatest names to recommend them.Must we then ignore all that has been said and written and wholly repudiate the inheritance of the centuries and the scientists of the past? Heaven preserve us from such stupidity! But while it would not be reasonable or even possible to make a clean sweep of all that has been acquired by our[158]predecessors, it is none the less prudent not to accept, in blind confidence, the whole heritage of the past, but to subject to the control of facts the statements even of the masters when these appear at all extravagant. Otherwise we run the risk, if not of perpetrating error by repeating it on our own responsibility, at all events of following a false trail on which we may lose much time and which may finally lead us to envy the lot of those who are able to attack their subject, from the very first, with minds empty of all information and any preconceived ideas. This was brought well home to Fabre by the repeated experience of errors which had escaped the most learned authors and erroneous methods suggested by the best books. And the persuasive effect of the highly symptomatic example afforded by an absolutely unrivalled master was even more eloquent.Unexpectedly, one fine day [writes Fabre], Pasteur rang my door-bell: the Pasteur who was presently to acquire so great a celebrity. His name was known to me. I had read his beautiful essay on the dissymmetry of tartaric acid; I had followed with the keenest interest his researches concerning the generation of the Infusoria.Every period has its scientific craze; to-day it is evolution; then it was spontaneous generation. By[159]his glass bulbs, made sterile or fertile at will, by his experiments, magnificent in their rigorous simplicity, Pasteur exploded for ever the insanity which professed to see life arising from a chemical conflict in a mass of putrescence.Aware of this dispute, so victoriously elucidated, I gave my illustrious visitor the best of welcomes. The scientist had come to me in the first place for certain information. I owed this notable honour to my quality of colleague as a teacher of physics and chemistry. Ah, but what a humble, obscure colleague!Pasteur’s tour through the district of Avignon was in connection with sericulture. For some years the silk-worm nurseries had been at sixes and sevens, ravaged by unknown plagues. The silkworms, without appreciable cause, became masses of putrid deliquescence, or hardened into stony lumps. The peasant, in dismay, saw one of his chief sources of income disappearing; after much expense and trouble he had to throw his litters on the dung-heap.A few words were exchanged concerning the prevailing evil; then, without further preamble:“I wanted to see some cocoons,” said my visitor; “I have never seen any; I know them only by name. Could you get me some?”“Nothing simpler. My landlord is himself a dealer in cocoons, and he lives across the road. If you’ll be good enough to wait a moment, I will bring you what you want.”[160]A few long strides and I had reached my neighbour’s house, where I stuffed my pockets with cocoons. On my return I offered them to the scientist. He took one, turned it over and over in his fingers; curiously he examined it, as we should some singular object which had come from the other end of the world. He shook it against his ear.“It rattles!” he said, quite surprised. “There is something inside!”“Why, yes!”“But what?”“The chrysalis.”“What’s that, the chrysalis?”“I mean the sort of mummy into which the caterpillar turns before it becomes a moth.”“And in every cocoon there is one of those things?”“Of course; it’s to protect the chrysalis that the caterpillar spins.”“Ah!”And without more ado, the cocoons went into the pocket of the scientist, who was to inform himself at leisure concerning this great novelty, the chrysalis. This magnificent assurance impressed me. Knowing nothing of caterpillar, cocoon, chrysalis, or metamorphosis, Pasteur had come to regenerate the silkworm. The ancient gymnasts presented themselves naked for the contest. This ingenious thinker, who was to fight the plague of the silk-worm nurseries, had also hastened to battle wholly naked: that is, devoid of the simplest[161]notions of the insect he was to save from danger. I was astounded; more, I was filled with wonder.14The fact is indeed so extraordinary that it may well appear incredible, but it receives authentic confirmation from the wholly concordant account of Duclaux, Pasteur’s pupil and historiographer, as well as from the honesty of the naturalist, who is assuredly incapable of having invented the story for our amusement.I still remember the day [says Duclaux] when Pasteur, returning to the laboratory, said to me with a touch of excitement in his voice:“Do you know what M. Dumas has just asked of me? To go to the Midi, to study the silk-worm disease.”I don’t know what I replied; probably what he himself replied to his illustrious master: Then there is a silk-worm disease? There are provinces that are being ruined by it? All this was happening so far from Paris, and we were so far from Paris in the laboratory!…Pasteur hesitated. He was not a physiologist. But Dumas’ insistence, the attraction of the unknown, and an inward voice urged him to accept. So he left for the Midi; it was early in June 1865. He was invested with an official mission which confronted him with a plague that had to be conquered[162]and obliged him to render an account of the attempts made and the results obtained.To be sent to fight a fire and not to know what fire is and to have no fire-engine or hose! It needed Pasteur to accept and to shoulder such a responsibility!… To his complaint that he had no knowledge of the matter, Dumas had replied:“So much the better! You will have no ideas on the subject but those that will come to you as a result of your own observations!”This reply is not always a paradox, but one has to be careful to whom one makes it!15In this case the choice was not mistaken, and the lesson was as profitable to Pasteur as it was to Fabre, to whom he was about to hand it on, all unsuspecting.When Pasteur was called upon to regeneratesericulture, the silk-worm disease had been known for twenty years. During that period much research had been undertaken and many efforts had been made, in France as well as in Italy, to discover the nature of the affection and to fight it. But “of all this story, a mixture of truth and falsehood, Pasteur knew nothing when he began his researches.” More—and this was what astonished Fabre—he knew nothing of the physiology or the rearing of the silk-worm. “For[163]the first time he has seen a cocoon, and has learned that there is something in the cocoon, a rough model of the future moth,” … and he is about to revolutionise the hygiene of the silk-worm nurseries and is preparing to revolutionise medicine and general hygiene in the same way,16by showing that the maladies of silk-worms and most of our human maladies arise from the development in the tissues of a microscopic living entity, a microbe, the cause of the malady. And while his other discoveries won for him only fame and the admiration of his contemporaries, this will give him immortality and place him in the front rank of the benefactors of humanity. Decidedly ignorance may have its advantages.Encouraged by the magnificent example of Pasteur (continues the entomologist), I have made it a rule to adopt the method of ignorance in my investigations of the instincts. I read very little. Instead of turning over the leaves of books, an expensive method which is not within my means, instead of consulting others, I set myself obstinately face to face with my subject until I contrive to make it speak. I know nothing. So much the better; my interrogation will be all the freer, to-day tending in one direction, to-morrow in another, according to the information acquired. And[164]if by chance I do open a book, I am careful to leave a section of my mind wide open to doubt.17Beginning with that arising out of Dufour’s memoir, repeated experiences taught Fabre not to be too greatly influenced, in his conceptions of natural objects, by faith in his reading or even in the assertions of his masters. To go still further, Pasteur’s example made him appreciate the advantage of coming fresh to the facts, of confronting them in a state of ignorance, of receiving impressions from them alone, and of having no ideas but those that truly emanate from the reality.Without going to extremes, Fabre benefited by this twofold lesson. No one had a greater respect for his masters; he quotes them readily and is chary neither of praising their works nor of expressing his gratitude to them;18but no one was ever more independent in his researches and his conclusions, which are often the very contrary of theirs. If he revered his masters he revered the truth still more, and he might well have made his own the celebrated maxim:Amicus Plato, magis amica veritas.[165]Let us add that while no one was ever more interested in authors and their writings, to purchase which he often sacrificed his last coppers, and even his daily bread, no one was more resolutely determined to give the first place to the language of facts, and direct intercourse with the tiny living creatures whom he had chosen for his own. So much so that, if we wish fully to describe his method, we must complete the maxim which we have just quoted by this other, which forms its exact counterpart:Amicus liber, magis amica natura.[166]

“… Ego nec studium sine divite venâ,Nec rude quid possit video ingenium. Alterius sicAltera poscit opem res et conjurat amice.”1

“… Ego nec studium sine divite venâ,

Nec rude quid possit video ingenium. Alterius sic

Altera poscit opem res et conjurat amice.”1

It will be no less interesting to see by what varied and concurrent circumstances, by what personal interventions, a virtuosity and an activity so well co-ordinated were stimulated, directed and controlled, sustained and protected[144]against all causes of deviation or discouragement.

Not in vain does a man breathe at birth the air of the mountain-tops; not in vain does he live his earliest summers with the vision of the heights before him. He retains as it were a nostalgia for the heights, and a wild longing to climb them. It will not surprise us to learn that the child of the Haut-Rouergue, transplanted, by the vicissitudes of life, from the Lévézou mountains to the Provençal plains, should calm his brain, burning with the stress of study, by gazing at Mont Ventoux, and anticipating his approaching expedition to the mountain of his dreams.2We shall not be surprised to find that he never allowed himself to be repulsed by the difficulties of the enterprise, and that more than a score of ascents failed to produce satiety, whereas many another found his courage and his interest evaporate almost at the outset.3For the ascent of Mont Ventoux is a difficult task, more difficult than that of the majority of our mountains:

One might best compare the Ventoux with a heap of stones broken up for road-mending purposes.[145]Raise this heap suddenly to a height of a mile and a quarter, increase its base in proportion, cover the white of the limestone with the black stain of the forests, and you have a clear idea of the general aspect of the mountain. This accumulation of rubbish—sometimes small chips, sometimes huge blocks—rises from the plain without preliminary slopes or successive terraces that would render the ascent less arduous by dividing it into stages. The climb begins at once by rocky paths, the best of which is worse than the surface of a road newly strewn with stones, and continues, becoming ever rougher and rougher, right to the summit, the height of which is 6270 feet. Green swards, babbling brooks, the spacious shade of venerable trees, all the things, in short, that lend such charm to other mountains, are here unknown and are replaced by an interminable bed of limestone broken into scales, which slip under our feet with a sharp, almost metallic “click.” By way of cascades the Ventoux has rills of stones; the rattle of falling rocks takes the place of the whispering waters.4

But the unsatisfied eagerness that draws the exile from our cool green hills to repeat, again and again, the ascent of the rocky Provençal height, is based on something more than sensitiveness to impressions and a pre-established harmony; he is also strongly attracted[146]by the peculiar and unique variety of the flora growing upon its slopes:

Thanks to its isolated position, which leaves it freely exposed on every side to atmospheric influences; thanks also to its height, which makes it the topmost point of France within the frontiers of either the Alps or the Pyrenees, our bare Provençal mountain, Mont Ventoux, lends itself remarkably well to the study of the climatic distribution of plants. At its base the tender olive thrives, with all that multitude of semi-ligneous plants, such as the thyme, whose aromatic fragrance calls for the sun of the Mediterranean regions; on the summit, mantled with snow for at least half the year, the ground is covered with a northern flora, borrowed to some extent from Arctic shores. Half a day’s journey in an upward direction brings before our eyes a succession of the chief vegetable types which we should find in the course of a long voyage from south to north along the same meridian.5

To any one with any love of plants, to any one with blood in his veins, the expedition was a tempting one. So we see him set out for the twenty-third time in company with two colleagues6and five others. Let us join them if we wish to make the acquaintance of the[147]botanist of Mont Ventoux as well as the botany; for Fabre is one who throws himself wholly into all that he does, and his history can no more be divorced from that of his plants than from that of his beloved insects.

It is four o’clock in the morning. At the head of the caravan walks Triboulet, with his Mule and his Ass: Triboulet, the Nestor of the Ventoux guides. My botanical colleagues inspect the vegetation on either side of the road by the cold light of the dawn; the others talk. I follow the party with a barometer slung from my shoulder and a note-book and pencil in my hand.My barometer, intended for taking the altitude of the principal botanical halts, soon becomes a pretext for attacks on the gourd with the rum. No sooner is a noteworthy plant observed than somebody cries:“Quick, let’s look at the barometer!”And we all crowd around the gourd, the scientific instrument coming later. The coolness of the morning and our walk make us appreciate these references to the barometer so thoroughly that the level of the stimulant falls even more swiftly than that of the mercury. In the interests of the immediate future I must consult Torricelli’s tube a little less often.As the temperature grows too cold for them, first the oak and the ilex disappear by degrees; then the vine and the almond-tree; and next the mulberry,[148]the walnut-tree, and the white oak. Box becomes plentiful. We enter upon a monotonous region extending from the end of the cultivated fields to the lower boundary of the beech-woods, where the predominant plant isSatureia montana, the winter savory, known here by its popular name ofpébré d’asé, Ass’s pepper, because of the acrid flavour of its tiny leaves, impregnated with essential oil. Certain small cheeses forming part of our stores are powdered with this strong spice. Already more than one of us is biting into them in imagination and casting hungry glances at the provision bags carried by the Mule. Our hard morning exercise has brought appetite, and more than appetite, a devouring hunger, what Horace callslatrans stomachus. I teach my colleagues how to stay this rumbling stomach until they reach the next halt; I show them a little sorrel-plant, with arrow-head leaves, theRumex scutatus, or French sorrel; and, practising what I preach, I pick a mouthful. At first they laugh at my suggestion. I let them laugh and soon see them all occupied, each more eagerly than his fellow, in plucking the precious sorrel.While chewing the acid leaves we come to the beeches. These are first big, solitary bushes, trailing on the ground; soon after, dwarf trees, clustering close together; and, finally, mighty trunks, forming a dense and gloomy forest, whose soil is a mass of rough limestone blocks. Bowed down in winter by the weight of the snow, battered all the year round by the fierce gusts of the Mistral, many of[149]the trees have lost their branches and are twisted into grotesque postures, or even lie flat on the ground. An hour or more is spent in crossing this wooded zone, which from a distance shows against the sides of the Ventoux like a black belt. Then once more the beeches become bushy and scattered. We have reached their upper boundary and, to the great relief of all of us, despite the sorrel-leaves, we have also reached the stopping-place selected for our lunch.We are at the source of the Grave, a slender stream of water caught, as it bubbles from the ground, in a series of long beech-trunk troughs, where the mountain shepherds come to water their flocks. The temperature of the spring is 45° F.; and its coolness is a priceless boon for us who have come from the sultry oven of the plain. The cloth is spread on a charming carpet of Alpine plants, with glittering among them the thyme-leaved paronychia, whose wide, thin bracts look like silver scales. The food is taken out of the bags, the bottles extracted from their bed of hay. On this side are the joints, the legs of mutton stuffed with garlic, the stacks of loaves; on that, the tasteless chickens, for our grinders to toy with presently, when the edge has been taken off our appetite. At no great distance, set in a place of honour, are the Ventoux cheeses spiced with winter savory, the littlepébré d’asécheeses, flanked by Arles sausages, whose pink flesh is mottled with cubes of bacon and whole peppercorns. Over here, in this corner, are green olives still dripping with brine and black[150]olives soaking in oil; in that other, Cavaillon melons, some white, some orange, to suit every taste; and, down there, a jar of anchovies which make you drink hard and so keep your strength up. Lastly, the bottles are cooling in the ice-cold water of the trough over there. Have we forgotten anything? Yes, we have not mentioned the crowning side-dish, the onions, to be eaten raw with salt. Our two Parisians—for we have two among us, my fellow-botanists—are at first a little startled by this very invigorating bill of fare; soon they will be the first to burst into praises.7

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

“Quick, let’s look at the barometer!”

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

As the temperature grows too cold for them, first the oak and the ilex disappear by degrees; then the vine and the almond-tree; and next the mulberry,[148]the walnut-tree, and the white oak. Box becomes plentiful. We enter upon a monotonous region extending from the end of the cultivated fields to the lower boundary of the beech-woods, where the predominant plant isSatureia montana, the winter savory, known here by its popular name ofpébré d’asé, Ass’s pepper, because of the acrid flavour of its tiny leaves, impregnated with essential oil. Certain small cheeses forming part of our stores are powdered with this strong spice. Already more than one of us is biting into them in imagination and casting hungry glances at the provision bags carried by the Mule. Our hard morning exercise has brought appetite, and more than appetite, a devouring hunger, what Horace callslatrans stomachus. I teach my colleagues how to stay this rumbling stomach until they reach the next halt; I show them a little sorrel-plant, with arrow-head leaves, theRumex scutatus, or French sorrel; and, practising what I preach, I pick a mouthful. At first they laugh at my suggestion. I let them laugh and soon see them all occupied, each more eagerly than his fellow, in plucking the precious sorrel.

While chewing the acid leaves we come to the beeches. These are first big, solitary bushes, trailing on the ground; soon after, dwarf trees, clustering close together; and, finally, mighty trunks, forming a dense and gloomy forest, whose soil is a mass of rough limestone blocks. Bowed down in winter by the weight of the snow, battered all the year round by the fierce gusts of the Mistral, many of[149]the trees have lost their branches and are twisted into grotesque postures, or even lie flat on the ground. An hour or more is spent in crossing this wooded zone, which from a distance shows against the sides of the Ventoux like a black belt. Then once more the beeches become bushy and scattered. We have reached their upper boundary and, to the great relief of all of us, despite the sorrel-leaves, we have also reached the stopping-place selected for our lunch.

We are at the source of the Grave, a slender stream of water caught, as it bubbles from the ground, in a series of long beech-trunk troughs, where the mountain shepherds come to water their flocks. The temperature of the spring is 45° F.; and its coolness is a priceless boon for us who have come from the sultry oven of the plain. The cloth is spread on a charming carpet of Alpine plants, with glittering among them the thyme-leaved paronychia, whose wide, thin bracts look like silver scales. The food is taken out of the bags, the bottles extracted from their bed of hay. On this side are the joints, the legs of mutton stuffed with garlic, the stacks of loaves; on that, the tasteless chickens, for our grinders to toy with presently, when the edge has been taken off our appetite. At no great distance, set in a place of honour, are the Ventoux cheeses spiced with winter savory, the littlepébré d’asécheeses, flanked by Arles sausages, whose pink flesh is mottled with cubes of bacon and whole peppercorns. Over here, in this corner, are green olives still dripping with brine and black[150]olives soaking in oil; in that other, Cavaillon melons, some white, some orange, to suit every taste; and, down there, a jar of anchovies which make you drink hard and so keep your strength up. Lastly, the bottles are cooling in the ice-cold water of the trough over there. Have we forgotten anything? Yes, we have not mentioned the crowning side-dish, the onions, to be eaten raw with salt. Our two Parisians—for we have two among us, my fellow-botanists—are at first a little startled by this very invigorating bill of fare; soon they will be the first to burst into praises.7

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

Would you do some really fruitful botanising? Be there in the first fortnight of July; above all, be ahead of the grazing herds: where the sheep has browsed you will gather none but wretched leavings. While still spared by the hungry flocks, the top of the Ventoux in July is a literal bed of flowers; its loose stony surface is studded with[151]them. My memory recalls, all streaming with the morning dew, those elegant tufts ofAndrosace villosa, with its pink-centred white blooms; the Mont-Cenis violet, spreading its great blue blossoms over the chips of limestone; the spikenard valerian, which blends the sweet perfume of its flowers with the offensive odour of its roots; the wedge-leaved globularia, forming close carpets of bright green dotted with blue capitula; the Alpine forget-me-not, whose blue rivals that of the skies; the Candolla candy-tuft, whose tiny stalk bears a dense head of little white flowers and goes winding among the loose stones.8

Our naturalist is evidently fascinated by so many beauties, of such delicate quality. Will he not be tempted to forsake his insects for the flowers? Will not the botanical wealth of the Ventoux make him forget the entomological wonders of the “Sunken Road”? No; he is saved from such an error by God and the good genius that watches over the destiny of him who is to become the prince of entomologists. Even in his lectures on botanical subjects the insects are given their due; and now from time to time they claim his attention and seduce him from the spectacle of the vegetable curiosities which form the principal motive of[152]the expedition; it is now the Ammophila and now the Decticus9that crosses the path of the naturalist in search of plants and flowers, recalling, by some of the most curious problems of entomology, the first beginnings of his vocation and the great task of his life.

But the silent language of the tiny creatures destined to be his most intimate companions through life was seconded, at an opportune moment, by the more expressive language of human speech. Here we have one of those events that were landmarks in Fabre’s life, marking the starting-point of a fresh phase in the evolution of his ideas and his labours. He alone can describe for us the actual nature and exact significance of this incident:

One winter evening, when the rest of the household was asleep, as I sat reading beside a stove whose ashes were still warm, my book made me forget for a while the cares of the morrow: these heavy cares of a poor professor of physics who, after piling up diplomas and for a quarter of a century performing services of uncontested merit, was receiving for himself and his family a stipend of sixteen hundred francs, or less than the wages of a groom in a decent establishment. Such was the[153]disgraceful parsimony of the day where education was concerned; such was the edict of our government red-tape: I was an irregular, the offspring of my solitary studies. And so I was forgetting the poverty and anxieties of a professor’s life amid my books, when I chanced to turn over the pages of an entomological essay that had fallen into my hands I forget how.It was a monograph by the then father of entomology, the venerable scientist Léon Dufour, on the habits of a Wasp that hunted Buprestis beetles. Certainly, I had not waited till then to interest myself in insects; from my early childhood I had delighted in Beetles, Bees, and Butterflies; as far back as I can remember, I see myself in ecstasy before the splendour of a Ground-beetle’s wing-cases or the wings ofPapilio machaon, the Swallowtail. The fire was laid; the spark to kindle it was absent. Léon Dufour’s essay provided that spark.10New lights burst forth: I received a sort of mental revelation. So there was more in science than the arranging of pretty Beetles in a cork box and giving them names and classifying them; there was something much finer: a close and loving study of insect life, the examination of the structure and especially the faculties of each species. I read of a magnificent instance of this, glowing with excitement as I did so. Some time after, aided by[154]those lucky circumstances which he who seeks them eagerly is always able to find, I myself published an entomological article, a supplement to Léon Dufour’s. This first work of mine won honourable mention from the Institute of France, and was awarded a prize for experimental physiology. But soon I received a far more welcome recompense, in the shape of a most eulogistic and encouraging letter from the very man who had inspired me. From his home in the Landes the revered master sent me a warm expression of his enthusiasm and urged me to go on with my studies. Even now, at that sacred recollection, my old eyes fill with happy tears. O fair days of illusion, of faith in the future, where are you now?11

It was a monograph by the then father of entomology, the venerable scientist Léon Dufour, on the habits of a Wasp that hunted Buprestis beetles. Certainly, I had not waited till then to interest myself in insects; from my early childhood I had delighted in Beetles, Bees, and Butterflies; as far back as I can remember, I see myself in ecstasy before the splendour of a Ground-beetle’s wing-cases or the wings ofPapilio machaon, the Swallowtail. The fire was laid; the spark to kindle it was absent. Léon Dufour’s essay provided that spark.10

New lights burst forth: I received a sort of mental revelation. So there was more in science than the arranging of pretty Beetles in a cork box and giving them names and classifying them; there was something much finer: a close and loving study of insect life, the examination of the structure and especially the faculties of each species. I read of a magnificent instance of this, glowing with excitement as I did so. Some time after, aided by[154]those lucky circumstances which he who seeks them eagerly is always able to find, I myself published an entomological article, a supplement to Léon Dufour’s. This first work of mine won honourable mention from the Institute of France, and was awarded a prize for experimental physiology. But soon I received a far more welcome recompense, in the shape of a most eulogistic and encouraging letter from the very man who had inspired me. From his home in the Landes the revered master sent me a warm expression of his enthusiasm and urged me to go on with my studies. Even now, at that sacred recollection, my old eyes fill with happy tears. O fair days of illusion, of faith in the future, where are you now?11

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

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

It was to the chance perusal of a certain passage that another prince of science owed[155]the awakening of his genius. We are speaking of Pasteur, whom we shall presently see in his dealings with Fabre. “It was through reading a note by the Russian chemist, Mitscherlich, on the comparison of the specific characters of certain crystals that Pasteur became interested in those investigations of the subject of molecular dissymmetry which were the starting-point of so many wonderful discoveries.”12

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

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

Dufour supposed that these Buprestes were simply dead, and, “in order to explain this marvellous preservation of their flesh, which makes an insect that for several weeks has been motionless as a corpse a kind of game that does not become high but remain[156]as fresh as at the moment of capture during the greatest heat of summer, he presumed the use of a liquid antiseptic, acting in the same manner as the preparations used to preserve anatomical specimens. This liquid could only be the venom of the Hymenopteron inoculated into the victim’s body. The tiny drop of poisonous humour that accompanies the sting, the lancet employed in the inoculation, is supposed to perform the office of a kind of pickle or preservative liquid for preserving the flesh set aside for the nourishment of the larvæ.”

But Fabre was burning with curiosity to observe for himself a phenomenon which an old practitioner like Dufour proclaims the most curious and extraordinary known to the history of the insect kingdom.13He did not hesitate to go to Carpentras, to search for the Buprestis-hunting wasp, which does not occur in the neighbourhood of Avignon. A minute inspection of the Cerceris’ victims enabled him to prove that, not only was the flesh intact, but the joints were flexible, the viscera were moist, defalcation persisted, and vestiges of irritability even were present, all of which facts were scarcely compatible[157]“with the supposition of an animal absolutely dead, the hypothesis of a true corpse rendered incorruptible by the effect of a liquid preservative.” He was thus led to conclude that the insect was not dead, but only benumbed and reduced to a state of immobility.

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

But at the same time he was forced to realise how incomplete and superficial were the observations of the man whom he nevertheless revered as the first among his masters.

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

Must we then ignore all that has been said and written and wholly repudiate the inheritance of the centuries and the scientists of the past? Heaven preserve us from such stupidity! But while it would not be reasonable or even possible to make a clean sweep of all that has been acquired by our[158]predecessors, it is none the less prudent not to accept, in blind confidence, the whole heritage of the past, but to subject to the control of facts the statements even of the masters when these appear at all extravagant. Otherwise we run the risk, if not of perpetrating error by repeating it on our own responsibility, at all events of following a false trail on which we may lose much time and which may finally lead us to envy the lot of those who are able to attack their subject, from the very first, with minds empty of all information and any preconceived ideas. This was brought well home to Fabre by the repeated experience of errors which had escaped the most learned authors and erroneous methods suggested by the best books. And the persuasive effect of the highly symptomatic example afforded by an absolutely unrivalled master was even more eloquent.

Unexpectedly, one fine day [writes Fabre], Pasteur rang my door-bell: the Pasteur who was presently to acquire so great a celebrity. His name was known to me. I had read his beautiful essay on the dissymmetry of tartaric acid; I had followed with the keenest interest his researches concerning the generation of the Infusoria.Every period has its scientific craze; to-day it is evolution; then it was spontaneous generation. By[159]his glass bulbs, made sterile or fertile at will, by his experiments, magnificent in their rigorous simplicity, Pasteur exploded for ever the insanity which professed to see life arising from a chemical conflict in a mass of putrescence.Aware of this dispute, so victoriously elucidated, I gave my illustrious visitor the best of welcomes. The scientist had come to me in the first place for certain information. I owed this notable honour to my quality of colleague as a teacher of physics and chemistry. Ah, but what a humble, obscure colleague!Pasteur’s tour through the district of Avignon was in connection with sericulture. For some years the silk-worm nurseries had been at sixes and sevens, ravaged by unknown plagues. The silkworms, without appreciable cause, became masses of putrid deliquescence, or hardened into stony lumps. The peasant, in dismay, saw one of his chief sources of income disappearing; after much expense and trouble he had to throw his litters on the dung-heap.A few words were exchanged concerning the prevailing evil; then, without further preamble:“I wanted to see some cocoons,” said my visitor; “I have never seen any; I know them only by name. Could you get me some?”“Nothing simpler. My landlord is himself a dealer in cocoons, and he lives across the road. If you’ll be good enough to wait a moment, I will bring you what you want.”[160]A few long strides and I had reached my neighbour’s house, where I stuffed my pockets with cocoons. On my return I offered them to the scientist. He took one, turned it over and over in his fingers; curiously he examined it, as we should some singular object which had come from the other end of the world. He shook it against his ear.“It rattles!” he said, quite surprised. “There is something inside!”“Why, yes!”“But what?”“The chrysalis.”“What’s that, the chrysalis?”“I mean the sort of mummy into which the caterpillar turns before it becomes a moth.”“And in every cocoon there is one of those things?”“Of course; it’s to protect the chrysalis that the caterpillar spins.”“Ah!”And without more ado, the cocoons went into the pocket of the scientist, who was to inform himself at leisure concerning this great novelty, the chrysalis. This magnificent assurance impressed me. Knowing nothing of caterpillar, cocoon, chrysalis, or metamorphosis, Pasteur had come to regenerate the silkworm. The ancient gymnasts presented themselves naked for the contest. This ingenious thinker, who was to fight the plague of the silk-worm nurseries, had also hastened to battle wholly naked: that is, devoid of the simplest[161]notions of the insect he was to save from danger. I was astounded; more, I was filled with wonder.14

Every period has its scientific craze; to-day it is evolution; then it was spontaneous generation. By[159]his glass bulbs, made sterile or fertile at will, by his experiments, magnificent in their rigorous simplicity, Pasteur exploded for ever the insanity which professed to see life arising from a chemical conflict in a mass of putrescence.

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

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

A few words were exchanged concerning the prevailing evil; then, without further preamble:

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

“Nothing simpler. My landlord is himself a dealer in cocoons, and he lives across the road. If you’ll be good enough to wait a moment, I will bring you what you want.”[160]

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

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

“Why, yes!”

“But what?”

“The chrysalis.”

“What’s that, the chrysalis?”

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

“And in every cocoon there is one of those things?”

“Of course; it’s to protect the chrysalis that the caterpillar spins.”

“Ah!”

And without more ado, the cocoons went into the pocket of the scientist, who was to inform himself at leisure concerning this great novelty, the chrysalis. This magnificent assurance impressed me. Knowing nothing of caterpillar, cocoon, chrysalis, or metamorphosis, Pasteur had come to regenerate the silkworm. The ancient gymnasts presented themselves naked for the contest. This ingenious thinker, who was to fight the plague of the silk-worm nurseries, had also hastened to battle wholly naked: that is, devoid of the simplest[161]notions of the insect he was to save from danger. I was astounded; more, I was filled with wonder.14

The fact is indeed so extraordinary that it may well appear incredible, but it receives authentic confirmation from the wholly concordant account of Duclaux, Pasteur’s pupil and historiographer, as well as from the honesty of the naturalist, who is assuredly incapable of having invented the story for our amusement.

I still remember the day [says Duclaux] when Pasteur, returning to the laboratory, said to me with a touch of excitement in his voice:“Do you know what M. Dumas has just asked of me? To go to the Midi, to study the silk-worm disease.”I don’t know what I replied; probably what he himself replied to his illustrious master: Then there is a silk-worm disease? There are provinces that are being ruined by it? All this was happening so far from Paris, and we were so far from Paris in the laboratory!…Pasteur hesitated. He was not a physiologist. But Dumas’ insistence, the attraction of the unknown, and an inward voice urged him to accept. So he left for the Midi; it was early in June 1865. He was invested with an official mission which confronted him with a plague that had to be conquered[162]and obliged him to render an account of the attempts made and the results obtained.To be sent to fight a fire and not to know what fire is and to have no fire-engine or hose! It needed Pasteur to accept and to shoulder such a responsibility!… To his complaint that he had no knowledge of the matter, Dumas had replied:“So much the better! You will have no ideas on the subject but those that will come to you as a result of your own observations!”This reply is not always a paradox, but one has to be careful to whom one makes it!15

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

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

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

Pasteur hesitated. He was not a physiologist. But Dumas’ insistence, the attraction of the unknown, and an inward voice urged him to accept. So he left for the Midi; it was early in June 1865. He was invested with an official mission which confronted him with a plague that had to be conquered[162]and obliged him to render an account of the attempts made and the results obtained.

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

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

This reply is not always a paradox, but one has to be careful to whom one makes it!15

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

When Pasteur was called upon to regeneratesericulture, the silk-worm disease had been known for twenty years. During that period much research had been undertaken and many efforts had been made, in France as well as in Italy, to discover the nature of the affection and to fight it. But “of all this story, a mixture of truth and falsehood, Pasteur knew nothing when he began his researches.” More—and this was what astonished Fabre—he knew nothing of the physiology or the rearing of the silk-worm. “For[163]the first time he has seen a cocoon, and has learned that there is something in the cocoon, a rough model of the future moth,” … and he is about to revolutionise the hygiene of the silk-worm nurseries and is preparing to revolutionise medicine and general hygiene in the same way,16by showing that the maladies of silk-worms and most of our human maladies arise from the development in the tissues of a microscopic living entity, a microbe, the cause of the malady. And while his other discoveries won for him only fame and the admiration of his contemporaries, this will give him immortality and place him in the front rank of the benefactors of humanity. Decidedly ignorance may have its advantages.

Encouraged by the magnificent example of Pasteur (continues the entomologist), I have made it a rule to adopt the method of ignorance in my investigations of the instincts. I read very little. Instead of turning over the leaves of books, an expensive method which is not within my means, instead of consulting others, I set myself obstinately face to face with my subject until I contrive to make it speak. I know nothing. So much the better; my interrogation will be all the freer, to-day tending in one direction, to-morrow in another, according to the information acquired. And[164]if by chance I do open a book, I am careful to leave a section of my mind wide open to doubt.17

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

Without going to extremes, Fabre benefited by this twofold lesson. No one had a greater respect for his masters; he quotes them readily and is chary neither of praising their works nor of expressing his gratitude to them;18but no one was ever more independent in his researches and his conclusions, which are often the very contrary of theirs. If he revered his masters he revered the truth still more, and he might well have made his own the celebrated maxim:Amicus Plato, magis amica veritas.[165]

Let us add that while no one was ever more interested in authors and their writings, to purchase which he often sacrificed his last coppers, and even his daily bread, no one was more resolutely determined to give the first place to the language of facts, and direct intercourse with the tiny living creatures whom he had chosen for his own. So much so that, if we wish fully to describe his method, we must complete the maxim which we have just quoted by this other, which forms its exact counterpart:Amicus liber, magis amica natura.[166]

1Horace,Ars Poetica, 409et seq.↑2Souvenirs,III., p. 193.↑3Ibid.,I., p. 182.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xi., “An Ascent of Mont Ventoux.”↑4Souvenirs,I., pp. 182–3.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xi., “An Ascent of Mont Ventoux.”↑5Souvenirs,I., p. 180.↑6Th. Delacour and Bernard Valot of theJardin des Plantes.↑7Souvenirs,I., pp. 181–186.The Hunting Wasps, chap, xi., “An Ascent of Mont Ventoux.”↑8Souvenirs,I., pp. 192–193.↑9Souvenirs,VI., p. 166;I., p. 187.↑10Léon Dufour (1780–1865) was an Army surgeon who in 1823 went through the Spanish campaign, and on returning to France settled in his native town, Saint-Sever, where he devoted himself chiefly to entomology.↑11Souvenirs,I., pp. 39–41.The Hunting Wasps, chap, i., “The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris.”↑12Fabre, Poet of Science, p. 58.↑13Souvenirs,I., pp. 41, 44.The Hunting Wasps, chap.I., “The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris.”↑14Souvenirs,IX., pp. 326–328.↑15Duclaux,Pasteur, Histoire d’un Esprit, pp. 182–93.↑16Souvenirs,IX., p. 330.↑17Souvenirs,IX., pp. 330–331.↑18Souvenirs,I., p. 40, 73;II., pp. 78, 83, 181, 214, 234, 235, 283;V., pp. 76, 188, 229, etc.↑

1Horace,Ars Poetica, 409et seq.↑

2Souvenirs,III., p. 193.↑

3Ibid.,I., p. 182.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xi., “An Ascent of Mont Ventoux.”↑

4Souvenirs,I., pp. 182–3.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xi., “An Ascent of Mont Ventoux.”↑

5Souvenirs,I., p. 180.↑

6Th. Delacour and Bernard Valot of theJardin des Plantes.↑

7Souvenirs,I., pp. 181–186.The Hunting Wasps, chap, xi., “An Ascent of Mont Ventoux.”↑

8Souvenirs,I., pp. 192–193.↑

9Souvenirs,VI., p. 166;I., p. 187.↑

10Léon Dufour (1780–1865) was an Army surgeon who in 1823 went through the Spanish campaign, and on returning to France settled in his native town, Saint-Sever, where he devoted himself chiefly to entomology.↑

11Souvenirs,I., pp. 39–41.The Hunting Wasps, chap, i., “The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris.”↑

12Fabre, Poet of Science, p. 58.↑

13Souvenirs,I., pp. 41, 44.The Hunting Wasps, chap.I., “The Buprestis-hunting Cerceris.”↑

14Souvenirs,IX., pp. 326–328.↑

15Duclaux,Pasteur, Histoire d’un Esprit, pp. 182–93.↑

16Souvenirs,IX., p. 330.↑

17Souvenirs,IX., pp. 330–331.↑

18Souvenirs,I., p. 40, 73;II., pp. 78, 83, 181, 214, 234, 235, 283;V., pp. 76, 188, 229, etc.↑

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