CHAPTER XIII

[Contents]CHAPTER XIIIRETIREMENT: ORANGEIt is commonly enough thought that a professor on his vacations and a pensioned official are very much the same—that both art created and put into the world merely to kill time and savour the delights offar niente. Such was never Fabre’s opinion. While he loved nothing so well as his Thursdays and vacations, this was because he then had more freedom to devote himself to his favourite studies. If he resigned himself readily to a premature retirement, if he was even happy to shake off the yoke of thelycée, this was because he had quite definitely determined to work more quietly and continuously; because he hoped to increase the ardour and fertility of his mind by a closer and more lasting intercourse with the world of Nature.At the same time he found himself compelled to look to his pen for that assurance of material life which his retorts had refused him, and which his meagre professor’s pension afforded but insufficiently. “What is to be done now?” he cried, after the collapse[200]of his industrial hopes and professorial ambitions. “Let us try another lever and resume rolling the Sisyphean stone. Let us seek to draw from the ink-pot what the madder-vat and theAlma Materrefuses us.Laboremus!”Laboremus!That indeed is the fitting motto for this period of his life, no less than for the earlier part of it. For it was then that he wrote the greater number of his numerous handbooks, now classic, and it was then that he began to write and to publish hisSouvenirs entomologiques, without ceasing on that account his great life-work, the passionate observation of the living world.Still, it is not so much the man’s work as the man, and not so much the student as the man himself, that we wish to evoke in this chapter.To live happily, we must live hidden from sight, far from the troubles of the world, exercising our minds and cultivating our talents at leisure. Such evidently was Fabre’s idea from the time of his departure from Avignon; and it plainly reveals to us one of the salient features of his moral physiognomy.But he could not have had the illusion that in thus taking refuge from the tribulations[201]of which the world is the source, he was placing himself beyond the reach of any trials. Is it not written that the life of man upon earth is a perpetual struggle against suffering? And if it were not for the cruel wounds which it inflicts upon the poor human heart, we ought rather perhaps to bless this law of our destiny; for it is one of the qualities of human greatness, of the beauty of the soul as of the power of the intellect, that it does not fully reveal itself save under the discipline and empire of suffering.Among the moral qualities of Fabre as we have been able to divine them there is one which the vicissitudes of life revealed more especially during this phase of his existence: I mean his kindliness.Fabre had the simplicity of the kindly man as well as that of the truthful man. He, who instinctively withdrew from the gaze and the malice of men, cared nothing for their smiles or their disdain when there was a question of adding to his store of scientific data or kindly actions, however trivial the matter might be.The following episode is illuminating. Our entomologist was interested, as a scientist, in discovering whether the bite of the Black-bellied Tarantula, deadly to insects,[202]was dangerous to other animals, and to man, or whether it was not, in the latter case, a negligible accident. He therefore experimented upon a bird:I make a Tarantula bite the leg of a young, well-fledged Sparrow, ready to leave the nest. A drop of blood flows: the wounded spot is surrounded by a reddish circle, changing to purple. The bird almost immediately loses the use of its leg, which drags, with the toes doubled in; it hops upon the other. Apart from this, the patient does not seem to trouble much about his hurt; his appetite is good. My daughters feed him on flies, bread-crumb, apricot-pulp. He is sure to get well, he will recover his strength; the poor victim of the curiosity of science will be restored to liberty. This is the wish, the intention of us all. Twelve hours later, the hope of a cure increases; the invalid takes nourishment readily; he clamours for it, if we keep him waiting. But the leg still drags. I set this down to a temporary paralysis which will soon disappear. Two days after, he refuses his food. Wrapping himself in his stoicism and his rumpled feathers, the Sparrow hunches into a ball, now motionless, now twitching. My girls take him in the hollow of their hands and warm him with their breath. The spasms become more frequent. A gasp proclaims that all is over. The bird is dead.There was a certain coolness among us at the evening meal. I read mute reproaches, because[203]of my experiment, in the eyes of my home-circle; I read an unspoken accusation of cruelty all around me. The death of the unfortunate Sparrow had saddened the whole family. I myself was not without some remorse of conscience: the poor result achieved seemed to me too dearly bought. I am not made of the stuff of those who, without turning a hair, rip up live Dogs to find out nothing in particular.1Is there not something touching in the simplicity of the father who, with such good will, becomes a child with his children; and in the compassionate kindness of the man who cannot without grieving witness the death of a Sparrow? Fabre indeed possessed in no common degree that quality which, according to Saint Augustine, is the foremost characteristic of spiritual beauty and, according to the poet of the animals, constitutes the essential nobility of the French mind:“La bonté, c’est le fond de tout âme française.”(Kindness, the base of every Frenchman’s mind.)It was, at all events, the basis of his own. And we are conscious of a fundamental emotion, an intimate reprobation, that ascends from the depths of his being to oppose all ideas of violence and hatred.[204]It does not surprise us to see the serene kindliness of our compatriot veiling itself in dejection and becoming almost pugnacious when confronted by the melancholy exploits of force; for how could he remain unaffected before the stupendous barbarism and iniquity of 1870?At the time of his retirement to Orange, Fabre was already the father of five children: Antonia, Aglaé, Claire, Emile, and Jules, who, in course of time, were joined by three others, Paul, Anna, and Marie-Pauline.It was not with Fabre as with some intellectuals, whose thoughts and life remain almost strangers to the home which they establish one day as though in a moment of distraction, and who divide their lives into two parts—one being devoted to their professional labours and the other reserved for the exigencies of family life.Like thepagèsof his native country who live surrounded by their wives and children, sharing their tasks and breaking bread with them, Fabre loved to make his family share in his work as well as in his leisure. He too was a worker in the fields, and was persuaded that, just as there can never be too many hands at work to extract their wealth, so there could never be too many eyes at[205]work contemplating their wonders. He made all his children, little as well as big, boys and girls, so many collaborators in his researches, and he loved to scatter their names about the pages of his books. And it is not the least charm of theSouvenirsthat we meet in them, at every step, the father hand in hand with his children. Passing to and fro, like a refreshing breeze that blows through the scientific aridities of the subject, we feel a twofold current of sympathy flowing from the father to his children and the naturalist to his insects.Incapable of living without either of them, he found a way to devote himself to both, and so closely that the bond between them was truly one that held fast in life and death. Aglaé, Antonia, Claire, Emile, and Jules were recruited in turn, and Fabre informs us that their help was often of the greatest value in his entomological researches. And he liked to attach his children’s names to those of his insects and his discoveries. Jules above all was distinguished by these entomological honours, which a father’s gratitude piously laid, with regretful tears, upon his untimely grave.Not content with dedicating to him the first volume of hisSouvenirs, Fabre again[206]did homage to Jules in the second volume:To my Son Jules.—Beloved child, my zealous collaborator in the study of insects, my perspicacious assistant in the study of plants, it was for your sake that I began this volume; I have continued it for the sake of your memory, and I shall continue it in the bitterness of my mourning. Ah! how hateful is death when it reaps the flower in all the radiance of its blossoming! Your mother and your sisters bring to your tomb wreaths gathered in the rustic flower-bed that you delighted in. To these wreaths, faded by a day’s sunshine, I add this book, which, I hope, will have a to-morrow. It seems to me that it thus prolongs our common studies, fortified as I am by my indomitable faith in a reawakening in the Beyond.2When the separation from loved ones wounds the heart so grievously and wrings from the soul such accents of hope and faith, we need seek no other standard to judge a man’s moral worth.The spectacle of a man, thus moved by the death of his dear ones, who yet welcomes his own death with serenity, is admirable. Such was the case with Fabre, as proved by the following episode of the same date—i.e.1879.[207]I am living at Orange in the year 1879. My house stands alone among the fields.…After a hard winter, when the snow had lain on the ground for a fortnight, I wanted once more to look into the matter of my Halicti. I was in bed with pneumonia and to all appearances at the point of death. I had little or no pain, thank God, but extreme difficulty in living. With the little lucidity left to me, being able to do no other sort of observing, I observed myself dying; I watched with a certain interest the gradual falling to pieces of my poor machinery. Were it not for the terror of leaving my family, who were still young, I would gladly have departed. The after-life must have so many higher and fairer truths to teach us.My hour had not yet come. When the little lamps of thought began to emerge, all flickering, from the dusk of unconsciousness, I wished to take leave of the Hymenoptera, my fondest joy, and first of all of my neighbour, the Halictus.3My son Emile took the spade and went and dug the frozen ground. Not a male was found, of course; but there were plenty of females, numbed with the cold in their cells.A few were brought for me to see, and, roused from their torpor by the warmth of the room, they[208]began to wander about my bed, where I followed them vaguely with my failing eyes.4It is very true that, on leaving Orange, Fabre still had “much to learn” from the company of Hymenoptera and other insects—the great period of his entomological career had not yet begun—but the regret with which he left Orange was soon dissipated by the wealth of observations and the facilities for study which his new home offered him.Living in retirement at Orange, on the confines of the town, at the gate of the fields, he was as yet only in sight of the promised land. At Sérignan, in the quiet obscurity of quite a little village, in the very midst of “the great museum of the fields,” he was truly in possession of the country of his dreams; he had found his ideal abiding-place, the spot which was in most perfect conformity with his tastes and most favourable to his genius.[209]1Souvenirs,II., pp. 202–203.The Life of the Spider, chap. i., “The Black-bellied Tarantula.”↑2Souvenirs,II., p. 1.↑3The Halicti produce two generations each year: one, in the spring, is the issue of mothers who, fecundated in the autumn, have passed through the winter; the other, produced in the summer, is the fruit ofparthenogenesis, that is, of procreation by the maternal virtualities alone. Of the concourse of the two sexes only females are born; parthenogenesis gives rise to both males and females.↑4Souvenirs,VIII., pp. 144–160.The Bramble-Bees, chap. xiv., “Parthenogenesis.” It was only a later date, by combining a series of successive observations which were spread over a great length of years, that he was able to define exactly the various modes of generation employed by the Halicti, as described in the preceding note.↑

CHAPTER XIIIRETIREMENT: ORANGE

It is commonly enough thought that a professor on his vacations and a pensioned official are very much the same—that both art created and put into the world merely to kill time and savour the delights offar niente. Such was never Fabre’s opinion. While he loved nothing so well as his Thursdays and vacations, this was because he then had more freedom to devote himself to his favourite studies. If he resigned himself readily to a premature retirement, if he was even happy to shake off the yoke of thelycée, this was because he had quite definitely determined to work more quietly and continuously; because he hoped to increase the ardour and fertility of his mind by a closer and more lasting intercourse with the world of Nature.At the same time he found himself compelled to look to his pen for that assurance of material life which his retorts had refused him, and which his meagre professor’s pension afforded but insufficiently. “What is to be done now?” he cried, after the collapse[200]of his industrial hopes and professorial ambitions. “Let us try another lever and resume rolling the Sisyphean stone. Let us seek to draw from the ink-pot what the madder-vat and theAlma Materrefuses us.Laboremus!”Laboremus!That indeed is the fitting motto for this period of his life, no less than for the earlier part of it. For it was then that he wrote the greater number of his numerous handbooks, now classic, and it was then that he began to write and to publish hisSouvenirs entomologiques, without ceasing on that account his great life-work, the passionate observation of the living world.Still, it is not so much the man’s work as the man, and not so much the student as the man himself, that we wish to evoke in this chapter.To live happily, we must live hidden from sight, far from the troubles of the world, exercising our minds and cultivating our talents at leisure. Such evidently was Fabre’s idea from the time of his departure from Avignon; and it plainly reveals to us one of the salient features of his moral physiognomy.But he could not have had the illusion that in thus taking refuge from the tribulations[201]of which the world is the source, he was placing himself beyond the reach of any trials. Is it not written that the life of man upon earth is a perpetual struggle against suffering? And if it were not for the cruel wounds which it inflicts upon the poor human heart, we ought rather perhaps to bless this law of our destiny; for it is one of the qualities of human greatness, of the beauty of the soul as of the power of the intellect, that it does not fully reveal itself save under the discipline and empire of suffering.Among the moral qualities of Fabre as we have been able to divine them there is one which the vicissitudes of life revealed more especially during this phase of his existence: I mean his kindliness.Fabre had the simplicity of the kindly man as well as that of the truthful man. He, who instinctively withdrew from the gaze and the malice of men, cared nothing for their smiles or their disdain when there was a question of adding to his store of scientific data or kindly actions, however trivial the matter might be.The following episode is illuminating. Our entomologist was interested, as a scientist, in discovering whether the bite of the Black-bellied Tarantula, deadly to insects,[202]was dangerous to other animals, and to man, or whether it was not, in the latter case, a negligible accident. He therefore experimented upon a bird:I make a Tarantula bite the leg of a young, well-fledged Sparrow, ready to leave the nest. A drop of blood flows: the wounded spot is surrounded by a reddish circle, changing to purple. The bird almost immediately loses the use of its leg, which drags, with the toes doubled in; it hops upon the other. Apart from this, the patient does not seem to trouble much about his hurt; his appetite is good. My daughters feed him on flies, bread-crumb, apricot-pulp. He is sure to get well, he will recover his strength; the poor victim of the curiosity of science will be restored to liberty. This is the wish, the intention of us all. Twelve hours later, the hope of a cure increases; the invalid takes nourishment readily; he clamours for it, if we keep him waiting. But the leg still drags. I set this down to a temporary paralysis which will soon disappear. Two days after, he refuses his food. Wrapping himself in his stoicism and his rumpled feathers, the Sparrow hunches into a ball, now motionless, now twitching. My girls take him in the hollow of their hands and warm him with their breath. The spasms become more frequent. A gasp proclaims that all is over. The bird is dead.There was a certain coolness among us at the evening meal. I read mute reproaches, because[203]of my experiment, in the eyes of my home-circle; I read an unspoken accusation of cruelty all around me. The death of the unfortunate Sparrow had saddened the whole family. I myself was not without some remorse of conscience: the poor result achieved seemed to me too dearly bought. I am not made of the stuff of those who, without turning a hair, rip up live Dogs to find out nothing in particular.1Is there not something touching in the simplicity of the father who, with such good will, becomes a child with his children; and in the compassionate kindness of the man who cannot without grieving witness the death of a Sparrow? Fabre indeed possessed in no common degree that quality which, according to Saint Augustine, is the foremost characteristic of spiritual beauty and, according to the poet of the animals, constitutes the essential nobility of the French mind:“La bonté, c’est le fond de tout âme française.”(Kindness, the base of every Frenchman’s mind.)It was, at all events, the basis of his own. And we are conscious of a fundamental emotion, an intimate reprobation, that ascends from the depths of his being to oppose all ideas of violence and hatred.[204]It does not surprise us to see the serene kindliness of our compatriot veiling itself in dejection and becoming almost pugnacious when confronted by the melancholy exploits of force; for how could he remain unaffected before the stupendous barbarism and iniquity of 1870?At the time of his retirement to Orange, Fabre was already the father of five children: Antonia, Aglaé, Claire, Emile, and Jules, who, in course of time, were joined by three others, Paul, Anna, and Marie-Pauline.It was not with Fabre as with some intellectuals, whose thoughts and life remain almost strangers to the home which they establish one day as though in a moment of distraction, and who divide their lives into two parts—one being devoted to their professional labours and the other reserved for the exigencies of family life.Like thepagèsof his native country who live surrounded by their wives and children, sharing their tasks and breaking bread with them, Fabre loved to make his family share in his work as well as in his leisure. He too was a worker in the fields, and was persuaded that, just as there can never be too many hands at work to extract their wealth, so there could never be too many eyes at[205]work contemplating their wonders. He made all his children, little as well as big, boys and girls, so many collaborators in his researches, and he loved to scatter their names about the pages of his books. And it is not the least charm of theSouvenirsthat we meet in them, at every step, the father hand in hand with his children. Passing to and fro, like a refreshing breeze that blows through the scientific aridities of the subject, we feel a twofold current of sympathy flowing from the father to his children and the naturalist to his insects.Incapable of living without either of them, he found a way to devote himself to both, and so closely that the bond between them was truly one that held fast in life and death. Aglaé, Antonia, Claire, Emile, and Jules were recruited in turn, and Fabre informs us that their help was often of the greatest value in his entomological researches. And he liked to attach his children’s names to those of his insects and his discoveries. Jules above all was distinguished by these entomological honours, which a father’s gratitude piously laid, with regretful tears, upon his untimely grave.Not content with dedicating to him the first volume of hisSouvenirs, Fabre again[206]did homage to Jules in the second volume:To my Son Jules.—Beloved child, my zealous collaborator in the study of insects, my perspicacious assistant in the study of plants, it was for your sake that I began this volume; I have continued it for the sake of your memory, and I shall continue it in the bitterness of my mourning. Ah! how hateful is death when it reaps the flower in all the radiance of its blossoming! Your mother and your sisters bring to your tomb wreaths gathered in the rustic flower-bed that you delighted in. To these wreaths, faded by a day’s sunshine, I add this book, which, I hope, will have a to-morrow. It seems to me that it thus prolongs our common studies, fortified as I am by my indomitable faith in a reawakening in the Beyond.2When the separation from loved ones wounds the heart so grievously and wrings from the soul such accents of hope and faith, we need seek no other standard to judge a man’s moral worth.The spectacle of a man, thus moved by the death of his dear ones, who yet welcomes his own death with serenity, is admirable. Such was the case with Fabre, as proved by the following episode of the same date—i.e.1879.[207]I am living at Orange in the year 1879. My house stands alone among the fields.…After a hard winter, when the snow had lain on the ground for a fortnight, I wanted once more to look into the matter of my Halicti. I was in bed with pneumonia and to all appearances at the point of death. I had little or no pain, thank God, but extreme difficulty in living. With the little lucidity left to me, being able to do no other sort of observing, I observed myself dying; I watched with a certain interest the gradual falling to pieces of my poor machinery. Were it not for the terror of leaving my family, who were still young, I would gladly have departed. The after-life must have so many higher and fairer truths to teach us.My hour had not yet come. When the little lamps of thought began to emerge, all flickering, from the dusk of unconsciousness, I wished to take leave of the Hymenoptera, my fondest joy, and first of all of my neighbour, the Halictus.3My son Emile took the spade and went and dug the frozen ground. Not a male was found, of course; but there were plenty of females, numbed with the cold in their cells.A few were brought for me to see, and, roused from their torpor by the warmth of the room, they[208]began to wander about my bed, where I followed them vaguely with my failing eyes.4It is very true that, on leaving Orange, Fabre still had “much to learn” from the company of Hymenoptera and other insects—the great period of his entomological career had not yet begun—but the regret with which he left Orange was soon dissipated by the wealth of observations and the facilities for study which his new home offered him.Living in retirement at Orange, on the confines of the town, at the gate of the fields, he was as yet only in sight of the promised land. At Sérignan, in the quiet obscurity of quite a little village, in the very midst of “the great museum of the fields,” he was truly in possession of the country of his dreams; he had found his ideal abiding-place, the spot which was in most perfect conformity with his tastes and most favourable to his genius.[209]

At the same time he found himself compelled to look to his pen for that assurance of material life which his retorts had refused him, and which his meagre professor’s pension afforded but insufficiently. “What is to be done now?” he cried, after the collapse[200]of his industrial hopes and professorial ambitions. “Let us try another lever and resume rolling the Sisyphean stone. Let us seek to draw from the ink-pot what the madder-vat and theAlma Materrefuses us.Laboremus!”

Laboremus!That indeed is the fitting motto for this period of his life, no less than for the earlier part of it. For it was then that he wrote the greater number of his numerous handbooks, now classic, and it was then that he began to write and to publish hisSouvenirs entomologiques, without ceasing on that account his great life-work, the passionate observation of the living world.

Still, it is not so much the man’s work as the man, and not so much the student as the man himself, that we wish to evoke in this chapter.

To live happily, we must live hidden from sight, far from the troubles of the world, exercising our minds and cultivating our talents at leisure. Such evidently was Fabre’s idea from the time of his departure from Avignon; and it plainly reveals to us one of the salient features of his moral physiognomy.

But he could not have had the illusion that in thus taking refuge from the tribulations[201]of which the world is the source, he was placing himself beyond the reach of any trials. Is it not written that the life of man upon earth is a perpetual struggle against suffering? And if it were not for the cruel wounds which it inflicts upon the poor human heart, we ought rather perhaps to bless this law of our destiny; for it is one of the qualities of human greatness, of the beauty of the soul as of the power of the intellect, that it does not fully reveal itself save under the discipline and empire of suffering.

Among the moral qualities of Fabre as we have been able to divine them there is one which the vicissitudes of life revealed more especially during this phase of his existence: I mean his kindliness.

Fabre had the simplicity of the kindly man as well as that of the truthful man. He, who instinctively withdrew from the gaze and the malice of men, cared nothing for their smiles or their disdain when there was a question of adding to his store of scientific data or kindly actions, however trivial the matter might be.

The following episode is illuminating. Our entomologist was interested, as a scientist, in discovering whether the bite of the Black-bellied Tarantula, deadly to insects,[202]was dangerous to other animals, and to man, or whether it was not, in the latter case, a negligible accident. He therefore experimented upon a bird:

I make a Tarantula bite the leg of a young, well-fledged Sparrow, ready to leave the nest. A drop of blood flows: the wounded spot is surrounded by a reddish circle, changing to purple. The bird almost immediately loses the use of its leg, which drags, with the toes doubled in; it hops upon the other. Apart from this, the patient does not seem to trouble much about his hurt; his appetite is good. My daughters feed him on flies, bread-crumb, apricot-pulp. He is sure to get well, he will recover his strength; the poor victim of the curiosity of science will be restored to liberty. This is the wish, the intention of us all. Twelve hours later, the hope of a cure increases; the invalid takes nourishment readily; he clamours for it, if we keep him waiting. But the leg still drags. I set this down to a temporary paralysis which will soon disappear. Two days after, he refuses his food. Wrapping himself in his stoicism and his rumpled feathers, the Sparrow hunches into a ball, now motionless, now twitching. My girls take him in the hollow of their hands and warm him with their breath. The spasms become more frequent. A gasp proclaims that all is over. The bird is dead.There was a certain coolness among us at the evening meal. I read mute reproaches, because[203]of my experiment, in the eyes of my home-circle; I read an unspoken accusation of cruelty all around me. The death of the unfortunate Sparrow had saddened the whole family. I myself was not without some remorse of conscience: the poor result achieved seemed to me too dearly bought. I am not made of the stuff of those who, without turning a hair, rip up live Dogs to find out nothing in particular.1

There was a certain coolness among us at the evening meal. I read mute reproaches, because[203]of my experiment, in the eyes of my home-circle; I read an unspoken accusation of cruelty all around me. The death of the unfortunate Sparrow had saddened the whole family. I myself was not without some remorse of conscience: the poor result achieved seemed to me too dearly bought. I am not made of the stuff of those who, without turning a hair, rip up live Dogs to find out nothing in particular.1

Is there not something touching in the simplicity of the father who, with such good will, becomes a child with his children; and in the compassionate kindness of the man who cannot without grieving witness the death of a Sparrow? Fabre indeed possessed in no common degree that quality which, according to Saint Augustine, is the foremost characteristic of spiritual beauty and, according to the poet of the animals, constitutes the essential nobility of the French mind:

“La bonté, c’est le fond de tout âme française.”(Kindness, the base of every Frenchman’s mind.)

“La bonté, c’est le fond de tout âme française.”

(Kindness, the base of every Frenchman’s mind.)

It was, at all events, the basis of his own. And we are conscious of a fundamental emotion, an intimate reprobation, that ascends from the depths of his being to oppose all ideas of violence and hatred.[204]

It does not surprise us to see the serene kindliness of our compatriot veiling itself in dejection and becoming almost pugnacious when confronted by the melancholy exploits of force; for how could he remain unaffected before the stupendous barbarism and iniquity of 1870?

At the time of his retirement to Orange, Fabre was already the father of five children: Antonia, Aglaé, Claire, Emile, and Jules, who, in course of time, were joined by three others, Paul, Anna, and Marie-Pauline.

It was not with Fabre as with some intellectuals, whose thoughts and life remain almost strangers to the home which they establish one day as though in a moment of distraction, and who divide their lives into two parts—one being devoted to their professional labours and the other reserved for the exigencies of family life.

Like thepagèsof his native country who live surrounded by their wives and children, sharing their tasks and breaking bread with them, Fabre loved to make his family share in his work as well as in his leisure. He too was a worker in the fields, and was persuaded that, just as there can never be too many hands at work to extract their wealth, so there could never be too many eyes at[205]work contemplating their wonders. He made all his children, little as well as big, boys and girls, so many collaborators in his researches, and he loved to scatter their names about the pages of his books. And it is not the least charm of theSouvenirsthat we meet in them, at every step, the father hand in hand with his children. Passing to and fro, like a refreshing breeze that blows through the scientific aridities of the subject, we feel a twofold current of sympathy flowing from the father to his children and the naturalist to his insects.

Incapable of living without either of them, he found a way to devote himself to both, and so closely that the bond between them was truly one that held fast in life and death. Aglaé, Antonia, Claire, Emile, and Jules were recruited in turn, and Fabre informs us that their help was often of the greatest value in his entomological researches. And he liked to attach his children’s names to those of his insects and his discoveries. Jules above all was distinguished by these entomological honours, which a father’s gratitude piously laid, with regretful tears, upon his untimely grave.

Not content with dedicating to him the first volume of hisSouvenirs, Fabre again[206]did homage to Jules in the second volume:

To my Son Jules.—Beloved child, my zealous collaborator in the study of insects, my perspicacious assistant in the study of plants, it was for your sake that I began this volume; I have continued it for the sake of your memory, and I shall continue it in the bitterness of my mourning. Ah! how hateful is death when it reaps the flower in all the radiance of its blossoming! Your mother and your sisters bring to your tomb wreaths gathered in the rustic flower-bed that you delighted in. To these wreaths, faded by a day’s sunshine, I add this book, which, I hope, will have a to-morrow. It seems to me that it thus prolongs our common studies, fortified as I am by my indomitable faith in a reawakening in the Beyond.2

When the separation from loved ones wounds the heart so grievously and wrings from the soul such accents of hope and faith, we need seek no other standard to judge a man’s moral worth.

The spectacle of a man, thus moved by the death of his dear ones, who yet welcomes his own death with serenity, is admirable. Such was the case with Fabre, as proved by the following episode of the same date—i.e.1879.[207]

I am living at Orange in the year 1879. My house stands alone among the fields.…After a hard winter, when the snow had lain on the ground for a fortnight, I wanted once more to look into the matter of my Halicti. I was in bed with pneumonia and to all appearances at the point of death. I had little or no pain, thank God, but extreme difficulty in living. With the little lucidity left to me, being able to do no other sort of observing, I observed myself dying; I watched with a certain interest the gradual falling to pieces of my poor machinery. Were it not for the terror of leaving my family, who were still young, I would gladly have departed. The after-life must have so many higher and fairer truths to teach us.My hour had not yet come. When the little lamps of thought began to emerge, all flickering, from the dusk of unconsciousness, I wished to take leave of the Hymenoptera, my fondest joy, and first of all of my neighbour, the Halictus.3My son Emile took the spade and went and dug the frozen ground. Not a male was found, of course; but there were plenty of females, numbed with the cold in their cells.A few were brought for me to see, and, roused from their torpor by the warmth of the room, they[208]began to wander about my bed, where I followed them vaguely with my failing eyes.4

I am living at Orange in the year 1879. My house stands alone among the fields.…

After a hard winter, when the snow had lain on the ground for a fortnight, I wanted once more to look into the matter of my Halicti. I was in bed with pneumonia and to all appearances at the point of death. I had little or no pain, thank God, but extreme difficulty in living. With the little lucidity left to me, being able to do no other sort of observing, I observed myself dying; I watched with a certain interest the gradual falling to pieces of my poor machinery. Were it not for the terror of leaving my family, who were still young, I would gladly have departed. The after-life must have so many higher and fairer truths to teach us.

My hour had not yet come. When the little lamps of thought began to emerge, all flickering, from the dusk of unconsciousness, I wished to take leave of the Hymenoptera, my fondest joy, and first of all of my neighbour, the Halictus.3My son Emile took the spade and went and dug the frozen ground. Not a male was found, of course; but there were plenty of females, numbed with the cold in their cells.

A few were brought for me to see, and, roused from their torpor by the warmth of the room, they[208]began to wander about my bed, where I followed them vaguely with my failing eyes.4

It is very true that, on leaving Orange, Fabre still had “much to learn” from the company of Hymenoptera and other insects—the great period of his entomological career had not yet begun—but the regret with which he left Orange was soon dissipated by the wealth of observations and the facilities for study which his new home offered him.

Living in retirement at Orange, on the confines of the town, at the gate of the fields, he was as yet only in sight of the promised land. At Sérignan, in the quiet obscurity of quite a little village, in the very midst of “the great museum of the fields,” he was truly in possession of the country of his dreams; he had found his ideal abiding-place, the spot which was in most perfect conformity with his tastes and most favourable to his genius.[209]

1Souvenirs,II., pp. 202–203.The Life of the Spider, chap. i., “The Black-bellied Tarantula.”↑2Souvenirs,II., p. 1.↑3The Halicti produce two generations each year: one, in the spring, is the issue of mothers who, fecundated in the autumn, have passed through the winter; the other, produced in the summer, is the fruit ofparthenogenesis, that is, of procreation by the maternal virtualities alone. Of the concourse of the two sexes only females are born; parthenogenesis gives rise to both males and females.↑4Souvenirs,VIII., pp. 144–160.The Bramble-Bees, chap. xiv., “Parthenogenesis.” It was only a later date, by combining a series of successive observations which were spread over a great length of years, that he was able to define exactly the various modes of generation employed by the Halicti, as described in the preceding note.↑

1Souvenirs,II., pp. 202–203.The Life of the Spider, chap. i., “The Black-bellied Tarantula.”↑

2Souvenirs,II., p. 1.↑

3The Halicti produce two generations each year: one, in the spring, is the issue of mothers who, fecundated in the autumn, have passed through the winter; the other, produced in the summer, is the fruit ofparthenogenesis, that is, of procreation by the maternal virtualities alone. Of the concourse of the two sexes only females are born; parthenogenesis gives rise to both males and females.↑

4Souvenirs,VIII., pp. 144–160.The Bramble-Bees, chap. xiv., “Parthenogenesis.” It was only a later date, by combining a series of successive observations which were spread over a great length of years, that he was able to define exactly the various modes of generation employed by the Halicti, as described in the preceding note.↑

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