The resolute worker resumed his indefatigable labours with an ardour
greater than ever, for now he was haunted by a noble ambition, that of
becoming a teacher of the superior grade, and of "talking plants and
animals" in a chair of the faculty. With this end in view he added to his
two diplomas--those of mathematics and physics--a third certificate, that
of natural sciences. His success was triumphant.
Already tenacious and fearless in affirming what he believed to be the
truth, he astonished and bewildered the professors of Toulouse. Among the
subjects touched upon by the examiners was the famous question of
spontaneous generation, which was then so vital, and which gave rise to so
many impassioned discussions. The examiner, as it chanced, was one of the
leading apostles of this doctrine. The future adversary of Darwin, at the
risk of failure, did not scruple to argue with him, and to put forward his
personal convictions and his own arguments. He decided the vexed question
in his own way, on his own responsibility. A personality already so
striking was regarded with admiration; a candidate so far out of the
ordinary was welcomed with enthusiasm, and but for the insufficiency of the
budget which so scantily met the needs of public instruction his
examination fees would have been returned. (4/1.)
Why, after this brilliant success, was Fabre not tempted to enter himself
for a fellowship, which would later in his career have averted so many
disappointments? It was doubtless because he felt, obscurely, that his
ideal future lay along other lines, and that he would have been taking a
wrong turning. Despite all the solicitations which were addressed to him he
would think of nothing but "his beloved studies in natural history" (4/2.);
he feared to lose precious time in preparing himself for a competitive
examination; "to compromise by such labour, which he felt would be
fruitless" (4/3.), the studies which he had already commenced, and the
inquiries already carried out in Corsica. He was busy with his first
original labours, the theses which he was preparing with a view to his
doctorate in natural science, "which might one day open the doors of a
faculty for him, far more easily than would a fellowship and its
mathematics." (4/4.)
At heart he was utterly careless of dignities and degrees. He worked only
to learn, not to attain and follow up a settled calling. What he hoped
above all was to succeed in devoting all his leisure to those marvellous
natural sciences in which he could vaguely foresee studies full of
interest; something animated and vital; a thousand fascinating themes, and
an atmosphere of poetry.
His genius, as yet invisible, was ripening in obscurity, but was ready to
come forth; he lacked only the propitious circumstance which would allow
him to unfold his wings.
He was seeking them in vain when a volume by Léon Dufour, the famous
entomologist, who then lived in the depths of the Landes, fell by chance
into his hands, and lit the first spark of that beacon which was presently
to decide the definite trend of his ideas.
It was this incident which then and there developed the germs already
latent within him. These had only awaited such an occasion as that which so
fortunately came to pass one evening of the winter of 1854.
Fabre offers yet another example of the part so often played by chance in
the manifestations of talent. How many have suddenly felt the unexpected
awakening of gifts which they did not suspect, as a result of some unusual
circumstance!
Was it not simply as a result of having read a note by the Russian chemist
Mitscherlich on the comparison of the specific characteristics of certain
crystals that Pasteur so enthusiastically took up his researches into
molecular asymmetry which were the starting-point of so many wonderful
discoveries?
Again, we need only recall the case of Brother Huber, the celebrated
observer of the bee, who, having out of simple curiosity undertaken to
verify certain experiments of Réaumur's, was so completely and immediately
fascinated by the subject that it became the object of the rest of his
life.
Again, we may ask what Claude Bernard would have been had he not met
Magendie? Similarly Léon Dufour's little work was to Fabre the road to
Damascus, the electric impulse which decided his vocation.
It dealt with a very singular fact concerning the manners of one of the
hymenoptera, a wasp, a Cerceris, in whose nest Dufour had found small
coleoptera of the genus Buprestis, which, under all the appearances of
death, retained intact for an incredible time their sumptuous costume,
gleaming with gold, copper, and emerald, while the tissues remained
perfectly fresh. In a word, the victims of Cerceris, far from being
desiccated or putrefied, were found in a state of integrity which was
altogether paradoxical.
Dufour merely believed that the Buprestes were dead, and he gave an
attempted explanation of the phenomenon.
Fabre, his curiosity and interest aroused, wished to observe the facts for
himself; and, to his great surprise, he discovered how incomplete and
insufficiently verified were the observations of the man who was at that
time known as "the patriarch of entomologists."
>From that moment he saw his way ahead; he suspected that there was still
much to discover and much to revise in this vast department of nature, and
conceived the idea of resuming the work so splendidly outlined by Réaumur
and the two Hubers, but almost completely neglected since the days of those
illustrious masters. He divined that here were fresh pastures, a vast
unexplored country to be opened up, an entire unimagined science to be
founded, wonderful secrets to be discovered, magnificent problems to be
solved, and he dreamed of consecrating himself unreservedly, of employing
his whole life in the pursuit of this object; that long life whose fruitful
activity was to extend over nearly ninety years, and which was to be so
"representative" by the dignity of the man, the probity of the expert, the
genius of the observer, and the originality of the writer.
The year 1855 saw the first appearance, in the "Annales des sciences
naturelles," of the famous memoir which marked the beginning of his fame:
the history, which might well be called marvellous and incredible, of the
great Cerceris, a giant wasp and "the finest of the Hymenoptera which hunt
for booty at the foot of Mont Ventoux." (4/5.)
Fabre was now thirty-two years old, and his situation as assistant-
professor of physics was somewhat precarious. From the 72 pounds sterling
which he drew at Ajaccio, an overseas post, his salary was reduced, on his
return to the mainland, to 64 pounds sterling, and during the whole of his
stay at Avignon he obtained neither promotion nor the smallest increase of
pay, excepting a few additional profits which were unconnected with his
habitual duties. When he left the university after twenty well-filled
years, he left as he had entered, with the same title, rank, and salary of
a mere assistant-professor.
Yet all about him "everywhere and for every one, all was black indeed": his
family had increased and therewith his expenses; there were now seven at
table every day. Very shortly his modest salary would no longer suffice; he
was obliged to supplement it by all sorts of hack-work--classes,
"repetitions," private lessons; tasks which repelled him, for they absorbed
all his available time; they prevented him from giving himself up to his
favourite studies, to his silent and solitary observations. Nevertheless,
he acquitted himself of these duties patiently and conscientiously, for at
heart he loved his profession, and was rather a fellow-disciple than a
master to his pupils. For this reason all those about him worked with
praiseworthy assiduity; even the worst elements, the black sheep, the "bad
eggs" of other classes, with him were suddenly transformed and as attentive
as the rest. Although he knew how to keep order, how to make himself
respected, and could on occasion deal severely and speak sternly, so that
very few dared to forget themselves before him, he knew also how to be
merry with his pupils, chatting with them familiarly, putting himself in
their place, entering into their ideas, and making himself their rival. If
life was laborious under his ferula, it was also merry. The best proof of
this is the fact that of all his colleagues at the lycée he was the only
one who had no nickname, a rarity in scholastic annals.
He did not therefore object to these lessons; but while at Carpentras he
was made much of and praised by the principal, was a general favourite, and
had perfect liberty to follow his inspiration during his partly gratuitous
classes, here the hours and the programme tied him down, which was
precisely what he found insupportable.
Everything made things difficult for him here: his external self; his
character, ever so little shy and unsocial; his temperament, which was made
for solitude.
In the thick of this hierarchical society of university professors he
remained independent; he knew nothing of what was said or what was
happening in the college, and his colleagues were always better informed
than he. (4/6.) As he was not a fellow, he was made to feel the fact and
was treated as a subordinate; the others, who prided themselves on the
title, and who were incapable of recognizing his merit, which was a little
beyond them, were jealous of him, all the more inasmuch as his name was
momentarily noised abroad, and they revenged themselves by calling him "the
fly" among themselves, by way of allusion to his favourite subject. (4/7.)
Indifferent to distinctions, as well as to those who bore them,
contemptuous of etiquette, and incapable of putting constraint upon his
nature, he remained an "outsider," and refused to comply with a host of
factitious or worldly obligations which he regarded as useless or
disgusting. Thus even at Ajaccio he managed to escape the customary
ceremonies of New Year's Day.
"Good society I avoid as much as possible; I prefer my own company. So I
have seen no one; I did not respond to the principal's invitation to make
the official round of visits." (4/8.)
When obliged to accept some invitation, apart from occasions of too great
solemnity, when he was really constrained to dress himself in the complete
livery of circumstance and ceremony, he remained faithful to his black felt
hat, which made a blot among all the carefully polished "toppers" of his
colleagues. He was called to order; he was reprimanded; he obeyed
unwillingly, or worse, he resisted; he revolted, and threatened to send in
his resignation. To pay court to people, to endeavour to make himself
pleasant, to grovel before a superior, were to him impossibilities. He
could neither solicit, nor sail with the wind, nor force himself on others,
nor even make use of his relations.
However, when he went to Paris to take his doctor's degree in natural
sciences, he did not forget Moquin-Tandon, who had formerly, in Corsica,
revealed to him the nature of biology, and whom he himself had received and
entertained in his humble home.
The ex-professor of Toulouse, who was now eminent in his speciality,
occupied the chair of natural history in the faculty of medicine in Paris.
What better occasion could he wish of introducing himself to a highly
placed official? Fabre had formerly been his host; he could recall the
happy hours they had spent together; he could explain his plans, and ask
for the professor's assistance! Fate pointed to him as a protector. But if
Fabre had been capable of climbing the professor's stairs with some such
ambitious desires, he would quickly have been disabused.
The "dear master" had long ago forgotten the little professor of Ajaccio,
and his welcome was by no means such as Fabre had the right to expect. Far
from insisting, he was disheartened, perhaps a little humiliated, and
hastened to take his leave.
The theses which Fabre brought with him, and which, he had thought, ought
to lead him one day to a university professorship, did not, as a matter of
fact, contain anything very essentially original.
He had been attracted, indeed fascinated, by all the singularities
presented by the strange family of the orchids; the asymmetry of their
blossoms, the unusual structure of their pollen, and their innumerable
seeds; but as for the curious rounded and duplicated tubercles which many
of them bore at their base, what precisely were they? The greatest
botanists--de Candolle, A. de Jussieu--had perceived in them nothing more
than roots. Fabre demonstrated in his thesis that these singular organs are
in reality merely buds, true branches or shoots, modified and disguised,
analogous to the metamorphosed tubercle of the potato. (4/9.)
He added also a curious memoir on the phosphorescence of the agaric of the
olive-tree, a phenomenon to which he was to return at a later date.
In the field of zoology his scalpel revealed the complicated structure of
the reproductive organs of the Centipedes (Millepedes), hitherto so
confused and misunderstood; as also certain peculiarities of the
development of these curious creatures, so interesting from the point of
view of the zoological philosopher (4/10.), for he had become expert in
handling not only the magnifying glass, which was always with him, but also
the microscope, which discovers so many infinite wonders in the lowest
creatures, yet which was not of particular service in any of the beautiful
observations upon which his fame is built.
Returning to Avignon, in the possession of his new degree, he commenced an
important task which took him nearly twenty years to complete: a
painstaking treatise on the Sphaeriaceae of Vaucluse, that singular family
of fungi which cover fallen leaves and dead twigs with their blackish
fructifications; a remarkable piece of work, full of the most valuable
documentation, as were the theses whose subjects I have just detailed; but
without belittling the fame of their author, one may say that another, in
his place, might have acquitted himself as well.
Although he continued to undertake researches of limited interest and
importance, although he persisted in dissecting plants, and, although he
disliked it, in "disembowelling animals," the fact was that apart from
Thursdays and Sundays it was scarcely possible for him to escape from his
week's work; hardly possible to snatch sufficient leisure to undertake the
studies toward which he felt himself more particularly drawn. Tied down by
his duties, which held him bound to a discipline that only left him brief
moments, and by the forced hack-work imposed upon him by the necessity of
earning his daily bread, he had scarcely any time for observation excepting
vacations and holidays.
Then he would hasten to Carpentras, happy to hold the key to the meadows,
and wander across country and along the sunken lanes, collecting his
beautiful insects, breathing the free air, the scent of the vines and
olives, and gazing upon Mont Ventoux, close at hand, whose silver summit
would now be hidden in the clouds and now would glitter in the rays of the
sun.
Carpentras was not merely the country in which his wife's parents dwelt: it
was, above all, a unique and privileged home for insects; not on account of
its flora, but because of the soil, a kind of limestone mingled with sand
and clay, a soft marl, in which the burrowing hymenoptera could easily
establish their burrows and their nests. Certain of them, indeed, lived
only there, or at least it would have been extremely difficult to find them
elsewhere; such was the famous Cerceris; such again, was the yellow-winged
Sphex, that other wasp which so artistically stabs and paralyses the
cricket, "the brown violinist of the clods."
At Carpentras too the Anthophorae lived in abundance; those wild bees with
whom the vexed and enigmatic history of the Sitaris and the Meloë is bound
up; those little beetles, cousins of the Cantharides, whose complex
metamorphoses and astonishing and peculiar habits have been revealed by
Fabre. This memoir marked the second stage of his scientific career, and
followed, at an interval of two years, the magnificent observations on the
Cerceris.
These two studies, true masterpieces of science, already constituted two
excellent titles to fame, and would by themselves have sufficed to fill a
naturalist's whole lifetime and to make his name illustrious.
>From that time forward he had no peer. The Institute awarded him one of its
Montyon prizes (4/11.), "an honour of which, needless to say, he had never
dreamed." (4/12.) Darwin, in his celebrated work on the "Origin of
Species," which appeared precisely at this moment, speaks of Fabre
somewhere as "the inimitable observer." (4/13.)
Exploring the immediate surroundings of Avignon, he very soon discovered
fresh localities frequented almost exclusively by other insects, whose
habits in their turn absorbed his whole attention.
First of these was the sandy plateau of the Angles, where every spring, in
the sunlit pastures so beloved of the sheep, the Scarabaeus sacer, with his
incurved feet and clumsy legs, commences to roll his everlasting pellet,
"to the ancients the image of the world." His history, since the time of
the Pharaohs, had been nothing but a tissue of legends; but stripping it of
the embroidery of fiction, and referring it to the facts of nature, Fabre
demonstrated that the true story is even more marvellous than all the tales
of ancient Egypt. He narrated its actual life, the object of its task, and
its comical and exhilarating performances. But such is the subtlety of
these delicate and difficult researches that nearly forty years were
required to complete the study of its habits and to solve the mystery of
its cradle. (4/14.)
On the right bank of the Rhône, facing the embouchure of the Durance, is a
small wood of oak-trees, the wood of Des Issarts. This again, for many
reasons, was one of his favourite spots. There, "lying flat on the ground,
his head in the shadow of some rabbit's burrow," or sheltered from the sun
by a great umbrella, "while the blue-winged locusts frisked for joy," he
would follow the rapid and sibilant flight of the elegant Bembex, carrying
their daily ration of diptera to her larvae, at the bottom of her burrow,
deep in the fine sand." (4/15.)
He did not always go thither alone: sometimes, on Sundays, he would take
his pupils with him, to spend a morning in the fields, "at the ineffable
festival of the awakening of life in the spring." (4/16.)
Those most dear to him, those who in the subsequent years have remained the
object of a special affection, were Devillario, Bordone, and Vayssières
(4/17.), "young people with warm hearts and smiling imaginations,
overflowing with that springtime sap of life which makes us so expansive
and so eager to know.
Among them he was "the eldest, their master, but still more their companion
and friend"; lighting in them his own sacred fire, and amazing them by the
deftness of his fingers and the acuteness of his lynx-like eyes. Furnished
with a notebook and all the tools of the naturalist--lens, net, and little
boxes of sawdust steeped in anaesthetic for the capture of rare specimens--
they would wander "along the paths bordered with hawthorn and hyaebla,
simple and childlike folk," probing the bushes, scratching up the sand,
raising stones, running the net along hedge and meadow, with explosions of
delight when they made some splendid capture or discovered some unrecorded
marvel of the entomological world.
It was not only on the banks of the Rhône or the sandy plateau of Avignon
that they sought adventure thus, "discussing things and other things," but
as far as the slopes of Mont Ventoux, for which Fabre had always felt an
inexplicable and invincible attraction, and whose ascent he accomplished
more than twenty times, so that at last he knew all its secrets, all the
gamut of its vegetation, the wealth of the varied flora which climb its
flanks from base to summit, and which range "from the scarlet flowers of
the pomegranate to the violet of Mont Cenis and the Alpine forget-me-not"
(4/18.), as well as the antediluvian fauna revealed amid its entrails, a
vast ossuary rich in fossils.
His disciples, all of whom, without exception, regarded him with absolute
worship, have retained the memory of his wit, his enthusiasm, his geniality
and his infectious gaiety, and also of the singular uncertainty of his
temperament; for on some days he would not speak a word from the beginning
to the end of his walk.
Even his temper, ordinarily gentle and easy, would suddenly become hasty
and violent, and would break out into terrible explosions when a sudden
annoyance set him beside himself; for instance, when he was the butt of
some ill-natured trick, or when, in spite of the lucidity of his
explanations, he felt that he had not been properly understood. Perhaps he
inherited this from his mother, a rebellious, crotchety, somewhat fantastic
person, by whose temper he himself had suffered.
But the young people who surrounded him were far from being upset by these
contrasts of temperament, in which they themselves saw nothing but natural
annoyance, and the corollary, as it were, of his abounding vitality.
(4/19.)
It was because he was the only university teacher in Avignon to occupy
himself with entomology that Pasteur visited him in 1865. The illustrious
chemist had been striving to check the plague that was devastating the
silkworm nurseries, and as he knew nothing of the subject which he proposed
to study, not even understanding the constitution of the cocoon or the
evolution of the silkworm, he sought out Fabre in order to obtain from his
store of entomological wisdom the elementary ideas which he would find
indispensable. Fabre has told us, in a moving page (4/20), with what a
total lack of comprehension of "poverty in a black coat" the great
scientist gazed at his poor home. Preoccupied by another problem, that of
the amelioration of wines by means of heat, Pasteur asked him point-blank--
him, the humble proletarian of the university caste, who drank only the
cheapest wine of the country--to show him his cellar. "My cellar! Why not
my vaults, my dusty bottles, labelled according to age and vintage! But
Pasteur insisted. Then, pointing with my finger, I showed him, in a corner
of the kitchen, a chair with all the straw gone, and on this chair a two-
gallon demijohn: 'There is my cave, monsieur!'"
If the country professor was embarrassed by the chilliness of the other, he
was none the less shocked by his attitude. It would seem, from what Fabre
has said, that Pasteur treated him with a hauteur which was slightly
disdainful. The ignorant genius questioned his humble colleague, distantly
giving him his orders, explaining his plans and his ideas, and informing
him in what directions he required assistance.
After this, we cannot be surprised if the naturalist was silent. How could
sympathetic relations have survived this first meeting? Fabre could not
forgive it. His own character was too independent to accommodate itself to
Pasteur's. Yet never, perhaps, were two men made for a better
understanding. They were equally expert in exercising their admirable
powers of vision in the vast field of nature, equally critical of self,
equally careful never to depart from the strict limits of the facts; and
they were, one may say, equally eminent in the domain of invention,
different though their fortunes may have been; for the sublimity of
scientific discoveries, however full of genius they may be, is often
measured only by the immediate consequences drawn therefrom and the
practical importance of their results.
In reality, were they not two rivals, worthy of being placed side by side
in the paradise of sages? Both of them, the one by demolishing the theory
of spontaneous generation, the other by refuting the mechanical theory of
the origin of instincts, have brought into due prominence the great unknown
and mysterious forces which seem destined to hold eternally in suspense the
profound enigma of life.
Now he was anxious not to leave the Vaucluse district, the scene of his
first success, and a place so fruitful in subjects of study. He wished to
remain close to his insects, and also near the precious library and the
rich collections which Requien had left by will to the town of Avignon. In
spite of the meagreness of his salary, he asked for nothing more; and, what
is more, by an inconsequence which is by no means incomprehensible, he
avoided everything that might have resulted in a more profitable position
elsewhere, and evaded all proposals of further promotion. Twice, at
Poitiers and Marseilles, he refused a post as assistant professor, not
regarding the advantages sufficient to balance the expenses of removal.
(4/21.)
It is true that his modest position was slightly improved; at the lycée he
had just been appointed drawing-master, thanks to his knowledge of design,
for he could draw--indeed, what could he not do? The city, on the other
hand, appointed him conservator of the Requien Museum, and presently
municipal lecturer, so that his earnings were increased by 48 pounds
sterling per annum, and he was at last able to abandon "those abominable
private lessons" (4/22.), which the insufficiency of his income had
hitherto forced him to accept. These new duties, which naturally demanded
much time and much labour, kept him almost as badly tied as he had been
before.
To be rich enough to set himself free; to be master of all his time, to be
able to devote himself entirely to his chosen work: this was his dream, his
constant preoccupation: it haunted him; it was a fixed idea.
Such was the principal motive of his inquiry into the properties of madder,
the colouring principle of which he succeeded in extracting directly, by a
perfectly simple method, which for a time very advantageously replaced the
extremely primitive methods of the old dyers, who used a simple extract of
madder; a crude preparation which necessitated long and expensive
manipulations. (4/23.)
He had been working at this for eight years when Victor Duruy, Minister of
Public Instruction and Grand Master of the University, came to surprise him
in his laboratory at Saint-Martial, in the full fever of research. Whatever
was Duruy's idea in entering into relations with him, it seems that from
their first meeting the two men were really taken with one another: there
were, between them, so many close affinities of taste and character. Duruy
found in Fabre a man of his own temper; for his, like Fabre's, was a modest
and simple nature. Both came of the people, and the principal motive of
each was the same ideal of work, emancipation, and progress.
A little later Duruy summoned the modest sage of Avignon to Paris, with
particular insistence; he was full of attentions and of forethought, and
made him there and then a chevalier of the Legion of Honour; a distinction
of which Fabre was far from being proud, and which he was careful never to
obtrude; but he nevertheless always thought of it with a certain
tenderness, as a beloved "relic" in memory of this illustrious friend.
On the following day the naturalist was conveyed to the Tuileries to be
presented to the Emperor. You must not suppose that he was in the least
disturbed at the idea of finding himself face to face with royalty. In the
presence of all these bedizened folk, in his coat of a cut which was
doubtless already superannuated, he cared little for the impression he
might produce. As good an observer of men as of beasts, he gazed quietly
about him; he exchanged a few words with the Emperor, who was "quite
simple," almost suppressed, his eyes always half-closed; he watched the
coming and going of "the chamberlains with short breeches and silver-
buckled shoes, great scarabaei, clad with café au lait wing-cases, moving
with a formal gait." Already he sighed regretfully; he was bored; he was on
the rack, and for nothing in the world would he have repeated the
experience. He did not even feel the least desire to visit the vaunted
collections of the Museum. He longed to return; to find himself once more
among his dear insects; to see his grey olive-trees, full of the frolicsome
cicadae, his wastes and commons, which smelt so sweet of thyme and cypress;
above all, to return to his furnace and retorts, in order to complete his
discovery as quickly as possible.
But others profited by his happy conceptions. Like the cicada, the Cigale
of his fable (See "Social Life in the Insect World," by Jean-Henri Fabre
(T. Fisher Unwin, 1912).), which makes a "honeyed reek" flow from--
"the bark
Tender and juicy, of the bough,"
on which it is quickly supplanted by
"Fly, drone, wasp, beetle too with hornèd head" (4/24.),
who
"Now lick their honey'd lips, and feed at leisure,"
so, after he had painfully laboured for twelve years in his well, he saw
others, more cunning than he, come to his perch, who by dint of "stamping
on his toe," succeeded in ousting him. Pending the appearance of artificial
alizarine, which was presently to turn the whole madder industry upside
down, these more sophisticated persons were able to benefit at leisure by
the ingenious processes discovered by Fabre, so that the practical result
of so much assiduity, so much patient research, was absolutely nil, and he
found himself as poor as ever.
So faded his dream: and, if we except his domestic griefs, this was
certainly the deepest and cruellest disappointment he had ever experienced.
Thenceforth he saw his salvation only in the writing of textbooks, which
were at last to throw open the door of freedom. Already he had set to work,
under the powerful stimulus of Duruy, preoccupied as he always was by his
incessant desire for freedom. The first rudiments of his "Agricultural
Chemistry," which sounded so fresh a note in the matter of teaching, had
given an instance and a measure of his capabilities.
But he did not seriously devote himself to this project until after the
industrial failure and the distressing miscarriage of his madder process;
and not until he had been previously assured of the co-operation of Charles
Delagrave, a young publisher, whose fortunate intervention contributed in
no small degree to his deliverance. Confident in his vast powers of work,
and divining his incomparable talent as POPULARIZER, Delagrave felt that he
could promise Fabre that he would never leave him without work; and this
promise was all the more comforting, in that the University, despite his
twenty-eight years of assiduous service, would not accord him the smallest
pension.
Victor Duruy was the great restorer of education in France, from elementary
and primary education, which should date, from his great ministry, the era
of its deliverance, to the secondary education which he himself created in
every part. He was also the real initiator of secular instruction in
France, and the Third Republic has done little but resume his work, develop
his ideas, and extend his programme. Finally, by instituting classes for
adults, the evening classes which enabled workmen, peasants, bourgeois, and
young women to fill the gaps in their education, he gave reality to the
generous and fruitful idea that it is possible for all to divide life into
two parts, one having for its object our material needs and our daily
bread, and the other consecrated to the spiritual life and the delights of
the Ideal.
At the same time he emancipated the young women of France, formerly under
the exclusive tutelage of the clergy, and opened to them for the first time
the golden gates of knowledge; an audacious innovation, and formidable
withal, for it shrewdly touched the interests of the Church, struck a blow
at her ever-increasing influence, and clashed with her consecrated
privileges and age-long prejudices. (4/25.)
At Avignon Fabre was instructed to give his personal services. He gave them
with all his heart; and it was then that he undertook, in the ancient Abbey
of Saint-Martial, those famous free lectures which have remained celebrated
in the memory of that generation. There, under the ancient Gothic vault,
among the pupils of the primary Normal College, an eager crowd of listeners
pressed to hear him; and among the most assiduous was Roumanille, the
friend of Mistral, he who so exquisitely wove into his harmonies "the
laughter of young maidens and the flowers of springtime." No one expounded
a fact better than Fabre; no one explained it so fully and so clearly. No
one could teach as he did, in a fashion so simple, so animated, so
picturesque, and by methods so original.
He was indeed convinced that even in early childhood it was possible for
both boys and girls to learn and to love many subjects which had hitherto
never been proposed; and in particular that Natural History which to him
was a book in which all the world might read, but that university methods
had reduced it to a tedious and useless study in which the letter "killed
the life."
He knew the secret of communicating his conviction, his profound faith, to
his hearers: that sacred fire which animated him, that passion for all the
creatures of nature.
These lectures took place in the evening, twice a week, alternately with
the municipal lectures, to which Fabre brought no less application and
ardour. In the intention of those who instituted them these latter were
above all to be practical and scientific, dealing with science applied to
agriculture, the arts, and industry.
But might he not also expect auditors of another quality, in love only with
the ideal, "who, without troubling about the possible applications of
scientific theory, desired above all to be initiated into the action of the
forces which rule nature, and thereby to open to their minds more wondrous
horizons"?
Such were the noble scruples which troubled his conscience, and which
appeared in the letter which he addressed to the administration of the
city, when he was entrusted by the latter with what he regarded as a lofty
and most important mission.
"...Is it to be understood that every purely scientific aspect, incapable
of immediate application, is to be rigorously banished from these lessons?
Is it to be understood that, confined to an impassable circle, the value of
every truth must be reckoned at so much per hundred, and that I must
silently pass over all that aims only at satisfying a laudable desire of
knowledge? No, gentlemen, for then these lectures would lack a very
essential thing: the spirit which gives life!" (4/26.)
Physically, according to the testimony of his contemporaries, he was
already as an admirable photograph represents him twenty years later: he
wore a large black felt hat; his face was shaven, the chin strong and
wilful, the eyes vigilant, deep-set and penetrating; he hardly changed, and
it was thus I saw him later, at a more advanced age.
The ancient Abbey of Saint-Martial, where these lectures were given, was
occupied also by the Requien Museum, of which Fabre had charge. It was here
that he one day met John Stuart Mill.
The celebrated philosopher and economist had just lost his wife: "the most
precious friendship of his life" was ended. (4/27.) It was only after long
waiting that he had been able to marry her. Subjected at an early age by a
father devoid of tenderness and formidably severe to the harshest of
disciplines, he had learned in childhood "what is usually learned only by a
man." Scarcely out of his long clothes, he was construing Herodotus and the
dialogues of Plato, and the whole of his dreary youth was spent in covering
the vast field of the moral and mathematical sciences. His heart, always
suppressed, never really expanded until he met Mrs. Harriett Taylor.
This was one of those privileged beings such as seem as a rule to exist
only in poetry and literature; a woman as beautiful as she was
astonishingly gifted with the rarest faculties; combining with the most
searching intelligence and the most persuasive eloquence so exquisite a
sensitiveness that she seemed often to divine events in advance.
Mill possessed her at last for a few years only, and he had resigned his
post in the offices of the East India Company to enjoy a studious retreat
in the enchanted atmosphere of southern Europe when suddenly at Avignon
Harriett Mill was carried off by a violent illness. (Mill retired in 1858,
when the government of India passed to the Crown. He had married Mrs. John
Taylor in 1851. [Tr.])
>From that time the philosopher's horizon was suddenly contracted to the
limit of those places whence had vanished the adored companion and the
beneficent genius who had been the sole charm of his entire existence.
Overwhelmed with grief, he acquired a small country house in one of the
least frequented parts of the suburbs of Avignon, close to the cemetery
where the beloved dead was laid to rest for ever. A silent alley of planes
and mulberry-trees led to the threshold, which was shaded by the delicate
foliage of a myrtle. All about he had planted a dense hedge of hawthorn,
cypress, and arborvitae, above which, from the vantage of a small terrace,
built, under his orders, at the level of the first floor, he could see, day
by day and at all hours, the white tomb of his wife, and a little ease his
grief.
Thus he cloistered himself, "living in memory," having no companion but the
daughter of his wife; trying to console himself by work, recapitulating his
life, the story of which he has told in his remarkable "Memoirs." (4/28.)
Fabre paid a few visits to this Thebaïd. A solitary such as Mill had become
could be attracted only by a man of his temper, in whom he found, if not an
affinity of nature, at least tastes like his own, and immense learning, as
great as his. For Mill also was versed in all the branches of human
knowledge: not only had he meditated on the high problems of history and
political economy, but he had also probed all branches of science:
mathematics, physics, and natural history. It was above all botany which
served them as a bond of union, and they were often seen to set forth on a
botanizing expedition through the countryside.
This friendship, which was not without profit for Fabre (4/29.), was still
more precious to Mill, who found, in the society of the naturalist, a
certain relief from his sorrow. The substance of their conversation was far
from being such as one might have imagined it. Mill was not highly sensible
to the festival of nature or the poetry of the fields. He was hardly
interested in botany, except from the somewhat abstract point of view of
classification and the systematic arrangement of species. Always
melancholy, cold, and distant, he spoke little; but Fabre felt under this
apparent sensibility a rigorous integrity of character, a great capacity
for devotion, and a rare goodness of heart.
So the two wandered across country, each thinking his own thoughts, and
each self-contained as though they were walking on parallel but distant
paths.
However, Fabre was not at the end of his troubles; and secret ill-feeling
began to surround him. The free lectures at Saint-Martial offended the
devout, angered the sectaries, and excited the intolerance of the pedants,
"whose feeble eyelids blink at the daylight," and he was far from
receiving, from his colleagues at the lycée, the sympathy and encouragement
which were, at this moment especially, so necessary to him. Some even went
so far as to denounce him publicly, and he was mentioned one day from the
height of the pulpit, to the indignation of the pupils of the upper Normal
College, as a man at once dangerous and subversive.
Some found it objectionable that this "irregular person, this man of
solitary study," should, by his work and by the magic of his teaching,
assume a position so unique and so disproportionate. Others regarded the
novelty of placing the sciences at the disposal of young girls as a heresy
and a scandal.
Their bickering, their cabals, their secret manoeuvres, were in the long
run to triumph. Duruy had just succumbed under the incessant attacks of the
clericals. In him Fabre lost a friend, a protector, and his only support.
Embittered, defeated, he was now only waiting for a pretext, an incident, a
mere nothing, to throw up everything.
One fine morning his landladies, devout and aged spinsters, made themselves
the instruments of the spite of his enemies, and abruptly gave him notice
to quit. he had to leave before the end of the month, for, simple and
confident as usual, he had obtained neither a lease nor the least written
agreement.
At this moment he was so poor that he had not even the money to meet the
expenses of his removal. The times were troublous: the great war had
commenced, and Paris being invested he could no longer obtain the small
earnings which his textbooks were beginning to yield him, and which had for
some time been increasing his modest earnings. On the other hand, having
always lived far from all society, he had not at Avignon a single relation
who could assist him, and he could neither obtain credit nor find any one
to extricate him from his embarrassments and save him from the extremity of
need with which he was threatened. He thought of Mill, and in this
difficult juncture it was Mill who saved him. The philosopher was then in
England; he was for the time being a member of the House of Commons, and he
used to vary his life at Avignon by a few weeks' sojourn in London. His
reply, however, was not long in coming: almost immediately he sent help; a
sum of some 120 pounds sterling, which fell like manna into the hands of
Fabre; and he did not, in exchange, demand the slightest security for this
advance.
Then, filled with disgust, the "irregular person" shook off the yoke and
retired to Orange. At first he took shelter where he could, anxious only to
avoid as far as possible any contact with his fellow-men; then, having
finally discovered a dwelling altogether in conformity with his tastes, he
moved to the outskirts of the city, and settled at the edge of the fields,
in the middle of a great meadow, in an isolated house, pleasant and
commodious, connected with the road to Camaret by a superb avenue of tall
and handsome plane-trees. This hermitage in some respects recalled that of
Mill in the outskirts of Avignon; and thence his eyes, embracing a vast
horizon, from the pediment of the ancient theatre to the hills of Sérignan,
could already distinguish the promised land.