But it will doubtless be long before a new Fabre will resume, with the same
heroic ardour, the life of solitary labour, varied only by a few austere
recreations.
Rising at six o'clock, he would first of all pace the tiles of his kitchen,
breakfast in hand; so imperious in him was the need of action, if his mind
was to work successfully, that even at this moment of morning meditation
his body must already be in movement. Then, after many turns among the
bushes of the enclosure, all irised with drops of dew which were already
evaporating, he went straight to his cell: that is, to the silence of his
laboratory.
There, in unsociable silence, invisible to all, he worked hard and steadily
until noon; pursuing an observation or carrying out some experiment, or
recording what he saw or what he had seen the day before, or re-drafting
his records in their final form.
How many who have come hither to knock upon the door in these morning
hours, or to ring at the little gate, silent as the tomb, which gives upon
the private path frequented only by foot-passengers on their way to the
fields, have undertaken a fruitless journey! But without such discipline
would it have been possible to accomplish such a task as his?
At last he would leave his workroom; jaded, exhausted by the excessive
intensity of his work, "face pale and features drawn." (15/1.)
Now he is "at leisure: the half-day is over" (15/2.); and he can satisfy
his immense need not of repose, but of relaxation and distraction in less
severe occupations; for he is never at any time nor anywhere inactive;
incessantly making notes, with little stumps of pencil which he carries
about in his pockets, and on the first scrap of paper that comes to hand,
of all that passes through his mind. Those eternal afternoons, which
usually, in the depth of the French provinces, prove so dull and wearisome,
seem short enough to him. Now he will halt before his plants, now stoop to
the ground, the better to observe a passing insect; always in search of
some fresh subject of study; or now bending over his microscope. (15/3.)
Then he undertakes, for his later-born children at Sérignan, the duties
which he formerly performed for the elder family at Orange: he teaches them
himself; he has much to do with them, for their sake and for his own as
well, for he is jealous of possessing them, and he regrets parting with
them. They too have their tasks arranged in advance.
They are his assistants, his appointed collaborators, who keep and relieve
guard, undertaking, in his absence, some observation already in hand, so
that no detail may be lost, no incident of the story that unrolls itself
sometimes with exasperating slowness beneath the bell-covers of the
laboratory or on some bush in the garden. He inspires the whole household
with the fire of his own genius, and all those about him are almost as
interested as he.
At home, in the house, always wearing his eternal felt hat, and absorbed in
meditation, he speaks little, holding that every word should have its
object, and only employing a term when he has tested its weight and
meaning. Silence at mealtimes again is a rule that no one of his household
would infringe. But he unbends his brow when he receives a friend at his
hospitable table, where but lately his smiling wife would sit, full of
little attentions for him. (15/4.)
Frugal in all respects, he barely touches the dishes before him; avoiding
all meats, and saving himself wholly for the fruits; for is not man
naturally frugivorous, by his teeth, his stomach, and his bowels? Certain
dishes repel him, for reasons of sentiment rather than through any real
disgust; such as paté de foie gras, which reminds him too forcibly of the
so cruelly tortured goose; such cruelty is too high a price to pay for a
mere greasy mouthful. (15/5.) On the other hand, he drinks wine with
pleasure, the harsh, rough "wine of the country" of the plains of Sérignan.
He is also well able to appreciate good things and appetizing cookery; no
one ever had a finer palate; but he is happiest in seeing others appreciate
the pleasures of the table. Witness that breakfast worthy of Gargantua,
which he himself organized in honour of his guests, whom he had invited to
an excursion over the Ventoux Alp; where he seems expressly to have
commanded "that all should come in shoals." What a tinkling of bottles,
what piles of bread! There are green olives "flowing with brine," black
olives "seasoned with oil," sausages of Arles "with rosy flesh, marbled
with cubes of fat and whole peppercorns," legs of mutton stuffed with
garlic "to dull the keen edge of hunger"; chickens "to amuse the molars";
melons of Cavaillon too, with white pulp, not forgetting those with orange
pulp, and to crown the feast those little cheeses, so delightfully
flavoured, peculiar to Mont Ventoux, "spiced with mountain herbs," which
melt in the mouth. (15/6.)
But his greatest pleasure is his pipe; a briar, which in absence of mind he
is always allowing to go out, and always relighting.
Respectful of all traditions, he has kept up the observance of old customs;
no Christmas Eve has ever been passed under the roof of his Harmas without
the consecrated meats upon the table; the heart of celery, the nougat of
almonds, the dish of snails, and the savoury-smelling turkey. Then, stuck
into the Christmas bread (15/7.), the sprigs of holly, the verbouisset, the
sacred bush whose little starry flowers and coral berries, growing amid
evergreen leaves, affirm the eternal rebirth of indestructible nature.
At Sérignan Fabre is little known and little appreciated. To tell the
truth, folk regard him as eccentric; they have often surprised him in the
country lying on his stomach in the middle of a field, or kneeling on the
ground, a magnifying glass in hand, observing a fly or some one of those
insignificant creatures in which no sane person would deign to be
interested.
How should they know him, since he never goes into the village? When he did
once venture thither to visit his friend Charrasse, the schoolmaster, his
appearance was an event of which every one had something to say, so greatly
did it astonish the inhabitants. (15/8.)
Yet he never hesitates to place his knowledge at the service of all, and
welcomes with courtesy the rare pilgrims in whom a genuine regard is
visible, although he is always careful never to make them feel his own
superiority; but he very quickly dismisses, sometimes a trifle hastily,
those who are merely indiscreet or importunate; pedantic and ignorant
persons he judges instantaneously with his piercing eyes; with such people
he cannot emerge from his slightly gloomy reserve; he shuts himself up like
the snail, which, annoyed by some displeasing object, retires into its
shell, and remains silent in their presence.
Professors come to consult him: asking his advice as to their programmes of
instruction, or begging him to resolve some difficult problem or decide
some especially vexed question; and his explanations are so simple, so
clear, so logical that they are astonished at their own lack of
comprehension and their embarrassment. (15/9.)
But there are few who venture within the walls of that enclosure, which
seems to shut out all the temptations of the outer world; the only intimate
visitors to the Harmas are the village schoolmaster--first Laurent, then
Louis Charrasse (15/10.), and later Jullian--and a blind man, Marius.
This latter lost his sight at the age of twenty. Then, to earn a living, he
began to make and repair chairs, and in his misfortune, although blind and
extremely poor, he kept a calm and contented mind.
Fabre had discovered the sage and the blind man on his arrival at Sérignan,
and also Favier (15/11.), "that other native, whose jovial spirit was so
prompt to respond, and who helped to dig up the Harmas; to set up the
planks and tiles of the little kitchen-garden; a rude task, since this
scrap of uncultivated ground was then but a terrible desert of pebbles." To
Favier fell the care of the flowers, for the new owner was a great lover of
flowers. Potted plants, sometimes of rare species, were already, as to-day,
crowded in rows upon the terrace before the house, where all the summer
they formed a sort of vestibule in the open air, on either side of the
entrance; and these Fabre never ceased to watch over with constant and
meticulous care. Both spoke the same language, and the words they exchanged
were born of a like philosophy; for Favier also loved nature in his own
way, and at heart was an artist; and when, after the day's work, sitting
"on the high stone of the kitchen hearth, where round logs of green oak
were blazing," he would evoke, in his picturesque and figurative language,
the memories of an old campaigner, he charmed all the household and the
evening seemed to pass with strange rapidity.
When this precious servant and boon companion had disappeared, after two
years of digging, sowing, weeding, and hoeing, all was ready; the frame was
completed and the work could be commenced. It was then that Marius became
the master's appointed collaborator, and it is he who now constructs his
apparatus, his experimental cages; stuffs his birds, helps to ransack the
soil, and shades him with an umbrella while he watches under the burning
sun. Marius cannot see, but so intimate is his communion with his master,
so keen his enthusiasm for all that Fabre does, that he follows in his
mind's eye, and as though he could actually see them, all the doings at
which he assists, and whose inward reflection lights up his wondering
countenance.
Marius was not only rich in feeling and the gift of inner vision; he had
also a marvellously correct ear. He was a member of the "Fanfare" of
Sérignan, in which he played the big drum, and there was no one like him
for keeping perfect time and for bringing out the clash of the cymbals.
Charrasse was no less fervent a disciple; he worshipped science and all
beautiful things; and he could even conceive a noble passion for his
exhausting trade of school-teaching.
Like Marius, he ate "a bitter bread"; and Fabre would get on with them all
the better in that they, like himself, had lived a difficult life. "Man is
like the medlar," he liked to tell them; "he is worth nothing until he has
ripened a long time in the attic, on the straw."
"L'homme est comme la nèfle, il n'est rien qui vaille
S'il n'a mûri longtemps, au grenier, sur la paille."
These humble companions afforded him the simple conversation which he likes
so well; so natural, and so full of sympathy and common sense. They
customarily spent Thursday and Sunday afternoons at the Harmas; but these
beloved disciples might call at any hour; the master always welcomed them,
even in the morning, even when he was entirely absorbed in his work and
could not bear any one about him. They were his circle, his academy; he
would read them the last chapter written in the morning; he shared his
latest discoveries with them; he did not fear to ask advice of their
"fertile ignorance." (15/12.)
Charrasse was a "Félibre," versed in all the secrets of the Provençal
idiom, of which he knew all the popular terms, the typical expressions and
turns of speech; and Fabre loved to consult him, to read some charming
verses which he had just discovered, or to recite some delightful rustic
poem with which he had just been inspired; for in such occupations he found
one of his favourite relaxations, giving free vent to his fancy, a loose
rein to the poet that dwells within him. These poems the piety of his
brother has preserved in the collection entitled "Oubreto." It is at such a
moment that one should see his black eyes, full of fire; his power of
mimicry and expression, his impassioned features, lit up by inspiration,
truly idealized, almost transfigured, are at such times a thing to be
remembered.
Sometimes, again, in the shadow of the planes, on summer afternoons, when
the cigales were falling silent; or in the winter, before the blazing
fireplace, in that dining-room on the ground floor in which he welcomed his
visitors; when out of doors the mistral was roaring and raging, or the rain
clattering on the panes, the little circle was enlarged by certain new-
comers, his nephews, nieces, a few intimates, of whom, a little later, I
myself was often one. At such times his humour and imagination were given
full play, and it was truly a rare pleasure to sit there, sipping a glass
of mulled wine, during those delightful and earnest hours; to taste the
charm of his smiling philosophy, his picturesque conversation, full of
exact ideas, all the more profound in that they were founded on experience
and pointed or adorned by proverbs, adages, and anecdotes. Thanks to the
daily reading of the "Temps," which one of his friends regularly sends him,
Fabre is in touch with all the ideas of the day, and expresses his judgment
of them; for example, he does not conceal his scepticism with regard to
certain modern inventions, such as the aeroplane, whose novelty rather
disturbs his mind, and whose practical bearing seems to him to be on the
whole somewhat limited.
Thus even the most recent incidents find their way into the solitude of the
Harmas and help to sustain the conversation.
"The first time we resume our Sérignan evenings," he wrote to his nephew on
the morrow of one of these intimate gatherings, "we will have a little chat
about your Justinian, whom the recent drama of "Théodora" has just made the
fashion. Do you know the history of that terrible hussy and her stupid
husband? Perhaps not entirely; it is a treat I am keeping for you."
(15/13.)
The only subject which is hardly ever mentioned during these evenings at
Sérignan is politics, although Fabre, strange as it may seem, was one year
appointed to sit on the municipal council.
The son of peasants, who has emerged from the people yet has always
remained a peasant, has too keen a sense of injustice not to be a democrat;
and how many young men has he not taught to emancipate themselves by
knowledge? But above all he is proud of being a Frenchman; his mind, so
lucid, so logical, which has never gone abroad in search of its own
inspirations, and has never been influenced by any but those old French
masters, François Dufour and Réaumur, and the old French classics, has
always felt an instinctive repugnance, which it has never been able to
overcome, for all those ideas which some are surreptitiously seeking to put
forward in our midst in favour of some foreign trade-mark.
Although his visit to the court of Napoleon III left him with a rather
sympathetic idea of the Emperor, whose gentle, dreamy appearance he still
likes to recall, he detested the Empire and the "brigand's trick" which
established it.
On the day of the proclamation of the Republic he was seen in the streets
of Avignon in company with some of his pupils. He was agreeably surprised
at the turn events had taken, and delighted by the unforeseen result of the
war.
A spirit as proud and independent as his was naturally the enemy of any
species of servitude. State socialism of the equalitarian and communistic
kind was to him no less horrifying. Was not Nature at hand, always to
remind him of her eternal lessons?
"Equality, a magnificent political label, but scarcely more! Where is it,
this equality? In our societies shall we find even two persons exactly
equal in vigour, health, intelligence, capacity for work, foresight, and so
many other gifts which are the great factors of prosperity?...A single note
does not make a harmony: we must have dissimilar notes; discords even,
which, by their harshness, give value to the concords; human societies are
harmonious only thus, by the concourse of dissimilarities." (15/14.)
And what a puerile Utopia, what a disappointing illusion is that of
communism! Let us see under what conditions, at the price of what
sacrifices, nature here and there realizes it.
Among the bees "twenty thousand renounce maternity and devote themselves to
celibacy to raise the prodigious family of a single mother."
Among the ants, the wasps, the termites "thousands and thousands remain
incomplete and become humble auxiliaries of a few who are sexually gifted."
Would you by chance reduce man to the life of the Processional
caterpillars, content to nibble the pine-needles among which they live, and
which, satisfied to march continually along the same tracks, find within
reach an abundant, easy, and idle subsistence? All have the same size, the
same strength, the same aptitudes. No initiative. "What one does the others
do, with equal zeal, neither better nor worse." On the other hand, there is
"no sex, no love." And what would be a society in which there was no work
done for pleasure and from which love and the family were banished? What
would be the effect upon its progress, its welfare, its happiness? Would
not all that make the charm of life disappear for good? However imperfect
our present society may be, however mysterious its destinies, it is not in
socialism that Fabre foresees the perfection of future humanity, for to him
the true humanity does not as yet exist; it is making its way, it is slowly
progressing, and in this evolution he wishes with all his heart to believe.
Modern humanity is as yet only a shapeless grimacing caricature, and its
life is like a play written by madmen and played by drunken actors;
according to those profound words of the great poet, with which his mind is
in some sort imbued; which he often repeats, and which he has transcribed
at the head of one of his last records as an epigraph and a constant
reminder.
And you who groan over the distressing problem of depopulation, lend an ear
to the lesson of the Copris, "which trebles its customary batch of
offspring in times of abundance, and in times of dearth imitates the
artisan of the city who has only just enough to live on, or the bourgeois,
whose numerous wants are more and more costly to satisfy, limiting the
number of its offspring lest they should go in want, often reducing the
number of its children to a single one." (15/15.)
Instead of running after so many false appearances and false pleasures,
learn to return to simpler tastes, to more rustic manners; free yourselves
from a mass of factitious needs; steep yourself anew in the antique
sobriety, whose desires were sager; return to the fields, the source of
abundance, and the earth, the eternal foster-mother!
And in this appeal to return to nature, which perhaps since the time of
Rousseau has never been worded so eloquently, Fabre has in view if not the
strong, the predestined, who are called elsewhere, and who are actuated by
the sense of great tasks to be performed, at least all those of rural
origin, all those for whom the love of the family, the daily task, and a
peaceful heart are really the great things of life, the things that count,
the things that suffice.
He himself, although he was one of the strong, did not care to break any of
the ties that bound him to his origins. Like the Osmia, "which retains a
tenacious memory of its home," the beloved village of his childhood has
never been effaced from his memory, and for a long time the desire to leave
his bones there haunted him. His mind often returned to it; he thought that
there, better than anywhere else, he would find peace; that it would please
him to wander among the rocks, the trees, the stones which he had so loved,
in the old days, and that all these things would recognize him too.
One day, however, when I was begging him to make up his mind on this point-
-it was one of those peaceful evenings which are troubled under the plane-
trees only by the tinkling of the fountain--he confided to me that his
beloved Sérignan had at last, in his secret preferences, obliterated the
old longing. As he advanced in life, in fact, although he never forgot his
rude natal countryside, he felt that new links were daily binding him more
closely to those heaths and mountains on which his heart had been so often
thrilled with the intense joy of discovery, and that it was indeed in this
soil, to him so full of delight, amid its beautiful hymenoptera and
scarabaei, that he would wish to be buried.
Fabre is by no means the misanthrope that some have chosen to think him. He
delights in the society of women, and knows how to welcome them gracefully;
and more than any one he is sensitive to the pleasant and stimulating
impressions produced by the conversation of cultivated people.
He is no less fond of the arts, provided he finds in them a sincere
interpretation of life. This is why the theatre, with its false values, its
tinsel and affectation, has to him seemed a gross deformation of the
reality, ever since the day when at Ajaccio he attended a performance of
"Norma," in which the moon was represented by a round transparent disc, lit
from behind by a lantern hanging at the end of a string, whose oscillation
revealed by turns first the luminary and then the transparency. This was
enough to disgust him for ever with the theatre and the opera, whose
motionless choruses, contrasting with the sometimes frantic movement of the
music, left him with a memory of an insane and illogical performance.
Nevertheless, he adored music, of which he knew something, having learned
it, as he learned his drawing, without a master; but he preferred the naive
songs of the country, or the melody of a flute; to the most scholarly
concert-music. (15/16.) In the intimacy of the modest chamber which serves
as the family salon, with its few shabby and old-fashioned pieces of
furniture, he plays on an indifferent harmonium little airs of his own
composition, the subjects of which were at first suggested by his own
poetry. Like Rollinat, Fabre rightly considers that music should complete,
accentuate, and release that which poetry has perforce left incomplete or
indefinite. This is why he makes the bise laugh and sing and roar; why he
imitates the organ-tones of the wind in the pines, and seeks to reproduce
some of the innumerable rhythms of nature; the frenzy of the lizard, the
wriggling of the stickle-back, the jumping gait of the frog, the shrill hum
of the mosquito, the complaint of the cricket, the moving of the Scarabaei,
and the flight of the Libellulae.
Too busy by day to find time for much reading, it was at night that he
would shut himself up. Retiring early to his little chamber, with bare
walls and bare tile floor, and a window opening to the garden, he would lie
on his low bed, with curtains of green serge, and would often read far into
the night.
This philosopher, to whose books the philosophers of the future will resort
for new theories and original ideas, refuses to have any commerce with
other philosophers, disdaining their systems and preferring to go straight
to the facts. Even when he took up Darwin's "Origin of Species" he did
little more than open the book; so wearisome and uninteresting, he told me,
did he find the reading of it. On the other hand, he is full of the ancient
philosophers, and as he did not read them very extensively in his youth and
middle age, he has returned to them finally with love and predilection for
"these good old books." Unlike many thinkers of the day, he is persuaded
that we cannot with impunity dispense with classic studies; and he rightly
considers that science and the humanities are not rivals, but allies. Above
all he has a particular affection for Virgil; one may say that he is
steeped in his poetry; and he knows La Fontaine by heart. The style of the
latter is curiously like his own, and Fabre owns himself as his disciple;
certainly La Fontaine's is the most active influence which his work
reveals. He has a profound acquaintance with Rabelais, who was always his
"friend" and who constantly crops up in his conversation and his chance
remarks.
After these his intellectual foster-parents have been Courrier, Toussenel,
of whom he is passionately fond, and Rousseau, of whom he cares for little
but his "Lettres sur la botanique," full of such fresh impressions, in
which we feel not the literary man but the "craftsman"; he also cherishes
Michelet; so full of intuition, although he never handled actual things and
knew nothing of the practice of the sciences; not learned, but overflowing
with love; his magic pen, his powers of evocation, and his deft brushwork
delight Fabre, despite the poverty and insufficiency of his fundamental
facts (15/17.); sometimes Michelet had been his inspiration. The two do
really resemble one another; Michelet was no less fitted than Fabre to play
the confidant to Nature, and his heart was of the same mettle.
Since I have spoken of his favourites, let me also speak of his dislikes;
Racine, whom he cannot bear; Molière, whom he does not really like; Buffon,
whom he frankly detests for his too fluent prose, his ostentatious style,
and his vain rhetoric. The only naturalist whom he might really have
delighted in, had he possessed his works and been able to read them at
leisure, is Audubon, the enthusiastic painter of the birds of America. In
him he felt the presence of a mind and a temper almost identical with his
own.