I am back in the village, in my father's house. I am now seven years
old; and it is high time that I went to school. Nothing could have
turned out better: the master is my godfather. What shall I call the
room in which I was to become acquainted with the alphabet? It would
be difficult to find the exact word, because the room served for every
purpose. It was at once a school, a kitchen, a bedroom, a dining room
and, at times, a chicken house and a piggery. Palatial schools were not
dreamt of in those days; any wretched hovel was thought good enough.
A broad fixed ladder led to the floor above. Under the ladder stood
a big bed in a boarded recess. What was there upstairs? I never quite
knew. I would see the master sometimes bring down an armful of hay for
the ass, sometimes a basket of potatoes which the housewife emptied into
the pot in which the little porkers' food was cooked. It must have been
a loft of sorts, a storehouse of provisions for man and beast. Those two
apartments composed the whole building.
To return to the lower one, the schoolroom: a window faces south, the
only window in the house, a low, narrow window whose frame you can touch
at the same time with your head and both your shoulders. This sunny
aperture is the only lively spot in the dwelling, it overlooks the
greater part of the village, which straggles along the slopes of a
slanting valley. In the window recess is the master's little table.
The opposite wall contains a niche in which stands a gleaming copper
pail full of water. Here the parched children can relieve their thirst
when they please, with a cup left within their reach. At the top of the
niche are a few shelves bright with pewter plates, dishes and drinking
vessels, which are taken down from their sanctuary on great occasions
only.
More or less everywhere, at any spot which the light touches, are
crudely colored pictures, pasted on the walls. Here is Our Lady of the
Seven Dolours, the disconsolate Mother of God opening her blue cloak
to show her heart pierced with seven daggers. Between the sun and moon,
which stare at you with their great, round eyes, is the Eternal Father,
whose robe swells as though puffed out with the storm. To the right
of the window, in the embrasure, is the Wandering Jew. He wears a
three-cornered hat, a large, white leather apron, hobnailed shoes and a
stout stick. 'Never was such a bearded man seen before or after,' says
the legend that surrounds the picture. The draftsman has not forgotten
this detail: the old man's beard spreads in a snowy avalanche over the
apron and comes down to his knees. On the left is Genevieve of Brabant,
accompanied by the roe, with fierce Golo hiding in the bushes, sword in
hand. Above hangs The Death of Mr. Credit, slain by defaulters at the
door of his inn; and so on and so on, in every variety of subject, at
all the unoccupied spots of the four walls.
I was filled with admiration of this picture gallery, which held one's
eyes with its great patches of red, blue, green and yellow. The master,
however, had not set up his collection with a view to training our minds
and hearts. That was the last and least of the worthy man's ambitions.
An artist in his fashion, he had adorned his house according to his
taste; and we benefited by the scheme of decoration.
While the gallery of halfpenny pictures made me happy all the year
round, there was another entertainment which I found particularly
attractive in winter, in frosty weather, when the snow lay long on the
ground. Against the far wall stands the fireplace, as monumental in size
as at my grandmother's. Its arched cornice occupies the whole width of
the room, for the enormous redoubt fulfils more than one purpose. In the
middle is the hearth, but, on the right and left, are two breast-high
recesses, half wood and half stone. Each of them is a bed, with a
mattress stuffed with chaff of winnowed corn. Two sliding planks serve
as shutters and close the chest if the sleeper would be alone. This
dormitory, sheltered under the chimney mantel, supplies couches for the
favored ones of the house, the two boarders. They must lie snug in there
at night, with their shutters closed, when the north wind howls at the
mouth of the dark valley and sends the snow awhirl. The rest is occupied
by the hearth and its accessories: the three-legged stools; the salt
box, hanging against the wall to keep its contents dry; the heavy shovel
which it takes two hands to wield; lastly, the bellows similar to those
with which I used to blow out my cheeks in grandfather's house. They
consist of a mighty branch of pine, hollowed throughout its length with
a red-hot iron. By means of this channel, one's breath is applied, from
a convenient distance, to the spot which is to be revived. With a couple
of stones for supports, the master's bundle of sticks and our own logs
blaze and flicker, each of us having to bring a log of wood in the
morning, if he would share in the treat.
For that matter, the fire was not exactly lit for us, but, above all, to
warm a row of three pots in which simmered the pigs' food, a mixture
of potatoes and bran. That, despite the tribute of a log, was the real
object of the brushwood fire. The two boarders, on their stools, in
the best places, and we others sitting on our heels formed a semicircle
around those big cauldrons, full to the brim and giving off little jets
of steam, with puff-puff-puffing sounds. The bolder among us, when the
master's eyes were engaged elsewhere, would dig a knife into a well
cooked potato and add it to their bit of bread; for I must say that, if
we did little work in my school, at least we did a deal of eating. It
was the regular custom to crack a few nuts and nibble at a crust while
writing our page or setting out our rows of figures.
We, the smaller ones, in addition to the comfort of studying with our
mouths full, had every now and then two other delights, which were quite
as good as cracking nuts. The back door communicated with the yard where
the hen, surrounded by her brood of chicks, scratched at the dung hill,
while the little porkers, of whom there were a dozen, wallowed in their
stone trough. This door would open sometimes to let one of us out, a
privilege which we abused, for the sly ones among us were careful not to
close it on returning. Forthwith, the porkers would come running in,
one after the other, attracted by the smell of the boiled potatoes. My
bench, the one where the youngsters sat, stood against the wall, under
the copper pail to which we used to go for water when the nuts had made
us thirsty, and was right in the way of the pigs. Up they came trotting
and grunting, curling their little tails; they rubbed against our legs;
they poked their cold pink snouts into our hands in search of a scrap
of crust; they questioned us with their sharp little eyes to learn if we
happened to have a dry chestnut for them in our pockets. When they
had gone the round, some this way and some that, they went back to the
farmyard, driven away by a friendly flick of the master's handkerchief.
Next came the visit of the hen, bringing her velvet-coated chicks to see
us. All of us eagerly crumbled a little bread for our pretty visitors.
We vied with one another in calling them to us and tickling with our
fingers their soft and downy backs. No, there was certainly no lack of
distractions.
What could we learn in such a school as that! Let us first speak of the
young ones, of whom I was one. Each of us had, or rather was supposed
to have, in his hands a little penny book, the alphabet, printed on gray
paper. It began, on the cover, with a pigeon, or something like it. Next
came a cross, followed by the letters in their order. When we turned
over, our eyes encountered the terrible ba, be, bi, bo, bu, the
stumbling block of most of us. When we had mastered that formidable
page, we were considered to know how to read and were admitted among the
big ones. But, if the little book was to be of any use, the least that
was required was that the master should interest himself in us to some
extent and show us how to set about things. For this, the worthy man,
too much taken up with the big ones, had not the time. The famous
alphabet with the pigeon was thrust upon us only to give us the air of
scholars. We were to contemplate it on our bench, to decipher it with
the help of our next neighbor, in case he might know one or two of the
letters. Our contemplation came to nothing, being every moment disturbed
by a visit to the potatoes in the stew pots, a quarrel among playmates
about a marble, the grunting invasion of the porkers or the arrival of
the chicks. With the aid of these distractions, we would wait patiently
until it was time for us to go home. That was our most serious work.
The big ones used to write. They had the benefit of the small amount
of light in the room, by the narrow window where the Wandering Jew and
ruthless Golo faced each other, and of the large and only table with its
circle of seats. The school supplied nothing, not even a drop of ink;
every one had to come with a full set of utensils. The inkhorn of those
days, a relic of the ancient pen case of which Rabelais speaks, was a
long cardboard box divided into two stages. The upper compartment held
the pens, made of goose or turkey quills trimmed with a penknife; the
lower contained, in a tiny well, ink made of soot mixed with vinegar.
The master's great business was to mend the pens--a delicate work, not
without danger for inexperienced fingers--and then to trace at the head
of the white page a line of strokes, single letters or words, according
to the scholar's capabilities. When that is over, keep an eye on the
work of art which is coming to adorn the copy! With what undulating
movements of the wrist does the hand, resting on the little finger,
prepare and plan its flight! All at once, the hand starts off, flies,
whirls; and, lo and behold, under the line of writing is unfurled
a garland of circles, spirals and flourishes, framing a bird with
outspread wings, the whole, if you please, in red ink, the only kind
worthy of such a pen. Large and small, we stood awestruck in the
presence of these marvels. The family, in the evening, after supper,
would pass from hand to hand the masterpiece brought back from school:
'What a man!' was the comment. 'What a man, to draw you a Holy Ghost
with a stroke of the pen!'
What was read at my school? At most, in French, a few selections from
sacred history. Latin recurred oftener, to teach us to sing vespers
properly. The more advanced pupils tried to decipher manuscript, a deed
of sale, the hieroglyphics of some scrivener.
And history, geography? No one ever heard of them. What difference did
it make to us whether the earth was round or square! In either case, it
was just as hard to make it bring forth anything.
And grammar? The master troubled his head very little about that; and we
still less. We should have been greatly surprised by the novelty and the
forbidding look of such words in the grammatical jargon as substantive,
indicative and subjunctive. Accuracy of language, whether of speech
or writing, must be learnt by practice. And none of us was troubled
by scruples in this respect. What was the use of all these subtleties,
when, on coming out of school, a lad simply went back to his flock of
sheep!
And arithmetic? Yes, we did a little of this but not under that learned
name. We called it sums. To put down rows of figures, not too long,
add them and subtract them one from the other was more or less familiar
work. On Saturday evenings, to finish up the week, there was a general
orgy of sums. The top boy stood up and, in a loud voice, recited the
multiplication table up to twelve times. I say twelve times, for in
those days, because of our old duodecimal measures, it was the custom to
count as far as the twelve times table, instead of the ten times of the
metric system. When this recital was over, the whole class, the little
ones included, took it up in chorus, creating such an uproar that chicks
and porkers took to flight if they happened to be there. And this went
on to twelve times twelve, the first in the row starting the next table
and the whole class repeating it as loud as it could yell. Of all that
we were taught in school, the multiplication table was what we knew
best, for this noisy method ended by dinning the different numbers
into our ears. This does not mean that we became skilful reckoners. The
cleverest of us easily got muddled with the figures to be carried in a
multiplication sum. As for division, rare indeed were they who reached
such heights. In short, the moment a problem, however insignificant, had
to be solved, we had recourse to mental gymnastics much rather than to
the learned aid of arithmetic.
When all is said, our master was an excellent man who could have kept
school very well but for his lack of one thing; and that was time. He
devoted to us all the little leisure which his numerous functions
left him. And, first of all, he managed the property of an absentee
landowner, who only occasionally set foot in the village. He had under
his care an old castle with four towers, which had become so many pigeon
houses; he directed the getting in of the hay, the walnuts, the apples
and the oats. We used to help him during the summer, when the school,
which was well attended in winter, was almost deserted. All that
remained, because they were not yet big enough to work in the fields,
were a few children, including him who was one day to set down these
memorable facts. Lessons at that time were less dull. They were often
given on the hay or on the straw; oftener still, lesson time was spent
in cleaning out the dovecote or stamping on the snails that had sallied
in rainy weather from their fortresses, the tall box borders of the
garden belonging to the castle.
Our master was a barber. With his light hand, which was so clever at
beautifying our copies with curlicue birds, he shaved the notabilities
of the place: the mayor, the parish priest, the notary. Our master was a
bell ringer. A wedding or a christening interrupted the lessons: he had
to ring a peal. A gathering storm gave us a holiday: the great bell must
be tolled to ward off the lightning and the hail. Our master was a choir
singer. With his mighty voice, he filled the church when he led the
Magnificat at vespers. Our master wound up and regulated the village
clock. This was his proudest function. Giving a glance at the sun, to
ascertain the time more or less nearly, he would climb to the top of
the steeple, open a huge cage of rafters and find himself in a maze of
wheels and springs whereof the secret was known to him alone.
With such a school and such a master and such examples, what will become
of my embryo tastes, as yet so imperceptible? In that environment, they
seem bound to perish, stifled for ever. Yet no, the germ has life;
it works in my veins, never to leave them again. It finds nourishment
everywhere, down to the cover of my penny alphabet, embellished with
a crude picture of a pigeon which I study and contemplate much more
zealously than the A B C. Its round eye, with its circlet of dots, seems
to smile upon me. Its wing, of which I count the feathers one by one,
tells me of flights on high, among the beautiful clouds; it carries me
to the beeches raising their smooth trunks above a mossy carpet studded
with white mushrooms that look like eggs dropped by some vagrant hen; it
takes me to the snow-clad peaks where the birds leave the starry print
of their red feet. He is a fine fellow, my pigeon friend: he consoles
me for the woes hidden behind the cover of my book. Thanks to him, I sit
quietly on my bench and wait more or less till school is over.
School out of doors has other charms. When the master takes us to kill
the snails in the box borders, I do not always scrupulously fulfil my
office as an exterminator. My heel sometimes hesitates before coming
down upon the handful which I have gathered. They are so pretty! Just
think, there are yellow ones and pink, white ones and brown, all with
dark spiral streaks. I fill my pockets with the handsomest, so as to
feast my eyes on them at my leisure.
On hay making days in the master's field, I strike up an acquaintance
with the frog. Flayed and stuck at the end of a split stick, he serves
as bait to tempt the crayfish to come out of his retreat by the brook
side. On the alder trees I catch the Hoplia, the splendid scarab who
pales the azure of the heavens. I pick the narcissus and learn to
gather, with the tip of my tongue, the tiny drop of honey that lies
right at the bottom of the cleft corolla. I also learn that too long
indulgence in this feast brings a headache; but this discomfort in no
way impairs my admiration for the glorious white flower, which wears a
narrow red collar at the throat of its funnel.
When we go to beat the walnut trees, the barren grass plots provide me
with locusts spreading their wings, some into a blue fan, others into a
red. And thus the rustic school, even in the heart of winter, furnished
continuous food for my interest in things. There was no need for precept
and example: my passion for animals and plants made progress of itself.
What did not make progress was my acquaintance with my letters, greatly
neglected in favor of the pigeon. I was still at the same stage,
hopelessly behindhand with the intractable alphabet, when my father, by
a chance inspiration, brought me home from the town what was destined to
give me a start along the road of reading. Despite the not insignificant
part which it played in my intellectual awakening, the purchase was
by no means a ruinous one. It was a large print, price six farthings,
colored and divided into compartments in which animals of all sorts
taught the A B C by means of the first letters of their names.
Where should I keep the precious picture? As it happened, in the room
set apart for the children at home, there was a little window like the
one in the school, opening in the same way out of a sort of recess and
in the same way overlooking most of the village. One was on the right,
the other on the left of the castle with the pigeon house towers; both
afforded an equally good view of the heights of the slanting valley.
I was able to enjoy the school window only at rare intervals, when the
master left his little table; the other was at my disposal as often as I
liked. I spent long hours there, sitting on a little fixed window seat.
The view was magnificent. I could see the ends of the earth, that is
to say, the hills that blocked the horizon, all but a misty gap through
which the brook with the crayfish flowed under the alders and willows.
High up on the skyline, a few wind-battered oaks bristled on the ridges;
and beyond there lay nothing but the unknown, laden with mystery.
At the back of the hollow stood the church, with its three steeples and
its clock; and, a little higher, the village square, where a spring,
fashioned into a fountain, gurgled from one basin into another, under a
wide arched roof. I could hear from my window the chatter of the women
washing their clothes, the strokes of their beaters, the rasping of the
pots scoured with sand and vinegar. Sprinkled over the slopes are little
houses with their garden patches in terraces banked up by tottering
walls, which bulge under the thrust of the earth. Here and there are
very steep lanes, with the dents of the rock forming a natural pavement.
The mule, sure-footed though he be, would hesitate to enter these
dangerous passes with his load of branches.
Further on, beyond the village, half-way up the hills, stood the great
ever-so-old lime tree, the Tel, as we used to call it, whose sides,
hollowed out by the ages, were the favorite hiding places of us children
at play. On fair days, its immense, spreading foliage cast a wide shadow
over the herds of oxen and sheep. Those solemn days, which only came
once a year, brought me a few ideas from without: I learnt that the
world did not end with my amphitheater of hills. I saw the inn keeper's
wine arrive on mule back and in goat skin bottles. I hung about the
market place and watched the opening of jars full of stewed pears, the
setting out of baskets of grapes, an almost unknown fruit, the object
of eager covetousness. I stood and gazed in admiration at the roulette
board on which, for a sou, according to the spot at which its needle
stopped on a circular row of nails, you won a pink poodle made of barley
sugar, or a round jar of aniseed sweets, or, much oftener, nothing at
all. On a piece of canvas on the ground, rolls of printed calico with
red flowers, were displayed to tempt the girls. Close by rose a pile of
beechwood clogs, tops and boxwood flutes. Here the shepherds chose their
instruments, trying them by blowing a note or two. How new it all was
to me! What a lot of things there were to see in this world! Alas,
that wonderful time was of but short duration! At night, after a little
brawling at the inn, it was all over; and the village returned to
silence for a year.
But I must not linger over these memories of the dawn of life. We were
speaking of the memorable picture brought from town. Where shall I keep
it, to make the best use of it? Why, of course, it must be pasted on
the embrasure of my window. The recess, with its seat, shall be my study
cell; here I can feast my eyes by turns on the big lime tree and the
animals of my alphabet. And this was what I did.
And now, my precious picture, it is our turn, yours and mine. You began
with the sacred beast, the ass, whose name, with a big initial, taught
me the letter A. The boeuf, the ox, stood for B; the canard, the duck,
told me about C; the dindon, the turkey, gave me the letter D. And so
on with the rest. A few compartments, it is true, were lacking in
clearness. I had no friendly feeling for the hippopotamus, the kamichi,
or horned screamer, and the zebu, who aimed at making me say H, K and
Z. Those outlandish beasts, which failed to give the abstract letter the
support of a recognized reality, caused me to hesitate for a time over
their recalcitrant consonants. No matter: father came to my aid in
difficult cases; and I made such rapid progress that, in a few days,
I was able to turn in good earnest the pages of my little pigeon book,
hitherto so undecipherable. I was initiated; I knew how to spell. My
parents marveled. I can explain this unexpected progress today. Those
speaking pictures, which brought me amongst my friends the beasts, were
in harmony with my instincts. If the animal has not fulfilled all that
it promised in so far as I am concerned, I have at least to thank it for
teaching me to read. I should have succeeded by other means, I do not
doubt, but not so quickly nor so pleasantly. Animals forever!
Luck favored me a second time. As a reward for my prowess, I was
given La Fontaine's Fables, in a popular, cheap edition, crammed with
pictures, small, I admit, and very inaccurate, but still delightful.
Here were the crow, the fox, the wolf, the magpie, the frog, the rabbit,
the ass, the dog, the cat: all persons of my acquaintance. The glorious
book was immensely to my taste, with its skimpy illustrations on which
the animal walked and talked. As to understanding what it said, that
was another story! Never mind, my lad! Put together syllables that say
nothing to you as yet; they will speak to you later and La Fontaine will
always remain your friend.
I come to the time when I was ten years old and at Rodez College. My
functions as a serving boy in the chapel entitled me to free instruction
as a day boarder. There were four of us in white surplices and red
skull-caps and cassocks. I was the youngest of the party and did little
more than walk on. I counted as a unit; and that was about all, for I
was never certain when to ring the bell or move the missal. I was all
of a tremble when we gathered two on this side and two on that, with
genuflection's, in the middle of the sanctuary, to intone the Domine,
salvum fac regern at the end of mass. Let me make a confession:
tongue-tied with shyness, I used to leave it to the others.
Nevertheless, I was well thought of, for, in the school, I cut a good
figure in composition and translation. In that classical atmosphere,
there was talk of Procas, King of Alba, and of his two sons, Numitor and
Amulius. We heard of Cynoegirus, the strong jawed man, who, having
lost his two hands in battle, seized and held a Persian galley with
his teeth, and of Cadmus the Phoenician, who sowed a dragon's teeth as
though they were beans and gathered his harvest in the shape of a host
of armed men, who killed one another as they rose up from the ground.
The only one who survived the slaughter was one as tough as leather,
presumably the son of the big back grinder.
Had they talked to me about the man in the moon, I could not have been
more startled. I made up for it with my animals, which I was far from
forgetting amid this phantasmagoria of heroes and demigods. While
honoring the exploits of Cadmus and Cynoegirus, I hardly ever failed, on
Sundays and Thursdays [the weekly half-holiday in French schools], to go
and see if the cowslip or the yellow daffodil was making its appearance
in the meadows, if the Linnet was hatching on the juniper bushes, if the
Cockchafers were plopping down from the wind shaken poplars. Thus was
the sacred spark kept aglow, ever brighter than before.
By easy stages, I came to Virgil and was very much smitten with
Meliboeus, Corydon, Menalcas, Damoetas and the rest of them. The
scandals of the ancient shepherds fortunately passed unnoticed; and
within the frame in which the characters moved were exquisite details
concerning the bee, the cicada, the turtle dove, the crow, the nanny
goat and the golden broom. A veritable delight were these stories of
the fields, sung in sonorous verse; and the Latin poet left a lasting
impression on my classical recollections.
Then, suddenly, goodbye to my studies, goodbye to Tityrus and Menalcas.
Ill luck is swooping down on us, relentlessly. Hunger threatens us
at home. And now, boy, put your trust in God; run about and earn your
penn'orth of potatoes as best you can. Life is about to become a hideous
inferno. Let us pass quickly over this phase. Amid this lamentable
chaos, my love for the insect ought to have gone under. Not at all. It
would have survived the raft of the Medusa. I still remember a certain
pine cockchafer met for the first time. The plumes on her antennae, her
pretty pattern of white spots on a dark brown ground were as a ray of
sunshine in the gloomy wretchedness of the day.
To cut a long story short: good fortune, which never abandons the brave,
brought me to the primary normal school at Vaucluse where I was assured
food: dried chestnuts and chickpeas. The principal, a man of broad
views, soon came to trust his new assistant. He left me practically a
free hand, so long as I satisfied the school curriculum, which was very
modest in those days. Possessing a smattering of Latin and grammar, I
was a little ahead of my fellow pupils. I took advantage of this to
get some order into my vague knowledge of plants and animals. While a
dictation lesson was being corrected around me, with generous assistance
from the dictionary, I would examine, in the recesses of my desk, the
oleander's fruit, the snapdragon's seed vessel, the wasp's sting and the
ground beetle's wing-case.
With this foretaste of natural science, picked up haphazard and by
stealth, I left school more deeply in love than ever with insects and
flowers. And yet I had to give it all up. That wider education, which
would have to be my source of livelihood in the future, demanded this
imperiously. What was I to take in hand to raise me above the primary
school, whose staff could barely earn their bread in those days? Natural
history could not bring me anywhere. The educational system of the time
kept it at a distance, as unworthy of association with Latin and Greek.
Mathematics remained, with its very simple equipment: a blackboard, a
bit of chalk and a few books.
So I flung myself with might and main into conic sections and the
calculus: a hard battle, if ever there was one, without guides or
counselors, face to face for days on end with the abstruse problem which
my stubborn thinking at last stripped of its mysteries. Next came
the physical sciences, studied in the same manner, with an impossible
laboratory, the work of my own hands.
The reader can imagine the fate of my favorite branch of science in
this fierce struggle. At the faintest sign of revolt, I lectured myself
severely, lest I should let myself be seduced by some new grass, some
unknown Beetle. I did violence to my feelings. My natural history books
were sentenced to oblivion, relegated to the bottom of a trunk.
And so, in the end, I am sent to teach physics and chemistry at Ajaccio
College. This time, the temptation is too much for me. The sea, with its
wonders, the beach, whereon the tide casts such beautiful shells,
the maquis of myrtles, arbutus and mastic trees: all this paradise of
gorgeous nature has too much on its side in the struggle with the sine
and the cosine. I succumb. My leisure time is divided into two parts.
One, the larger, is allotted to mathematics, the foundation of my
academical future, as planned by myself; the other is spent, with much
misgiving, in botanizing and looking for the treasures of the sea. What
a country and what magnificent studies to be made, if, unobsessed by x
and y, I had devoted myself wholeheartedly to my inclinations!
We are the wisp of straw, the plaything of the winds. We think that we
are making for a goal deliberately chosen; destiny drives us towards
another. Mathematics, the exaggerated preoccupation of my youth, did
me hardly any service; and animals, which I avoided as much as ever I
could, are the consolation of my old age. Nevertheless, I bear no
grudge against the sine and the cosine, which I continue to hold in high
esteem. They cost me many a pallid hour at one time, but they always
afforded me some first rate entertainment: they still do so, when my
head lies tossing sleeplessly on its pillow.
Meanwhile, Ajaccio received the visit of a famous Avignon botanist,
Requien by name, who, with a box crammed with paper under his arm, had
long been botanizing all over Corsica, pressing and drying specimens
and distributing them to his friends. We soon became acquainted. I
accompanied him in my free time on his explorations and never did the
master have a more attentive disciple. To tell the truth, Requien was
not a man of learning so much as an enthusiastic collector. Very few
would have felt capable of competing with him when it came to giving the
name or the geographical distribution of a plant. A blade of grass, a
pad of moss, a scab of lichen, a thread of seaweed: he knew them all.
The scientific name flashed across his mind at once. What an unerring
memory, what a genius for classification amid the enormous mass of
things observed! I stood aghast at it. I owe much to Requien in the
domain of botany. Had death spared him longer, I should doubtless
have owed more to him, for his was a generous heart, ever open to the
troubles of novices.
In the following year, I met Moquin-Tandon, with whom, thanks
to Requien, I had already exchanged a few letters on botany. The
illustrious Toulouse professor came to study on the spot the flora which
he proposed to describe systematically. When he arrived, all the hotel
bedrooms were reserved for the members of the general council which had
been summoned; and I offered him board and lodging: a shakedown in a
room overlooking the sea; fare consisting of lampreys, turbot and sea
urchins: common enough dishes in that land of Cockayne, but possessing
no small attraction for the naturalist, because of their novelty. My
cordial proposal tempted him; he yielded to my blandishments; and there
we were for a fortnight chatting at table de omni re scibili after the
botanical excursion was over.
With Moquin-Tandon, new vistas opened before me. Here it was no longer
the case of a nomenclator with an infallible memory: he was a naturalist
with far-reaching ideas, a philosopher who soared above petty details to
comprehensive views of life, a writer, a poet who knew how to clothe the
naked truth in the magic mantle of the glowing word. Never again shall
I sit at an intellectual feast like that: 'Leave your mathematics,' he
said. 'No one will take the least interest in your formula. Get to the
beast, the plant; and, if, as I believe, the fever burns in your veins,
you will find men to listen to you.'
We made an expedition to the center of the island, to Monte Renoso,
with which I was already familiar. I made the scientist pick the hoary
everlasting (Helichrysum frigidum), which makes a wonderful patch of
silver; the many-headed thrift, or mouflon grass (Armeria multiceps),
which the Corsicans call erba muorone; the downy marguerite
(Leucanthemum tomosum), which, clad in wadding, shivers amid the
snows; and many other rarities dear to the botanist. Moquin-Tandon was
jubilant. I, on my side, was much more attracted and overcome by his
words and his enthusiasm than by the hoary everlasting. When we came
down from the cold mountaintop, my mind was made up: mathematics would
be abandoned.
On the day before his departure, he said to me: 'You interest yourself
in shells. That is something, but it is not enough. You must look into
the animal itself. I will show you how it's done.'
And, taking a sharp pair of scissors from the family work-basket and
a couple of needles stuck into a bit of vine shoot which served as a
makeshift handle, he showed me the anatomy of a snail in a soup plate
filled with water. Gradually he explained and sketched the organs which
he spread before my eyes. This was the only, never-to-be-forgotten
lesson in natural history that I ever received in my life.
It is time to conclude. I was cross-examining myself, being unable to
cross-examine the silent Beetle. As far as it is possible to read within
myself, I answer as follows: 'From early childhood, from the moment
of my first mental awakening, I have felt drawn towards the things of
nature, or, to return to our catchword, I have the gift, the bump of
observation.'
After the details which I have already given about my ancestors, it
would be ridiculous to look to heredity for an explanation of the fact.
Nor would any one venture to suggest the words or example of my masters.
Of scientific education, the fruit of college training, I had none
whatever. I never set foot in a lecture hall except to undergo the
ordeal of examinations. Without masters, without guides, often without
books, in spite of poverty, that terrible extinguisher, I went ahead,
persisted, facing my difficulties, until the indomitable bump ended by
shedding its scanty contents. Yes, they were very scanty, yet possibly
of some value, if circumstances had come to their assistance. I was a
born animalist. Why and how? No reply.
We thus have, all of us, in different directions and in a greater
or lesser degree, characteristics that brand us with a special mark,
characteristics of an unfathomable origin. They exist because they
exist; and that is all that any one can say. The gift is not handed
down: the man of talent has a fool for a son. Nor is it acquired; but it
is improved by practice. He who has not the germ of it in his veins will
never possess it, in spite of all the pains of a hothouse education.
That to which we give the name of instinct when speaking of animals is
something similar to genius. It is, in both cases, a peak that rises
above the ordinary level. But instinct is handed down, unchanged and
undiminished, throughout the sequence of a species; it is permanent
and general and in this it differs greatly from genius, which is not
transmissible and changes in different cases. Instinct is the inviolable
heritage of the family and falls to one and all, without distinction.
Here the difference ends. Independent of similarity of structure, it
breaks out like genius, here or elsewhere, for no perceptible reason.
Nothing causes it to be foreseen, nothing in the organization explains
it. If cross-examined on this point, the Dung beetles and the rest, each
with his own peculiar talent, would answer, were we able to understand
them: 'Instinct is the animal's genius.'