THE LAST HEIGHTS [197] (1910–1915)
I
In the year 1910 Fame flung the gate of the harmas wide open. Coming
late, she seemed anxious to repair her long neglect.
The process of reparation continued. It grew fuller, more marked, and
burst into a splendid apotheosis during the following years.
Scientists as a class had accused Fabre of mixing up Horace and Virgil
with his entomological adventures. He was despised for quoting these
authors; he was placed upon the Index for introducing grace and passion
into studies which officially were dry and cold as statistics. But in
joining the Académie Française on the occasion of the jubilee of 1910,
the Académie des Sciences gloriously avenged this unjust and
Pharisaical disdain.
But there were yet some of “time’s revenges” to be taken for the
injustice which Fabre had suffered.
We have spoken of his early struggles in the University, of his career,
first hampered, then shattered, of the jealousies and persecutions
evoked by this “irregular” self-taught pioneer; no doubt the work of a
triumphant clique, which eventually drove him from the house and
slammed the door. This was, as the reader may remember, on the occasion
of his lecture to young girls at Saint-Martial.
But now, on the 23rd of April 1911, a fresh invasion of young girls,
almost all pupils of the University, burst into the harmas. [198] And
what had they to say? That they came from Paris to visit the glories of
Provence, and that next to Mistral they had wished to see Fabre, after
the “emperor of poetry,” the “king of science,” and they made it clear
that it was not only to the scientist, but still more to the pioneer,
the initiator—or why not say, with them, to the most illustrious of
“cronies” [199]—that the girl “cronies,” as they called one another in
their group, had come to present their heart-felt homage. Who to-day
would dare to contest their right to become his pupils, to seek with
him “the freshest honey and the most poetical observations of the
insects that people the boughs and the flowers,” to enter with him into
the secret of all these little lives, “which are, like ourselves,” they
said, “creatures of the good God”?
And serious personages [200] from the precincts of the Académie and the
Université de France lent voice and gesture to the ingenuous utterance
of radiant youth, which delightfully made amends for the past.
There was another official authority, the highest of all, to which
Fabre had not much reason to be grateful. Long and brilliant services
in the cause of public instruction, scientific works of the highest
order, need of leisure and resources for his investigations, family
responsibilities, and the struggle for life—what claims did not these
represent to distinction and to the generosity of the public
authorities! But what part or lot had he in these in reality? One might
almost say none. One day, as though by chance, the perspicacity of a
Minister of the Empire had all but rescued him from poverty and
oblivion. A mere accident without sequence: for it was immediately
followed by the total collapse of the Empire and the institution of the
Republic. Fabre was not even among the number of the pensioned!
It needed the trumpet-blast of the jubilee (1910) to remind the
authorities to complete the beau geste of Victor Duruy, and after forty
years to replace the rosette of the Legion of the Cross. And it took
the loud outcry of indignation uttered by Mistral and the strong
feeling aroused by the report, which was echoed by the whole Press, of
their involuntary debt to the ex-professor, to obtain for the
nonagenarian a pension of two thousand francs (£80) a year, which was
nearly fifty years in arrears!
The reparation was far from adequate; but it could not be made by means
of money.
“Come at once, or I will have my gendarmes bring you.” In summoning him
thus to the Court in order to see and decorate this fine but timid
genius, the Emperor, in 1869, had performed a generous action. The
President of the Republic did still better, when, in 1913, in the
course of his tour through Provence, he sought to honour by his visit
him who had so greatly honoured his mother-country and his native and
adopted provinces.
Fabre, who was then in his ninetieth year, and could no longer stand
upright, awaited M. Poincaré sitting in a chair before the threshold of
his house, surrounded by his family; on his right hand stood the Sister
who was watching over his welfare.
A week before the President’s visit, I went to Sérignan to see my
distinguished relative and to bless the marriage of his son Paul Henri.
In the familiar intimacy of this family celebration he told me, as a
piece of good news: “It is possible that I shall soon receive a visit
from Monseigneur the Archbishop of Avignon.” He said this with a marked
satisfaction which was very unlike his usual detachment.
I understood at once that his mind was harking back to the evil days of
1870 and contrasting them with the present. What did not happen in that
disastrous year? Victor Duruy had just instituted courses of lectures
for adults in order to make up for the deficiencies of popular
education. Young girls were especially invited to these lectures. On
the pretext of opening the golden doors of science to them it was
hoped—no mystery has been made of the matter since—to emancipate them
from the tutelage of the clergy, [201] to remove them from, or to
dispute, the influence of the Church. The scientist, enamoured of the
beauty of natural history, saw in this venture merely an opportunity
for diffusing the knowledge and appreciation of his science among the
people. Accordingly he opened a course of evening lectures in the old
Abbey of Saint-Martial. And in the crowd that flocked eagerly to hear
him beneath the vaulted roof of the old disaffected church were squads
of young girls, more numerous at every lecture, enchanted by the magic
of his teaching, by its lucidity and vitality. Who could object to such
a success? Yet there were those who objected. A perfect cross-fire of
criticism and complaint arose from the Church and the University. Fabre
replied fearlessly, not without a touch of offended pride. The quarrel
became embittered. Some went so far as to denounce him publicly and to
point out, from the vantage of the pulpit, the dangers of his teaching.
Shortly afterwards the municipality dismissed him from his office as
conservator of the Musée Requien, without regard to his family
responsibilities, which were then considerable.
When he visited Fabre in 1914 Monseigneur Latty was fully aware of
these proceedings, and of the exodus which followed them, and also of
the painful impression which it had produced upon Fabre, and the
bitter-sweet reflections to which it still at times gave rise. Did the
eminent prelate approach the illustrious old scientist bearing an olive
branch as well as the golden laurel? I do not know; but the fact is
that this first interview was quickly followed by a second, which was
still more friendly, and from that moment Fabre never again spoke of
and did not seem even to remember the privations of the past.
One reflection naturally occurs to us here, and it is rather an attempt
to be just than a plea pro domo. Because once in his life the great
naturalist was confronted by the hostility of certain persons belonging
to the world of religion, need we erase from his carefully secularised
history all that connects him with the Church, from the motherly
caresses of the “holy woman” who assuaged his first griefs to the
tender care of the worthy Sister who consoled his last sufferings? Must
we forget that he was admitted as pupil-teacher to the lycée at Rodez,
as pupil to the seminary of Toulouse and the Normal College of Avignon
on the recommendation of M. l’Abbé d’Aiguillon-Pujol, his old Rodez
headmaster? Are we to say nothing of his articles in the Revue
scientifique of Brussels, one of the principal organs of Catholic
science, or of his very important contributions to the classic series
published under the editorship of M. l’Abbé Combes? If we are, rightly,
deeply interested in the smallest details of his life and all that
concerns him, are we to say nothing of his friendly relations with his
curé [202] or of the religious practices of his family and household,
or of his generous participation in all the works of charity in his
parish, not excepting the free school?
“Neither of Armagnac nor a Burgundian”; neither secular nor clerical.
The truth is that if we consider the matter candidly, without bandaging
our eyes and without exclusive prejudice, Fabre should serve as a bond
of union rather than a bone of contention.
The ex-Director of the Beaux-Arts, Henry Roujon, who was a fervent
apostle of national concord, used to say: “Statutes are only lastingly
beautiful if the sons of the same mother can inaugurate them without
railing at one another.”
Fabre, according to this maxim, might well have statues erected to him.
And speaking of statues, we must not, having mentioned the orators,
forget the artists. All the illustrated periodicals had already
popularised the original, eloquent physiognomy of our hero. This was
too ephemeral a homage for his admirers. His features must be chiselled
in marble and exposed under the blue sky to the delighted and
affectionate eyes of his compatriots. Provence was the first to propose
the idea. Le Rouergue followed. Avignon, Orange, and Sérignan each
wanted their monument. Saint-Léons profited by its right of seniority
to take precedence of Rodez and Maillane.
“Nous voulions te fêter vivant
Doux patriarche et grand savant,
Et fier amant de la nature,
Et le Rouergue où tu nacquis
Et la Provence où tu conquis
Le laurier d’or qui toujours dure.” [203]
(We wished to honour you living,
Gentle patriarch and great scientist,
And proud lover of Nature,
Both Le Rouergue where you were born,
And Provence where you won
The golden laurel that lasts for ever.)
The first subscription-list was opened by the Normal College of
Avignon, and a special appeal was made to the schoolmasters of Vaucluse
and the rest of France. Other appeals were addressed to all without
distinction, and the subscriptions flowed in from all sides, from
scientists and men of letters, priests and schoolmasters, bourgeois and
workers in town and country, to whom it was explained that the statue
was in honour of one of themselves who had achieved greatness by his
labours.
He himself, in his modesty, wished all to regard him only as a diligent
student.
“Master,” ventured an intimate of the harmas one day, “they are talking
of putting up a statue of you close by here.”
“Well, well! I shall see myself, but shall I recognise myself? I’ve had
so little time for looking at myself!”
“What inscription would you prefer?”
“One word: Laboremus.”
What lesson was ever more necessary than this eloquent reminder of the
great law of labour! But this grand old man, who by labour has achieved
fame, teaches us yet another lesson of even rarer quality.
Let us hear him confiding his impressions to a friend: “The Mayor of
Sérignan, it seems, proposes to erect a bust of me. At this very moment
I have, staying in the house, the sculptor Charpentier, who is making
my statue for a monument they are going to set up in the Normal College
of Avignon. In my opinion there’s a good deal of the beautiful saints
about it!” [204]
This reminds us of a remark whispered into a neighbour’s ear on the
occasion of the jubilee celebrations, in the midst of all the
fashionable folk by whom he was surrounded: “I must be very queer to
look at!”
Here is a more sober if not more weighty remark. One day some one was
reminding him, in my presence, of all the marks of honour lavished upon
him during his last two days. I heard him reply quickly with the famous
apostrophe: Ματαιότης ματαιοτήτων, καὶ πάντα ματαιότης. [205]
He had another manner, perhaps still more expressive, of rendering the
same idea: he would puff into the air a cloud of smoke from his pipe,
which never left him, and, before the blue vanishing spiral: “That,” he
would say, “is human glory!”
Here we recognise the man whom Rostand represented as follows in the
verses inscribed upon a bas-relief which makes his collection of
sonnets, entitled Fabre-des-Insectes, as it were the pendant of
Charpentier’s monument:
“C’est un homme incliné, modeste et magistral,
Pensif—car dans ses doigts il a tenu des ailes
Poursuivant les honneurs moins que les sauterelles.”
(A man who stoops, modest and magisterial,
Thoughtful—for in his fingers he has held wings,
Pursuing honours less than the grasshoppers.)
II
The fine and unusual qualities of Fabre’s career consist in this; he
has attained fame while seeking nothing but truth: and what a
truth!—the truth concealed in the humblest of created things!
Before Fabre’s time entomology was a poor little science, with no
savour of life or freshness about it, without a ray of sunshine,
without a soul; like those poor little insects under glass or stuck on
pins, which it was its mission to study.
In his hands and in his books, as though by magic, entomology became
truly a living science, provided with wings—the wings of imagination
and poetry, of thought and philosophy.
It is a far cry from the dense materialism of the “dust-to-dust”
scientists who content themselves with dissecting poor little murdered
bodies to the winged spiritualism of this open-air entomologist,
interrogating with his bright, loving glance these little insect souls,
at once so wonderful and so unconscious. And they all tell him the same
thing: Ipse fecit nos et non ipsi nos. [206] (It is He that hath made
us, and not we ourselves.)
Some one has said, and it is a saying worth repeating, so just and
admirable is it, and so characteristic of the man and his work: With
Fabre we have every moment, so to speak, the feeling, the surprise, of
rising toward the infinitely great while stooping over the infinitely
little.
Of this scientist, this philosopher, whose mind soars so readily from
the “little things” to the great, to the “very great,” from the little
curiosities of observation to the great problems that are to be
encountered in the higher domains of thought, his friends conceived the
idea of demanding a synthesis of the reflections scattered through the
pages of the Souvenirs.
This was his reply:
Because I have shifted a few grains of sand upon the shore, am I in
a position to understand the abysmal depths of the ocean? Life has
unfathomable secrets. Human knowledge will be erased from the
world’s archives before we know the last word concerning a gnat.
Thus the Homer, the Plato of the insects. He is utterly unassuming. He
will not allow his admirers to impose upon him. He does not allow
himself to be snared by the lure of vivid, brilliant language, nor by
the intoxicating problems of inner truths whose surface he grazes.
According to him the sum of all his work has been but to “shift a few
grains of sand upon the shore” of knowledge, and it is useless for him
to endeavour to sound the mysteries of life; he has not even learned—he
does not even think it possible to human knowledge to learn—“the last
word concerning a gnat.”
Does this imply that he has relapsed into scepticism; that finally, in
despair, he renounces the ambition of his whole life, vitam impendere
vero? By no means. He has striven to attain it even beyond his
strength.
When he considers himself incapable of adding further volumes to his
work he busies himself with preparing a definitive edition, and in a
touching farewell to his beloved studies he declares that they are so
full of charm and unexplored marvels that could he live several lives
he would devote them all to them without ever succeeding in “exhausting
their interest.”
There we have Fabre. After labouring all his life without troubling
about fame, ploughing his straight furrow like his peasant forebears,
like them, when the night has come, he simply binds his sheaves with a
humble and profound realisation of the narrow limits of his work as
compared with the immensity of the world and the infinite mystery of
things.
It is a fine spectacle, that of the entomologist on the summits of
science, as of fame, raising himself, by his humility, above both, and
fully prepared, to return to Him toward whom aspire those souls that
have attained the limit of human climbing:
O Jesu corona celsior
Et veritas sublimior.
III
Neither science nor fame could prevent him from suffering. To begin
with, there is suffering attaching to these, for all labour has its
burden, all light its shadow.
This none knew better than he whose genius was a protracted patience
and his life a hard-fought battle. And as though it was his destiny to
suffer to the end, he did suffer still when the tardy hour of his fame
had struck. Was it not an ordeal still to be assailed by visits and
speeches when “nothing was left but rest and silence”? How can a man
delight in the incense of his admirers when he is broken with fatigue?
To express this contrast, to show that all was not unmixed joy in these
flattering visits to the patriarch of Sérignan, I will borrow the
delicate brush of an artist friend of Fabre’s:
Night falls upon Sérignan, serene, limpid, violet and amethyst. The
sounds of day fade one by one. Still a few distant hoots from the
horns of motor-cars flying along the dusty roads, or the sound of a
dog baying the new moon, which shows its slender sickle on the
horizon; sometimes, too, as though to eclipse the first stars, a
rocket roars, a prelude to the fireworks which are about to
conclude the apotheosis.... J. H. Fabre, the hero of the fête, the
lover of the Sphex, the Mantis, the Dung-beetle, is very tired.
Think of it—ninety years of age, and almost ninety years of
labour!... and a world-wide reputation to sustain ... and visits to
receive. To-day it was the visit of a Minister and all the flies on
the ministerial wheel. And he had to return thanks, feeling upon
him the eyes of the reporters and the photographer’s lens. What an
ordeal! Fabre can hold out no longer!...
Do you not feel that the harvest of fame at ninety years of age and
after almost ninety years of labour is perhaps even more painful than
the harvest of science in the ardour of youth?
Meditating upon his history, with its full days and hours, Fabié, in a
delightful flight of imagination, shows us the harassed entomologist
escaping from the past to find himself alone with his thoughts and his
beloved insects. “He slips silently to the gate of his harmas. There he
lies down on a bank thickly carpeted with lavender and withered
couch-grass”.... A few moments pass. His children intervene: “he is
relaxing himself, stretching himself, soothed, happy as a little
child.—‘But, father, you aren’t thinking! When the dew is falling!’
‘Ah, my children, why did you wake me? I was having such a beautiful
dream!’ For in his sleep he had entered into conversation with the
crickets of his native country-side.”
Fatigue of the body, weariness of the mind, and a breaking heart!
Suffering pressed closely upon him at the close of his days.
“It is better to be loved than to be celebrated,” said Aubanel, the
delicate poet of Avignon. As long as Fabre had beside him his beloved
brother, his adored wife, and his darling children, he was at least
conscious of a kindly atmosphere of memories, and of tenderness that
made up for what he lacked and helped him to endure his afflictions
with serene resignation.
But now, little by little, there came a void about him. Death has its
surprises and life its demands.
With the death of his wife, in July 1912, half his own soul died. With
that of his brother, in 1913, his life was almost wholly shattered,
crushed, buried in the tomb.
With the marriage of the last of his sons and his two youngest
daughters almost all the life of the house, all the caressing grace of
light, considerate footfalls, of clear tender voices, of smiles and
kisses, had forsaken the old man, to return only in passing and at
distant intervals. His isolation became more and more complete.
Was all over? No, this was hardly the beginning of his afflictions. In
the great silence of the harmas there burst of a sudden the terrible
thunderclap of war which roused to a protest of intolerable grief the
uttermost fibres of his being.
The whole man suffered. The Frenchman, to see his beloved country the
victim of the brutal and underhand aggression of a predatory nation:
the father to see his dear children, a son and two sons-in-law, cast
into the furnace; the idealist and the great-hearted man who had held
war to be a relic of barbarism, doomed to disappear from the annals of
the human race, to see war declared, and spreading with the violence of
a conflagration, surpassing in horror all that history tells us of the
armed conflicts of the past.
Before the bloody vision of the battlefields, how should he not feel
shaken to the depths of his being by the tremors of a terrible anger
and a vast pity, he who had never been able to see an insect suffering
without a pang at the heart?
True, in his incomparable Iliad, the Homer of the Insects had often
described creatures that hunt one another, kill one another, devour one
another with indescribable ardour and ferocity, and he knew that he had
only written a chapter of that “struggle for life” which is to be found
on every step of the biological ladder, with the same disregard of
weakness and suffering.
But he would fain have seen man assert his superiority over the animals
by repressing these instincts, which come from below, by the free
flight of the aspirations vouchsafed from above, by the progressive
subordination of the brute power of force to the spiritual power of
justice and love.
While these distressing problems were filling his mind, and while, in
protest against happenings so utterly contrary to his ideas, he would
thump his fist upon his famous little table, a woman was moving gently
to and fro, playing the parts, alternately, with the same calm
countenance, of Martha and of Mary; and when he asked her her secret,
she showed him her crucifix and read the Gospel to him, as though to
wring from his heart the cry that was uttered by the poet of La Bonne
Souffrance: [207]
“Vingt siècles de bonté sont sortis de ces mystères,
Je crois en toi, Jésus....”
In moments of affliction, Fabre is even closer to the Truth than on the
heights of knowledge and fame. For we are never nearer the God of the
Gospel than when we most feel the want of Him.
IV
More than ninety years of life and almost as many of labour, nearly
five years of overwhelming fame, and almost as many of unspeakable
suffering: must not a man be “built of heart of oak,” as they say in
Aveyron, to survive so many trials?
Like the oaks of his native parts, the patriarch of Sérignan continued
to brave the assaults of time, and even when he began to feel that his
life was declining, it seemed as though it was only withdrawing itself
from its long and manifold ramifications in the external world to take
refuge, as in an inexpugnable asylum, in the depths and roots of his
being. He was one of those of whom people say with us that they “cannot
die.”
Fabre’s work is immortal—that is agreed. But the artisan?
Let us resume our comparison. Like the oak that loses its boughs, one
after the other, he saw falling one by one the several factors of his
life. His life was the harmas, that paradise of insects, that
laboratory after his own heart, where he could make his observations
under the blue sky, to the song of the Cicadæ, amid the thyme,
lavender, and rosemary. Now he was seen there no longer; hardly were
the traces of his footsteps yet visible through the untrimmed boughs
that crossed the paths and the grass that was invading them.
His life: it was his study, his museum of natural history, his
laboratory, where, with closed doors, face to face with Nature, he
repeated, in order to perfect them, to consign them to writing, his
open-air researches, his observations of the to-day or yesterday. Now
he no longer sets foot in it, and now one saw—with what respect and
tenderness—only the marks left by his footsteps upon the tiled floor,
as he came and went about the big observation-table, which occupies all
the middle of the room, in pursuit of the solution of the problems
propounded by his insects.
And we have a feeling that we are looking upon, and handling, relics,
when on this table we still see the pocket-lenses, the microscopes and
modest apparatus which has served for his experiments. And we have the
same feeling before the collections in the glass-topped cases of
polished pine which stand against the whitewashed walls, and before the
hundred and twenty volumes of the magnificent herbarium which stand in
a row beneath them, and before the innumerable portfolios of
mycological plates, in which vivid colour is blended so well with
delicacy of drawing, and before the registers and stacks of notes in
fine, clear handwriting, without erasures, which promised a fresh
series of Souvenirs.
Must they be left thus abandoned previous to their being dispersed or
falling into other hands—all these precious fragments of an
incomparable life, and these venerable premises, consecrated by such
rare memories?
The great naturalist’s disciples could not resign themselves to the
thought, and by a touching inspiration of filial piety they have found
the means to secure these treasures, as by a love stronger than death,
against this harrowing dispersal.
To keep the dead in their last dwelling, or attract them thither, the
ancient Egyptians used to place there the image of their earthly
dwelling, offering them at least a reduced facsimile of their life’s
environment, of the objects and premises which had in some sort made
part of their life and their soul.
Fabre’s friends sought to do still better. In order to preserve it in
its integrity, they determined to acquire the Harmas, with its
plantations, its collections, and all its dependencies, and in order to
make their homage as complete as possible they made, with this object,
an appeal for international subscriptions, which were unhappily
interrupted by the war.
“This is the museum which we wish to dedicate to him,” said the chief
promoter of this pious undertaking, [208] “so that in after years, when
the good sage who knew the language of the innumerable little creatures
of the country-side shall rest beneath the cypresses of his harmas, at
the foot of the laurestinus bushes, amidst the thyme and the sage that
the bees will still rifle, all those whom he has taught, all those whom
he has charmed, may feel that something of his soul still wanders in
his garden and animates his house.”
However, the soul of the “good sage” which they thus sought to capture
and hold here on earth—in short, to imprison in his work and its
environment—made its escape and took flight toward loftier regions and
wider horizons.
To see him in the twilight of the dining-room where he silently
finished his life, majestically leaning back in his arm-chair, with his
best shirt and old-fashioned necktie, his eyes still bright in his
emaciated face, his lips fine and still mobile, but thin with age and
at moments trembling with emotion, or moved by a sudden inspiration—to
see him thus, would you not say that he was still observing? Yes, but
his observations are now of an invisible world, a world even richer in
mysteries and revelations than the world below, so patiently explored
for more than fifty years.
One day, when two professors of the Grand-Séminaire de
Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux [209] had come to see him, as the time drew
near to bid them good-bye, the old man held out his hands and tucked
them under their arms, and, not without difficulty, rose from his
arm-chair, and arm-in-arm with them advanced, tile by tile, to the
threshold of the house, whither he had determined to accompany them.
Suddenly, pressing their arms more closely and alluding to their
cassocks and their vocation, he said, energetically: “You have chosen
the better part”; and, holding them back for a last word, he added:
“Life is a horrible phantasmagoria. But it leads us to a better
future.”
This future the naturalist liked to conceive in accordance with the
images familiar to his mind, as being a more complete understanding of
the great book of which he had deciphered only a few words, as a more
perfect communion with the offices of nature, in the incense of the
perfumes “that are softly exhaled by the carven flowers from their
golden censers,” amid the delightful symphonies in which are mingled
the voices of crickets and Cicadæ, chaffinches and siskins, skylarks
and goldfinches, “those tiny choristers,” all singing and fluttering,
“trilling their motets to the glory of Him who gave them voice and
wings on the fifth day of Genesis.” [210]
This last passage might be underlined, for now more than ever, in our
thoughts of this scientist, of whom it has been said that “with a taste
for Nature he has given us an appreciation of God,” the work cannot be
divorced from the artisan without the grossest inconsistency.
One who had the good fortune to become intimate with Fabre during the
last days of his life tells how eagerly the naturalist used to accept
the wild flowers which he brought in from his walks, how tenderly he
would caress them with his frail fingers and brilliant eyes. Both looks
and gestures expressed an infinite admiration for the pure and simple
work of Nature as God has ordained it:
“And when one evening,” says his friend, “I remarked that these little
miracles clearly proved the existence of a divine Artificer: ‘For me, I
do not believe in God’ declared the scientist, repeating for the last
time his famous and paradoxical profession of faith: ‘I do not believe
in God, because I see Him in all things and everywhere.’”
Another day he expressed his firm and profound conviction to the same
friend, in a slightly different form. “God is Light!” he said
dreamily.—“And you always see Him shining?” “No,” he said suddenly,
“God does not shine; He obtrudes Himself.”
The man who thus bows before God has truly attained, on the heights of
human knowledge, what we may call with him the threshold of eternal
life. To him God sends His angels to open the gates, that he may enter
by the straight paths of the Gospel and the Church.
After the death of Mme. Fabre in 1912, a nursing Sister of the
Congregation of Saint-Roch de Viviers was installed at the Harmas; her
name was Sister Adrienne.
The old man appreciated her services so greatly that he was overcome
with dejection by the very thought that she might be recalled by her
superiors, according to the rule of her Order, after the lapse of a
certain period of time. And he would gratefully press her hand when the
good Sister sought to relieve his anxiety and inspire him with the hope
that she would be allowed to remain in his service till the end of his
days.
He found her simplicity, her delicacy, her good nature, and her
devotion so delightful that he could not refrain from telling her so
plainly in the direct, forcible manner familiar to him: “You are
invaluable, Sister; you are admirable. I love religion as you practise
it.”
“He has often told me,” she writes, “that when he could not sleep at
night, he used to pray, to think of God, and address to Him a prayer
which he would himself compose.”
In the spring of 1914 the aged naturalist, who was more than ninety
years of age, felt that his strength was failing more perceptibly, so
that the doctors diagnosed a fatal outcome in the near future.
On receiving the news of this alarming condition, Monseigneur the
Archbishop of Avignon hastened to the Harmas. The invalid expressed his
delight and gratitude for the visit. Their relations were so cordial
that the prelate decided to continue them by a series of admirable
letters which have fortunately been published.
In these letters, with great delicacy, Monseigneur Latty avoided all
that might run contrary to the naturalist’s opinions, and very gently
endeavoured to induce him to die as a Christian.
To draw him more surely to the light that shines from the Cross and the
grace which raises the soul above itself, he asks him to recite every
evening, in unison with him, the beautiful prayer of the dying Saviour,
which he calls “the prayer of the heights,” the height of Golgotha, the
height of life: In manus tuus Domine commendo spiritum meum. (Into Thy
hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.)
However, Fabre was not yet at the end of his Calvary. Contrary to the
expectation of the doctors, a return of strength enabled him to live to
see another Spring, and it needed nothing less than the terrible shocks
of the tempest unloosed upon Europe to overcome the powers of
resistance that had braved so many storms.
During the summer of 1915 his weakness grew more marked, so that there
was no hope of many more days of life. The curé of Sérignan having been
mobilised, the absence of the priest at this time was a cause of great
anxiety to Sister Adrienne—always on the watch for the soul ready to
escape her.
Providence happily came to her assistance; and a Breton priest, who had
come to the South to recover his health, and had for some time been
acquainted with the master, was admitted to terms of intimacy. After
some hesitation he decided to speak to the scientist of the Sacrament
of Penitence. With that beautiful simplicity of his, and to the
astonishment of the priest, Fabre, who seemed expecting the invitation,
replied:
“Whenever you will.”
“Purified by absolution, fortified by the Extreme Unction, received, in
full consciousness, into the Church, Fabre displayed a wonderful
serenity. Pressing the hand of the priest who was officiating, he
listened to the recommendation of the soul. And when he heard the
sacred words that were familiar to him—In manus tuus, Domine—his lips
moved as though to pronounce the Amen of supreme acceptance, while his
gaze, which was beginning to grow dim, settled upon the Sister’s
crucifix.”
It was the 11th October 1915, at six o’clock of the evening, that the
great scientist so gently surrendered his soul to God.
The obsequies, celebrated on the 16th October, “were simple and
affecting, as he would have liked them to be. For a few moments before
leaving the church, the old naturalist’s fine face was again exposed.
It reflected an immense serenity. On his peaceful features one divined
the satisfaction of the man who is departing with his work
accomplished. In his parchment-like hands he clasped a wooden crucifix
with ivory tips. Beside his head was a wreath of laurestinus. Beside
one arm was his great black felt hat.”
The service was celebrated by the Arch-priest of Orange, in the little
church; and then the harsh, rocky soil received the body of him who had
so often stooped over it.
This “life of J. H. Fabre told by himself” would not be complete if we
did not give here the text of the epitaph which he himself had composed
beforehand. It is magnificent: it gives one the impression of an
unfurling of wings:
“Quos periisse putamus
Præmissi sunt.
Minime finis, sed limen
Vitæ excelsioris.”
Fabre was preceded to the tomb by several months by Mistral, who was
seven years his junior. “Very different in an equal fame, these two men
are inseparable. Mistral and Fabre both represented Provence; one was
born there and never left it, and to some extent created it; the other
adopted and was adopted by it, and, like his illustrious compatriot,
covered it with glory.” [211]
But while Fabre represented Provence, which saw the unfolding of his
rich and vital nature, and while it lavished upon him all the beauty of
its sky, all the brilliance of its Latin soul, all the savour of its
musical and picturesque language, and all the entomological wealth of
its sunny hills, he none the less represents the Rouergue, whence he
derived his innate qualities and his earliest habits, his love of
nature and the insects, his thirst for God and the Beyond, his
indefatigable love of work, his tenacious enthusiasm for study, his
irresistible craving for solitude, the strange, powerful, striking and
picturesque grace of his language, his almost rustic simplicity, his
blunt frankness, his proud timidity, his no less proud independence,
and with all these the ingenuous and unusual sensitiveness and sincere
modesty of his character.
THE END
NOTES
[1] The higher clerical seminary.—B. M.
[2] The great entomologist’s jubilee was celebrated on the April 3,
1910.—Author’s Note.
[3] Paris, Delagrave. The Souvenirs, translated by Alexander Teixeira
de Mattos, are in course of publication by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton
in England and Messrs. Dodd, Mead and Co. in the United States. The
arrangement of the essays has been altered in the English series. See
also The Life and Love of the Insect, translated by Alexander Teixeira
de Mattos (A. and C. Black), Social Life in the Insect World,
translated by Bernard Miall (T. Fisher Unwin), and Wonders of Instinct,
translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos and Bernard Miall (T. Fisher
Unwin).—B. M.
[4] It must in justice be admitted that Fabre had certain precursors,
among whom mention must be made of the famous Réaumur and Léon Dufour,
a physician who lived in the Landes (died 1865), and who was the
occasion and the subject of his first entomological publication. This
does not alter the fact that his great work is not only absolutely
original, but an achievement sui generis which cannot be compared with
the mere sketches of his predecessors.
[5] Souvenirs, Series VI., p. 65, The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My
Schooling.” This is Fabre’s verdict upon another naturalist,
Moquin-Tandon.
[6] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 76–97; The Glow-worm and Other Beetles, chap,
ix., “Dung-beetles of the Pampas.”
[7] M. E. Perrier is a Member of the Institut de France.
[8] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 76, 97; The Glow-worm, chap. ix.
[9] M. Albert Gaudry is a sometime professor of palæontology in the
Museum of Natural History, who, by virtue of his palæontological
discoveries and works, has acquired a great authority in the scientific
world. His Enchaînements du Monde Animal dans les Temps Géologiques is
especially valued and often cited. Gaudry, who is a good Catholic as
well as a scientist of the first rank, very definitely accepts the
evolution of species; but for him, as for Fabre, the activity of the
animal kingdom, like that of the world in general, is inconceivable
apart from a sovereign mind which has foreseen all things and provided
for all things.
[10] Those journals which claim him as a native of Sérignan are
therefore mistaken. “At Sérignan (Vaucluse), his native countryside,
the peasants familiarly call him Moussu Fabré” (Univers, March 3,
1910).
[11] In the reminiscences of his childhood, which are intermingled with
his entomological memoirs, Fabre does not mention a single proper name,
whether of person or place; only the vague expression, “the table-land
of the Rouergue,” which he once incidentally employs, might give an
attentive reader a hint as to the place of his origin. Souvenirs, VI.,
p. 38; The Life of the Fly, chap. v., “Heredity.”
[12] These paternal grandparents, of whom our hero has retained so
vivid a recollection, bore the names of Jean-Pierre Fabre and Elisabeth
Poujade. Patient searching of the archives, assisted, fortunately, by
the goodwill of M. Toscan, registrar to the Justice of the Peace for
Vezins, has enabled us to reproduce their marriage contract, which is
full of information hitherto unpublished, and curious details of
domestic life which will not fail to interest the reader:
“In the year 1791 and on the 15th day of the month of February, in the
locality of Ségur, province of Aveiron, in the presence of me, Raymond
Rous, man of law and notary royal ... have been devised and concluded
the following articles of marriage between Pierre-Jean Fabre,
legitimate son of Pierre Fabre, landowner and farmer, and Anne Fages,
husband and wife of the village of Malaval, on the one part, and
Elisabeth Poujade, legitimate daughter of Antoine Poujade, landowner,
and Françoise Azémar, husband and wife of the village of Mont, parish
of Notre-Dame d’Arques, on the other part—the said parties acting,
namely, the said future husband with the knowledge and consent of his
father and mother here present, and the said future wife, she being
absent, but the said Poujade for her, being here present stipulating
and accepting—have in the first place promised that the said marriage
shall be solemnised before the Church at the first demand of one of the
parties, under penalty of all expenses, damages, and interests—in the
second place, the said Fabre and Fages, husband and wife, favouring and
contemplating the present marriage have given and are giving by
donation, declared between living persons, to the aforesaid their son,
the future husband, all and each of their possessions, movable and
immovable, present and future, under the clauses, conditions, and
reserves hereafter following: firstly, to be fed at the same table of
the same victuals as the said donor; secondly, and in case of
incompatibility, they reserve to themselves the same income as Jean
Fabre and Françoise Fabre, father and mother of the donor, reserved to
themselves in the marriage contract of the said Fabre received by M.
Dufieu, notary ...; thirdly, to settle upon their other children a
portion such as by law shall pertain to them out of their possessions
in money when they accept a settlement; and in case Françoise and Anne
Fabre should not desire so to do, they shall enjoy the annual pension
... of three setiers each of rye, two quarters each of oats, five
pounds each of butter, and five pounds each of cheese; the use of their
usual bed, and of their spinning-wheel; the use of their clothes-press
and the small articles of furniture necessary according to their
condition; ... the said Fages, the mother, reserves to herself the sum
of thirty francs to be paid once at her will to employ and dispose as
she shall see fit. In the third place, the said Poujade, the father,
favouring and contemplating the present marriage, has given and
constituted as the dowry of his daughter, the future wife, to take the
place of any right to a portion which she might claim against his goods
and those of the mother aforesaid, a clothes-press with apparel valued
at a hundred livres, a heifer and a cow valued the two at eighty
francs, two sheep, and the sum of fifteen hundred livres, the said sum
being made up of one hundred and fifty livres of the maternal parent’s
and the rest of the paternal parent’s money....
“Devised and rehearsed in the presence of the sieur Joseph Déjean,
burgher of Moulin-Savi, and the sieur André Bourles, practitioner of
Ségur, signed by the aforesaid Fabre, father and son, and the aforesaid
Poujade, father, and not the aforesaid Fages, who, being requested to
sign, has stated that she is not able to do so....
“Forwarded by us, the notary undersigned, holder of the draft at Ségur,
the 12th April 1807.
“Rous, notary.”
[13] This account of the naturalist’s childhood is drawn principally
from The Souvenirs, vi., 32–45; see The Life of the Fly, chap, v.,
“Heredity.”
[14] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 46–68; The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My
Schooling.”
[15] Souvenirs, IV., pp. 50–60; The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My
Schooling.”
[16] The Château de Saint-Léons standing just outside and above the
village of Saint-Léons, where the author was born in 1823. Cf. The Life
of the Fly, chaps. vi. and vii.—A. T. de M.
[17] The brother whom Fabre here associates with the memories of his
childhood has also proved a credit to his name and his vocation. M.
Frédéric Fabre is to-day Director of the Crillon Canal and assistant
justice for the southern canton of Avignon.
[18] Souvenirs, VIII., pp. 126, 127; Bramble-Bees, chap. xiii, “The
Halicti.”
[19] The war of 1830 with Algiers.—A. T. de M.
[20] Souvenirs, pp. 260–270. The Life of the Fly, chap. vii., “The
Pond.”
[21] The Wheat-ear, one of the Saxicolæ, is known also as the
White-Tail, the meaning of both forms being the same; White-ear being a
corruptive of the Anglo-Saxon name. Both correspond with the Provençal
Cul-blanc. The Stonechat is a member of the same genus. B. M.
[22] Souvenirs, pp. 292–300. The Life of the Fly, chap. xvii.,
“Recollections of Childhood.”
[23] Souvenirs, VIII., pp. 125–129. Bramble-bees, chap. xiii., “The
Halicti: The Portress.”
[24] Souvenirs, VI., p. 60. The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My
Schooling.”
[25] Souvenirs, VII., pp. 29, 33. The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles,
chap. xv., “Suicide or Hypnosis?”
[26] Souvenirs, VI., p. 61. The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My
Schooling.”
[27] Souvenirs, II., pp. 41–44, 46. Hunting Wasps, chap. xx., “A Modern
Theory of Instinct.”
[28] Souvenirs, VI., p. 61. The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My
Schooling.”
[29] Fabre, Poet of Science, by G. V. Legros, translated by Bernard
Miall (T. Fisher Unwin), p. 24.
[30] Souvenirs, X., pp. 323–331. The Life of the Fly, chap. xix., “A
Memorable Lesson.”
[31] Souvenirs, X., 332–336. The Life of the Fly, chap. xix., “A
Memorable Lesson.”
[32] Chalicodoma, meaning a house of pebbles, concrete or mortar, would
be a most satisfactory title, were it not that it has an odd sound to
any one unfamiliar with Greek. The name is given to bees who build
their cells with materials similar to those which we employ for our own
dwellings. The work of these insects is masonry; only it is turned out
by a rustic mason more used to hard clay than to hewn stone. Réaumur,
who knew nothing of scientific classification—a fact which makes many
of his papers very difficult to understand—named the worker after her
work and called our builders in dried clay Mason Bees, which describes
them exactly.
[33] Souvenirs, I., pp. 278–280. The Mason Bees, chap, i., “The Mason
Bee.”
[34] Horace, Ars Poetica, 412.
[35] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 164–170. The Life of the Fly, chap. xii.,
“Mathematical Memories: The Binomial Theorem.”
[36] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 172–183 passim. The Life of the Fly, chap.
xii., “Mathematical Memories: The Binomial Theorem.”
[37] Souvenirs, IX., p. 184 passim. The Life of the Fly, chap. xii.,
“Mathematical Memories: The Binomial Theorem.”
[38] The weekly half-holiday in the French schools.—A. T. de M.
[39] The Hunting Wasps, chap. xi., “An Ascent of Mont Ventoux.”
[40] Souvenirs, III., pp. 191–193. The Life of the Fly, chap. iv.,
“Larval Dimorphism.”
[41] M. Fabié was never officially a schoolmaster, but he was trained
as one, and was a pupil at the Normal College at Rodez.
[42] M. Perbosc is a schoolmaster at Lavilledien (Tarnet-Garonne). He
has published through Privat of Toulouse: Lo Got occitan, Cansous del
Got occitan, Contes populars Gascons, Guilhem de Tolosa, Remembransa,
l’Arada, etc., and has repeatedly been crowned by the Académie des Jeux
Floraux of Toulouse.
[43] M. Besson is also a laureate of the Académie des Jeux Floraux, and
is at present Canon of Rodez. He has published through Carrère of
Rodez: Dal Brès à la Tounbo, Bagateletos, Besucarietos, Countes de la
Tata Mannou, Countes de l’Ouncle Janet, etc. This last volume is
dedicated: A mon Amic Antouni Perbosc.
[44] Esprit Requien (1788–1851), a French naturalist and collector,
director of the museum and botanical gardens at Avignon and author of
several works on botany and conchology.—A. T. de M.
[45] Horace Bénédict Alfred Moquin-Tandon (1804–63), a distinguished
naturalist, for twenty years director of the botanical gardens at
Toulouse. He was commissioned by the French Government in 1850 to
compile a flora of Corsica, and is the author of several important
works on botany and zoology.—A. T. de M.
[46] A mountain 7730 feet high, about twenty-five miles from
Ajaccio.—A. T. de M.
[47] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 63–66. The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My
Schooling.”
[48] Souvenirs, I., pp. 178–180. The Life of the Spider, chap. ii.,
“The Black-bellied Tarantula.”
[49] Souvenirs, I., pp. 221, 240–241. The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiv.,
“The Bembex.”
[50] Souvenirs, IV., 3–5.
[51] However, the audacious insect had other surprises in store for
him: his notes speak of nests found more or less by chance near the
still of a distillery, on the top of a steam-engine in a silk mill, on
the walls and furniture of a farmhouse kitchen, and even in the
interior of a gourd in which the farmer kept his shot on the
chimney-piece; in a word, wherever there was warmth and not too much
light. Souvenirs, IV., p. 8–12.
[52] Souvenirs, I., p. 122. The Hunting Wasps, chap. vii., “Advanced
Theories.”
[53] Souvenirs, I., p. 136. The Hunting Wasps, chap. viii., “The
Languedocian Sphex.”
[54] Souvenirs, I., pp. 50, 52; II., p. 262 et seq.
[55] Souvenirs, II., pp. 262–303, III., 194–195. The Glow-Worm, chap.
ii., “The Sitaris;” The Life of the Fly, chap. iv., “Larval
Dimorphism.”
[56] Horace, Ars Poetica, 409 et seq.
[57] Souvenirs, III., p. 193.
[58] Ibid., I., p. 182. The Hunting Wasps, chap. xi., “An Ascent of
Mont Ventoux.”
[59] Souvenirs, I., pp. 182–3. The Hunting Wasps, chap. xi., “An Ascent
of Mont Ventoux.”
[60] Souvenirs, I., p. 180.
[61] Th. Delacour and Bernard Valot of the Jardin des Plantes.
[62] Souvenirs, I., pp. 181–186. The Hunting Wasps, chap, xi., “An
Ascent of Mont Ventoux.”
[63] Souvenirs, I., pp. 192–193.
[64] Souvenirs, VI., p. 166; I., p. 187.
[65] Léon Dufour (1780–1865) was an Army surgeon who in 1823 went
through the Spanish campaign, and on returning to France settled in his
native town, Saint-Sever, where he devoted himself chiefly to
entomology.
[66] Souvenirs, I., pp. 39–41. The Hunting Wasps, chap, i., “The
Buprestis-hunting Cerceris.”
[67] Fabre, Poet of Science, p. 58.
[68] Souvenirs, I., pp. 41, 44. The Hunting Wasps, chap. I., “The
Buprestis-hunting Cerceris.”
[69] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 326–328.
[70] Duclaux, Pasteur, Histoire d’un Esprit, pp. 182–93.
[71] Souvenirs, IX., p. 330.
[72] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 330–331.
[73] Souvenirs, I., p. 40, 73; II., pp. 78, 83, 181, 214, 234, 235,
283; V., pp. 76, 188, 229, etc.
[74] Everybody knows to-day that heat kills, or so far enfeebles as to
render inoffensive, the microbes that infect liquids and make it
impossible to preserve them.
This again is one of Pasteur’s happy discoveries, as is conveyed by the
very verb to pasteurise, which means “to protect against microbes by
the action of heat.” We pasteurise milk, beer, wine, etc.
The ancients used to practise the heating of wines. In the house of St.
John and St. Paul, discovered in Rome in 1887, beneath the church
dedicated to the two martyrs, who were both officers of the Emperor
Constantine, the excavators found beside the cellar and the amphoræ of
wine, the little room with a fireplace known as the furnarium, which
was used for heating wine and drying fruit.
The heating of wines was practised also at Mèze, near Cette, before
Pasteur’s discovery.
But the ancient method of heating had nothing in common with
pasteurisation. The merchants of Hérault, like the ancients, used to
heat wine in order to modify its flavour, to mature it more quickly.
Pasteur, on the other hand, heats it to keep it unchanged. To mature
wine it is heated slowly in contact with the air. To preserve it, the
wine must be rapidly heated to 122° F. in a vacuum. The object and the
method are altogether different.
[75] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 329–30.
[76] St. Roch (1295–1327) is represented in his statues with the dog
that saved his life by discovering him in the solitude where after
curing the plague-stricken Italians, he hid himself lest he should
communicate the pestilence to others.—A. T. de M.
[77] The old, partly-demolished bridge at Avignon which figures in the
well-known French catch:
“Sur le pont d’Avignon,
Tout le monde y danse en rond.”
(A. T. de M.)
[78] Souvenirs, X., pp. 343 et seq. The Life of the Fly, chap xx.,
“Industrial Chemistry.”
[79] M. François Fabié, ex-professor in the lycée of Toulon, still
lives in the neighbourhood of the city, in the Villa des Troènes.
[80] Journal d’Aveyron, 8 November 1908.
[81] Souvenirs, X., pp. 338–43; The Life of the Fly, chap. xx.,
“Industrial Chemistry.”
[82] Cf. supra, p. 135.
[83] Souvenirs, X., p. 353. The Life of the Fly, chap. xx., “Industrial
Chemistry.”
[84] Revue scientifique, May 7, 1910, speech by M. Edmond Perrier.
[85] Jean Victor Duruy (1811–1894), author of a number of historical
works, including a well-known Histoire des Romains, and Minister of
Public Instruction under Napoleon III. from 1863 to 1869. Cf. The Life
of the Fly, chap. xx.—A. T. de M.
[86] Souvenirs, II., pp. 125–126. The Mason Bees, chap. V., “The story
of my Cats.”
[87] Horace, Ode xxx., Bk. iii.
[88] Souvenirs, II., pp. 202–203. The Life of the Spider, chap. i.,
“The Black-bellied Tarantula.”
[89] Souvenirs, II., p. 1.
[90] The Halicti produce two generations each year: one, in the spring,
is the issue of mothers who, fecundated in the autumn, have passed
through the winter; the other, produced in the summer, is the fruit of
parthenogenesis, that is, of procreation by the maternal virtualities
alone. Of the concourse of the two sexes only females are born;
parthenogenesis gives rise to both males and females.
[91] Souvenirs, VIII., pp. 144–160. The Bramble-Bees, chap. xiv.,
“Parthenogenesis.” It was only a later date, by combining a series of
successive observations which were spread over a great length of years,
that he was able to define exactly the various modes of generation
employed by the Halicti, as described in the preceding note.
[92] Fabre, Poet of Science, G. V. Legros, pp. 108–115.
[93] The country round Sérignan, in Provence.—A. T. de M.
[94] Souvenirs, II., pp. 1–8. The Life of the Fly, chap. i., “The
Harmas.”
[95] Souvenirs, VII., pp. 270–273. The Life of the Fly, chap. vii.,
“The Pond.”
[96] Ibid., VII., 260–270.
[97] Souvenirs, VIII., 278–280, 255–295. The Life of the Fly, chap. v.,
“The Greenbottles”; The Mason-wasps, chap. ix., “Insect Geometry”; The
Life of the Fly, chap. ix., “The Grey Flesh-Flies.”
[98] Souvenirs, VIII., p. 228. The Life of the Fly, chap. ix., “The
Greenbottles.”
[99] Mont Ventoux, an outlying summit of the Alps, 6270 feet high. Cf.
Insect Life, chap. xiii.—A. T. de M.
[100] Fabre lived the first years of his life (cf. chap. i.) on the
mountains of Lavaysse, which are almost of the birth and bifurcation of
the two ranges of the Levezon and the Palanger. In the language of his
country La Vaysse, pronounced Lo Baïsso, means “the hazel-bush.”
An alien zoology too is represented in the osier-beds of the Aygues,
whose peace is never disturbed save in freshets of exceptional
duration. The wild spates of the Aygues bring into our countryside
and strand in the osier-thickets the largest of our Snails, the glory
of Burgundy, Helix pramatias.
[101] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 26–37, 42. The Life of the Fly, chap. v.,
“Heredity.”
[102] A district of the province of Guienne, having Rodez for its
capital. The author’s maternal grandfather, Salgues by name, was the
huissier, or, as we should say, sheriff’s officer, of Saint-Léons.—A.
T. de M.
[103] The author’s father kept a café at Pierrelatte and other small
towns in the south of France.—A. T. de M.
[104] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 26–37, 42. The Life of the Fly, chap. v.,
“Heredity.”
[105] Fabre had a sort of natural horror of luxury.
[106] Souvenirs, I., pp. 134–136. The Hunting Wasps, chap. viii., “The
Languedocian Sphex.”
[107] Souvenirs, p. 319, viii., p. 1.
[108] Ibid., p. 294.
[109] Souvenirs, VI., p. 295.
[110] Souvenirs, II., pp. 80, 81, 90, 91. The Mason Wasps, chap. ii.,
“The Odyneri.”
[111] Souvenirs, I., p. 115. The Hunting Wasps, chap. vi., “The Larva
and the Nymph.”
[112] The 14th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille.—A.
T. de M.
[113] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 196–203, 246–247. The Life of the
Grasshopper, chap. xiv., “The Green Grasshopper.”
[114] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 94–97, 231, 299–310. The Life and Love of the
Insect, chaps. xvii., xviii.
[115] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 300–301. The Life and Love of the Insect,
chap. xvii.
[116] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 302–312. The Life and Love of the Insect,
chap. xxii.
[117] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 377–378. The Life of the Caterpillar, chap.
v., “The Moth.”
[118] Souvenirs, III., p. 14.
[119] 26th March 1910.
[120] E. Perrier, Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.
[121] E. Perrier, loc cit.
[122] Souvenirs, I., pp. 304–306, 320; II., pp. 112, 130, 131; III., p.
16; IV., pp. 142, 167, 183; VI., p. 15; VIII., p. 159.
[123] Souvenirs, IV., pp. 167–168, 182–183. The Mason Wasps, chap.
viii., “The Nest-building Odynerus.”
[124] Ibid., VI., pp. 4, 118–119, 249, 383; VIII., p. 295; X., pp. 15,
86, 112, etc.
[125] Souvenirs, I., p. 246; VI., p. 249; VIII., p. 3; X., p. 11, etc.
[126] Ibid., VII., p. 29; VIII., pp. 5, 272; X., pp. 111, 254, etc. For
Lucie, his grand-daughter, aged six, see II., p. 149.
[127] Souvenirs, VII., pp. 139–41. The Life of the Caterpillar, chap.
xi., “The Great Peacock”; also Social Life in the Insect World, chap.
xiv.
[128] Souvenirs, X., p. 111.
[129] Souvenirs, VII., 360.
[130] Souvenirs, V., pp. 43–44. The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap.
iv., “The Sacred Beetle: The Pear.”
[131] Souvenirs, V., pp. 27–29. The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. i.,
“The Sacred Beetle.”
[132] It is exceedingly curious that neither Fabre nor the silk-growers
knew what every English schoolboy knows so well—that silkworms thrive
upon lettuce leaves, the ordinary substitute, in England, for the
mulberry-leaf. Botany, of course, would not suggest such a
substitute.—B. M.
[133] Souvenirs, III., pp. 297–299.
[134] Souvenirs, X., pp. 102–109.
[135] Souvenirs, II., pp. 1 to 19.
[136] Ibid., p. 104.
[137] Souvenirs, III., pp. 12–14.
[138] Souvenirs, IV., pp. 59–60.
[139] Darwin died at Down, in Kent, on the 19th of April, 1882.—A. T.
de M.
[140] Souvenirs, II., p. 99.
[141] Souvenirs, II., p. 160. He makes this declaration in respect of
an error which he had incorrectly attributed to Erasmus Darwin, the
grandfather of the famous Charles Darwin, on the faith of an unfaithful
translation due to the entomologist Lacordaire. The mistake, which is
really Lacordaire’s, not Erasmus Darwin’s, consisted in confusing the
Sphex with a common Wasp. Charles Darwin, having informed Fabre that
his grandfather had said “a wasp,” the French naturalist immediately
inserted this correction in a note, in the second volume of the
Souvenirs, which I had not yet come across when I cited the passage in
question. I can therefore say with M. Fabre: “May this note amend,
within the proper limits, the assertions which I made in all good
faith.”
[142] Darwin died in 1882, and the second volume of the Souvenirs
appeared in 1883.
[143] Souvenirs, I., pp. 188, 189; II., pp. 103; VI., pp. 25, 166, 203;
VII., pp. 8, 9, 57, 161, etc.
[144] Souvenirs, VI., p. 70. The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap.
ix., “Dung-beetles of the Pampas.” There is also mention of Brother
Judulien in a long note in vol. V., p. 131; The Glow-Worm and Other
Beetles, p. 238.
[145] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 184–186. The Life of the Fly, chap. xiii.,
“Mathematical Memories: My Little Table.”
[146] E. Perrier, Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.
[147] Revue Scientifique, May 7, 1910.
[148] Our eminent compatriot will forgive the writer for quoting the
following passage from a letter of his, which so fully expresses both
his admiration for our hero and his profound affection for the land of
our fathers: “For the second time, on reading in the Journal d’Aveyron
your comprehensive and loving study of the life and work of your
illustrious namesake, I was agreeably surprised to see that you
compared our characters and our work. This comparison is extremely
flattering to me, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.... It is
indeed a somewhat curious thing that two Rouergats should have
conceived the idea of celebrating the Animals; that both should have
been led by their destiny to Provence; that both should have had the
course of their lives affected by the intervention of Duruy, etc. It is
true that one must not push these analogies too far. Duruy merely
advanced me from the Normal College of Rodez to that of Cluny; and in
so doing, alas! he uprooted me.... As for the Animals, what are the
poetic fancies which I have dedicated to them beside the masterly
essays of the man who has been called ‘the Homer of the insects!’” M.
Fabié does not dispute, any more than we ourselves, that Fabre’s fame
quite legitimately belongs to Provence, which has become his second
country; he merely regrets that we in our “loyal kingdom” have too long
allowed our good friends of the Empire to monopolise him.
[149] Cours élémentaire d’histoire naturelle: Zoologie, p. 1, 5th
edition.
[150] Cours élémentaire d’Astronomie, p. 272, 7th edition.
[151] Op. cit., “Avertissement ou Avant-Propos du Directeur de la
collection, couronnée par l’Académie française.”
[152] Souvenirs, II., p. 3. The Life of the Fly, chap. i., “The
Harmas.”
[153] Dedication of vol. II. of the Souvenirs.
[154] Souvenirs, II., p. 4. The Life of the Fly, chap. i., “The
Harmas.”
[155] The Cicada is the Cigale, an insect akin to the Grasshopper and
found more particularly in the south of France. Cf. Social Life in the
Insect World, chaps. i.–iv., and The Life of the Grasshopper, chaps.
i.–v.—A. T. de M.
[156] F. Marguet, Revue des Deux Mondes, December 15, 1910.
[157] Ibid.
[158] F. Marguet, op. cit.
[159] F. Marguet, op. cit.
[160] Souvenirs, IV., p. 222.
[161] Fabre, Poet of Science, G. V. Legros, pp. 147, 149.
[162] F. Marguet, op. cit.
[163] Fabre, Poet of Science, G. V. Legros, translated by Bernard
Miall, pp. 159–160.
[164] Souvenirs, X., pp. 100, 101.
[165] Souvenirs, VI., p. 296.
[166] Souvenirs, IX., pp. 176–178. The Mason Bees, chap. xi., “The
Jeucoopes.”
[167] J. P. Lafitte, La Nature, March 26, 1910.
[168] Jean Aicard, Eloge de F. Coppée.
[169] Souvenirs, X., p. 79.
[170] Souvenirs, VIII., p. 346. The Life of the Spider, chap. II., “The
Banded Epeira.”
[171] Souvenirs, X., pp. 78–79.
[172] Souvenirs, X., p. 92.
[173] Revue des Deux-Mondes, Dec. 1910, p. 875.
[174] Souvenirs, I., pp. 265, 314; V., p. 99; VII., p. 48.
[175] Ibid., I., 171–175. The Hunting Wasps, chap. X., “The Ignorance
of Instinct.”
[176] Souvenirs, I., pp. 297–298. The Mason-Bees, chap. ii.,
“Experiments.”
[177] Souvenirs, I., p. 165. The Hunting Wasps, chap. x., “The
Ignorance of Instinct.” Ibid., IV., p. 238; V., p. 90. The Sacred
Beetle and Others, chap. vii., “The Broad-necked Scarabæus.”
[178] Souvenirs, II., p. 157. The Mason-Bees, chap. vii., “Reflections
upon Insect Psychology.” Ibid., VI., pp. 116, 131, 148. The Glow-Worm
and Other Beetles, chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments;” also
Wonders of Instinct, chap. vi.
[179] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 130, 143. The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles,
chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments.”
[180] Souvenirs, V., pp. 141, 142, 150. The Sacred Beetle and others,
chap. xvi., “The Lunary Copris.” The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap.
xi., “The Burying Beetles.”
[181] Souvenirs, II., p. 159. The Mason-Bees, chap. vii. “Reflections
upon Insect Psychology.” Souvenirs, VI., 116. The Glow-Worm and Other
Beetles, chap. xi. “The Burying Beetles”; see also Wonders of Instinct,
chap. vi.
[182] Souvenirs, IV., p. 238.
[183] Souvenirs, II., p. 138; VI., pp. 98, 117.
[184] Souvenirs, I., p. 220. The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii, “The
Ammophila.”
[185] Souvenirs, V., p. 130. The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. xvi.,
“The Lunary Copris.” Souvenirs, VI., p. 97. The Glow-Worm and Other
Beetles, chap. x., “Insect Colouring.” Souvenirs, VII., p. 193.
[186] Souvenirs, I., p. 220. The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii., “The
Ammophila.” Souvenirs, V., p. 322. The Life of the Grasshopper, chap.
viii., “The Mantis: The Nest.”
[187] E. Tavernier.
[188] Souvenirs, X., pp. 92, 214.
[189] Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.
[190] La Nature, March 26, 1910. “It will be to M. Fabre’s lasting
honour that he has never known any idleness of this kind or, indeed,
any kind of idleness.”
[191] Souvenirs, VI., p. 75.
[192] Fabre denies “by the light of the facts” almost all the ideas
which evolution invokes to explain the formation of species. (Revue des
Deux Mondes, p. 891.) He says: “The facts as I see them lead me away
from Darwin’s theories. Whenever I try to apply selection to the facts
observed, it leaves me whirling in the void. It is majestic, but
sterile: evolution asserts as regards the past; it asserts as regards
the future; but it tells us as little as possible about the present. Of
the three terms of duration one only escapes it, and that is the very
one which is free from the fantastic imaginings of hypothesis.”
[193] Fabre appears to conceive a relation between instinct and the
organ analogous to that which obtains between the soul and the body;
for him the first element of instinct is an incorporeal element which
he does not otherwise define, which he characterises merely as a native
impulse, irresistible, infallible and superior to the organism as well
as to the sensibility of the insect, although it is not separated from
nor completely independent of these.
For the rest, instinct remains a mystery. What it is at bottom, “I do
not know, I shall never know. It is an inviolable secret.” Like all
true scientists, Fabre recognised the narrow limits of human knowledge
and did not fear to admit them. According to him, neither life nor
instinct results from matter; we must seek for an explanation not below
but above it, and of all the marvels created that compel us to look
upward and proclaim the Supreme Intelligence whence they are derived,
this is one of the most striking and persuasive: “The more I see, the
more I observe, the more this Intelligence shines forth behind the
mystery of things.”
Fabre thus joins hands with Pasteur, and may fitly be mentioned in the
same breath with him, as one of the most distinguished defenders of
spiritual science and belief against materialistic science and atheism.
This is all the more remarkable in that Fabre has never attempted to
make any apologia, but simply stated whither all his observations and
reflections tended.
[194] Quoted from Mgr. Mignot, Lettres sur les Etudes ecclésiastiques,
p. 248.
[195] Souvenirs, III., p. 91.
[196] Session of the 8th December 1910.
[197] This chapter was written by the Abbé Fabre especially for the
English edition.—B. M.
[198] This was the pilgrimage of the young girls of the Université des
Annales politiques et littéraires.
[199] The French words are “Cousins,” “Cousines.” Cousin = cousin, good
friend, crony.—B. M.
[200] Jules Clarétie, Jean Richepin, Adolphe Brisson, etc.
[201] E. Lavisse, quoted by Dr. Legros, op. cit., p. 81.
[202] M. l’Abbé Germain, ex-curé of Sérignan.
[203] François Fabié.
[204] In Provence, as in Italy, the plaster statues sold by itinerant
Italians are known as santi belli = beautiful saints.—B. M.
[205] The text is from Ecclesiastes, i. 2: “Vanity of vanities, all is
vanity,” but Fabre cites it according to the Discours contre Eutrope,
in which he had learnt it at school, alluding to the appropriate
reflection of Saint John Chrysostom: Ἀεὶ ρεν, ράλιστα Σενπνε ἠχαιρον
εἰπεῖν; ματαιότης, etc. (Semper quidem, nunc vero maxime opportunum est
dicere: Vanitas, etc.)
[206] Psalm 100, verse 3.
[207] Françoise Coppée.
[208] Dr. Legros, Les Annales politiques et littéraires, April 12,
1914.
[209] The Abbé Joseph Betton and his friend, the Abbé Juiot.
[210] J. H. Fabre, cited by Dr. Legros.
[211] E. Laguet, Annales politiques et littéraires, April 6, 1914.