Fabre, Poet of Science

or its poet. Like the enchanted princess of the

pears on the title-page of this volume, is in no way deceptive. The tiny insects buried in the soil or creeping over leaf or blade have

ut Rouergue, on the 22nd December, 1823, some seven years earlier than Mistral, his

iest steps; here he stam

, whose belfry was visible at quite a short distance; but to reach it one had to travel nearly twenty-five

ll at Saint-Léons, as a consequence of his marriage with the daughter of the huissier, Victoire Salgues

ceived his first impressions of nature. At Malaval too lived his grandmother, the good old woman who could lull

meat, or "the fairies who turned pumpkins into coaches and lizards into footmen

ssed in a little baize frock," or just "wearing his first braces," he sees himself "in ecstasy before the splendours of the wing-cases of a gardener-beetle, or the wings of a butterfly." At nightfall, among the bushes, he learned to recognize the chirp of the grasshopper. To put it in his own words, "he made for the flowers and insects as

rds"; and in the wretched surroundings of his childhood, when the only light, of an evening, came from a splinter of pine, steeped in resin, which was held by a strip of slate stuck into the wall; when his folk shut themselves in the byre, in times of severe co

as it is the peculiarity of instinct, to

ed, may be housed in those toil-worn brains, in which, perhaps, slowly and obscurely, accumulate the germs of faculties and talents by which some m

r, bellringer, and singer in the choir." Rembrandt, Teniers, nor Van Ostade never painted anything more picturesque than the room which served at the same time as kitchen, refectory,

t. He would always see the humble paternal garden, the brook where he used to surprise the crayfish, the ash-tree in which he found his first goldfinch's nest, and "the flat stone on which he heard, for the first time, the mellow ringing of the bellringer frog." (1/4.) Later, when

s of the meadows, and the odorous bracken of the woods." (1/6.) Apart from this the two brothers "were one"; they understood one another in a marvellous fashion, and always loved one another. Henri never failed to watch over Frédéric with a wholly fatherly solicitude; he was prodigal of advice, helpful with his experience, doing his best to smooth away all difficulties, encouraging him to walk in his footsteps and make his

this town, where he served Mass on Sunday, in the chapel, in order to pay his fees. There again he was interested in the animal creation above all. When he began to construe Virgil the only th

could. We see him set out along the wide white roads: lost, almost a wanderer, seeking his living by the sweat of his brow; one day selling lemons at the fair of Beaucaire, under the arcades of the market or before the barracks of the Pré; another day enlisting in a gang of labourers who were working on the line from Beaucaire to N?mes, which was then in process of construction. He knew gloomy days, lonely and despairing. What was he doing? of what was he dreaming? The love of nature and the passion for learning sustained him in spite of all, and often served him as nourishment; as on the day when he dined on a few gra

intense grasp of things and beings--two gifts well-nigh incompatible, and often mutually destructive--already it knew, not on

a competitive examination for a bursary at the école Normale Primaire of Avignon; and his wi

or Fabre only, notwithstanding, it was his fixed idea, his constant preoccupation, and "while the dictation class was busy around him, he would examine, in the secrecy of his desk, the sting of a wasp or the fruit of the oleander," and intoxicate himself with poetry. (1/9.) His pedagogic studies suffered thereby, and the first part of his stay at the normal school was by no means extremely br

rsted to know at least the elements. Between whiles he returned to his Latin, translating Horace and re-reading Virgil. One day his director put an "Imitation" into his hands, with double columns in Greek and Latin. The latter, which he knew fairly well, assisted him to decipher t

French for ever and for ever; to make a good version you need only common

ole were legible. Latin, for you, is the old inscription; the root of the word alone is legible: the veil of an unknown language hides