Augustin Fabre

“ And yet the Wasp is really the Sphex with whom I am so familiar, the Yellow-winged Sphex, the keen Cricket-huntress. I can hardly believe the evidence of my own eyes.
The burrow is not far off: the insect enters it and stores away the booty. I sit down, determined to wait for a new expedition, to wait hours if necessary, so that I may see if the extraordinary capture is repeated. My sitting attitude makes me take up the whole width of the path. Two raw conscripts heave in sight, their hair newly cut, wearing that inimitable automaton look which the first days of barrack-life bestow. ”

“ A deal better off am I, at this late hour, dogged by poverty and knowing that the diamonds of the duck-pool were rock-crystal, the gold-dust mica, the stone horn an Ammonite, and the sky-blue Beetle a Hoplia! We poor men would do better to mistrust the joys of knowledge: let us dig our furrow in the field of the commonplace, flee the temptations of the pond, mind our ducks and leave to others, more favoured by fortune, the job of explaining the world’s mechanism, if the spirit moves them. ”

“ To the scrutiny of this miracle, with its infinity of forms, Fabre devotes himself with touching sympathy and indefatigable activity. He dedicates his day to it; and at night he is still working. And in this work, which seems to admit of no relaxation, he appears to know nothing of fatigue. The love of his task upholds him and inspires him. When night has fallen, the observer has still one resource left; he can listen for the rustle or the song of the insect that has so far escaped him in its coming and going. ”

“ Neither science nor fame could prevent him from suffering. To begin with, there is [381] 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? ”

“ Prevented from being in your midst, I am nevertheless in spirit with those who are to-day honouring a man worthy of all admiration, one of the purest glories of France, the great scientist whose work I admire, the profound and racy poet, the Virgil of the insects, who has brought us to our knees in the grass, the hermit whose life is the most wonderful example of wisdom, the noble figure that, under its black felt hat, makes Sérignan the complement of Maillane. ”

“ In his hands and in his books, as though by [378] 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 it is no easy matter to acquire a laboratory in the open fields, when harassed by a terrible anxiety about one’s daily bread. For forty years have I fought, with steadfast courage, against the paltry plagues of life; and the long-wished-for laboratory has come at last. What it has cost me in perseverance and relentless work I will not try to say. It has come; and with it—a more serious condition—perhaps a little leisure. ”

“ It was there, amid these trees, in this house, three thousand feet above the sea, in sight of the sturdy belfry of Lavaysse, that Jean-Henri Fabre was “born into the true life,” the life of the mind. Here, on this hillside, which directly faces the east, he made his earliest discoveries; here, one fine morning, as he will presently tell us, he discovered the sun; here, he saw not only the dawn of day, but also “that inward dawn, so far swept clear of the clouds of unconsciousness as to leave him a lasting memory.” ”

“ At one’s first step on the downy carpet, the eye is caught by a mushroom, not yet full-spread and looking like an egg dropped there by some vagrant Hen. It is the first that I have picked, the first that I have turned round and round in my fingers, inquiring into its structure with that vague curiosity which is the first awakening of observation.
Soon I find others, differing in size, shape, and colour. It is a real treat for my prentice eyes. Some are fashioned like bells, like extinguishers, like cups; some are drawn out into spindles, hollowed into funnels, rounded into hemispheres. ”

“ Beside the road I light upon a dead Mole, a Snake killed with a stone, victims both of human folly. The two corpses, already decomposing, have begun to smell. Whoso approaches with eyes that do not see turns away his head and passes on. The observer stops and lifts the remains with his foot; he looks. A world is swarming underneath; life is eagerly consuming the dead. ”

“ While he was soaring toward the heights, and making his way into unexplored regions, under the astounded gaze of the most eminent authorities, who saw themselves suddenly equalled and even surpassed, his scientific genius loved also to look downwards, to approach the beginners, to return, as it were, to the starting-point, in order to hold out his hand to them, and to trace out for them, through all the stages of science, the path that he had opened up for himself in the face of unheard-of difficulties. ”

“ He had detected the insect issuing from the ground, had dug at the spot where it made its appearance, and had found, at no great depth, the queer thing which he was bringing me.
Queer it was, and calculated to upset the little that I thought I knew. In shape it was exactly like a tiny pear that had lost all its fresh colour [268] and turned brown in rotting. What could this curious object be, this pretty plaything that seemed to have come from a turner’s workshop? Was it made by human hands? Was it a model of the fruit of the pear-tree intended for some children’s museum? One would say so. ”

“ A lantern hung upon the glazed window enables us to follow what happens. This is our distraction after the bustle of the day; it is like a visit to the theatre. And in this theatre the plays are so interesting that, as soon as the lantern is lit, all of us, old and young, come to take our places in the stalls; even down to Tom, the house-dog. Indifferent to the affairs of the Scorpions, like the true philosopher that he is, Tom lies at our feet and sleeps, but only with one eye, the other being always open upon his friends, the children. ”

“ I had been inside the chemist’s laboratory; I had had a glimpse of those wonderful jars and tubes. In teaching what matters most is not the thing taught, whether well or badly grasped: it is the stimulus given to the pupil’s latent aptitudes; it is the fulminate awaking the slumbering explosives. One day, I shall obtain on my own account that oxygen which ill-luck has denied me; one day, without a master, I shall yet learn chemistry. I do not recommend that method to anybody. Happy the man who is guided by a master’s word and example! ”

“ His excursions to the pond and the garden were little more to our little Jean-Henri than the preface to rather more distant excursions in the neighbourhood of Saint-Léons. The edge of the brook, the crest of the hill and the skirts of the beechwood which limit his horizon are the chosen spots to which his [53] curiosity leads him, and the favourite scene of his childish rambles. It is really delightful to watch him taking possession of these unknown territories and making the first inventory of the wealth that he will explore later on. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ha, my friend, isn’t it grand, this chemistry!
All of us have red-letter days in our lives. Some, the practical men, have been successful in business; they have made money and hold their heads high in consequence. Others, the thinkers, have gained ideas; they have opened a new account in the ledger of nature and silently taste the hallowed joys of truth. One of my great days was that of my first acquaintance with oxygen. ”

“ Henri Fabre had just discovered what he had vainly been seeking for more than thirty years. He now knew the secret of the Sacred Beetle’s nest; he knew that the loaf of the future nursling was not in the least like that which the insect rolls along the ground for its own use. He was now in a position to correct the error of centuries which he himself had accepted on the word of the masters. And thanks to whom? Thanks to a shepherd barely “brightened by a little reading” who had acted as his assistant. The poet was indeed right who said:
“On a souvent besoin d’un plus petit que soi.” ”

“ On the west, my village crumbles into an avalanche of garden-patches, in which plums and apples ripen. Low, bulging walls, blackened with the stains of lichens and mosses, support the terraces. The brook runs at the foot of the slope. It can be cleared almost everywhere at a bound. In the wider parts, flat stones standing out of the water serve as a foot-bridge. There is no such thing as a whirlpool, the terror of mothers when the children are away; it is nowhere more than knee-deep. ”

“ One of the great joys of the Sérignan hermit is, after supper, to isolate himself in the restful quietude of the harmas, and there to lend an attentive ear to the least vibrations of sound from that little living world which he can no longer see but can still hear. ”

“ If I neglected to furnish myself with this embarrassing adjunct to a long walk, my only resource against sunstroke was to lie down at full length behind some sandy knoll; and, when the veins in my temples were throbbing to bursting point, my last hope lay in putting my head down a rabbit-burrow. Such are one’s means of keeping cool in the Bois des Issarts.
What was there to draw him and retain him in such places, so unpropitious for the holiday of a professor on vacation? Ah! they are the favourite resort of the Bembex, one of his favourite insects. ”

“ Fabre, on the contrary, has eyes only for the insect. He observes it by and for itself, in the most trivial manifestations of its life: the living, active insect, with its labours and its habits, is the thing that interests him before all else, guiding his investigation of the infinite host of these tiny lives, which claim his attention on every hand; and in this world of insects wealth of artifice and capacities of the mental order seem to be in an inverse ratio to beauty of form and brilliance of colour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In front of a high expanse of earth a swarm stimulated by the sun, which floods it with light and heat, is dancing a crazy ballet. It is a hover of Anthophoræ, a few feet thick and covering an area which matches the sort of house-front formed by the perpendicular soil. From the tumultuous heart of the cloud rises a monotonous, threatening murmur, while the bewildered eye strays through the inextricable evolutions of the eager throng. With the rapidity of a lightning-flash, thousands of Anthophoræ are incessantly flying off and scattering over the country-side in search of booty ”

“ Passing to and fro, like a refreshing breeze that blows through the scientific aridities of the subject, we feel a twofold current of sympathy flowing from the father to his children and the naturalist to his insects.
Incapable of living without either of them, he found a way to devote himself to both, and so closely that the bond between them was truly one that held fast in life and death. Aglaé, Antonia, Claire, Emile, and Jules were recruited in turn, and Fabre informs us that their help was often of the greatest value in his entomological researches. ”

“ I make out some with flabby fins constantly flapping on their backs. What are they all doing there? What are their names? I do not know. And I stare at them for ever so long, held by the incomprehensible mystery of the waters.
At the place where the pond dribbles into the adjoining field are some alder-trees; and here I make a glorious find. It is a Beetle—not a very large one, oh no! He is smaller than a cherry-stone, but of an unutterable blue. I put the glorious one inside an empty snail-shell, which I plug up with a leaf. I shall admire that living jewel at my leisure, when I get back. ”

“ The brilliance, colour, and vitality which enhance without ever diminishing the high scientific value of his Souvenirs are due, no doubt, to his native qualities, to the limpid and harmonious Gallic genius of which he affords so admirable a type; he owes them also, as we have said, to all those tiny lives, so vibrant with diligence, and so picturesque, whose lights and shades and naïve emotions seem to have found their way into his own heart, into his style ”

“ No one can be less suspected of prejudice against them, since none has “glorified” them more abundantly; no one has spoken of them with greater admiration and sympathy; no one has more fully described their high achievements, and no one has revealed such unknown and incredible marvels on their behalf. It is enough to recall the “miracles” of the science and wisdom of the paralysers.
But far from invalidating the conclusion drawn from the obvious stupidity of the insect even in the actions which are its specialty, the science and wisdom of instinct afford it a striking confirmation. ”

“ I pick the narcissus and learn to gather, with the tip of my tongue, the tiny drops of honey that lie right at the bottom of the cleft corolla. I also learn that too-long indulgence in this quest always 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. ”

“ Dufour’s essays furnished the spark that made the inward flame burst into a magnificent blaze of light. Experience and the example of Pasteur added fuel to the fire, by teaching him to keep as far as possible in close contact with nature. Duruy’s good will brought to this blaze the vivifying breath without which all ardour becomes chilled and all light extinguished.
But genius does not merely develop under the impulse of the inner life, and the influence of the external life, which in some men is more potent and more active ”