Fabre, Poet of Science | Page 5

and have had recourse to all that portion of his correspondence which fortunately fell into my hands.
This correspondence, to be truthful, does not appear at any time to have been very assiduous. Fabre, as we shall see in the story of his life (Introduction/3.), disliked writing letters, both in his studious youth and during the later period of isolation and silence.
On the other hand, although he wrote but little, he never wrote with difficulty or as a mere matter of duty. Among all the letters which I have succeeded in collecting there are scarcely any that are not of interest from one point of view or another. No frivolous narratives, no futile acquaintances, no commonplace intimacies; everything in his life is serious, and everything makes for a goal.
But we must set apart, as surpassing all others in interest, the letters which Fabre addressed to his brother during the years spent as schoolmaster at Carpentras or Ajaccio; for these are more especially instructive in respect of the almost unknown years of his youth; these most of all reveal his personality and are one of the finest illustrations that could be given of his life, a true poem of energy and disinterested labour.
I have to thank M. Fr��d��ric Fabre, who, in his fraternal piety, has generously placed all his family records at my disposal, and also his two sons, my dear friends Antonin Fabre, councillor at the Court of N?mes, and Henri Fabre, of Avignon, for these precious documents; and I take this opportunity of expressing my profound gratitude.
Let me at the same time thank all those who have associated themselves with my efforts by supplying me with letters in their possession and furnishing me with personal information; and in particular Mme Henry Devillario, M. Achard, and M. J. Belleudy, ex-prefect of Vaucluse; not forgetting M. Louis Charrasse, teacher at Beaumont-d'Orange, and M. Vayssi��res, professor of the Faculty of Sciences at Marseilles, all of whom I have to thank for personal and intimate information.
I must also express my gratitude to M. Henri Bergson, Professor Bouvier, and the learned M. Paul Marchal for the advice and the valuable suggestions which they offered me during the preparation of this book.
I shall feel fully repaid for my pains if this "Life" of one of the greatest of the world's naturalists, by enabling men to know him better, also leads them to love him the more.
FABRE, POET OF SCIENCE.
CHAPTER 1.
THE INTUITION OF NATURE.
Each thing created, says Emerson, has its painter or its poet. Like the enchanted princess of the fairy-tales, it awaits its predestined liberator.
Every part of nature has its mystery and its beauty, its logic and its explanation; and the epigraph given me by Fabre himself, which appears 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 for him been sufficient to evoke the most important, the most fascinating problems, and have revealed a whole world of miracle and poetry.
He saw the light at Saint-L��ons, a little commune of the canton of Vezins in the Haut Rouergue, on the 22nd December, 1823, some seven years earlier than Mistral, his most famous neighbour, the greater lustre of whose celebrity was to eclipse his own.
Here he essayed his earliest steps; here he stammered his first syllables.
His early childhood, however, was passed almost wholly at Malaval, a tiny hamlet in the parish of Lavaysse, whose belfry was visible at quite a short distance; but to reach it one had to travel nearly twenty-five rough, mountainous miles, through a whole green countryside; green, but bare, and lacking in charm. (1/1.)
All his paternal forebears came from Malaval, and thence one day his father, Antoine Fabre, came to dwell at Saint-L��ons, as a consequence of his marriage with the daughter of the huissier, Victoire Salgues, and in order to prepare himself, as working apprentice, in the tricks and quibbles of the law. (1/2.)
In the roads of Malaval, bordered with brambles, in the glades of bracken, and amid the meadows of broom, he received his first impressions of nature. At Malaval too lived his grandmother, the good old woman who could lull him to sleep at night with beautiful stories and simple legends, while she wound her distaff or spun her bobbin.
But what were all these imaginary marvels, what were the ogres who smelt fresh meat, or "the fairies who turned pumpkins into coaches and lizards into footmen" beside all the marvels of reality, which already he was beginning to perceive?
For above all things he was born a poet: a poet by instinct and by vocation. From his earliest childhood, "the brain hardly released from the swaddling-bands of unconsciousness," the things of the outer world left a profound and living impression. As far back as he