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” [[367]]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.[2] 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”[3]—that the girl “cronies,” as they called one another in their group, had come to present their heart-felt [[368]]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[4] 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: [[369]]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. [[370]]
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 [[371]]clergy,[5] 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 [[372]]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, [[373]]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[6] 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 [[374]]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.”[7]
(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.)
[[375]]
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 [[376]]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!”[8]
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.[9]
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 [[377]]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.)