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 [[387]]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 [[388]]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 [[389]]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,[12] “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.”