CHAPTER V
AT THE COLLEGE OF RODEZ
We have learned what we may of the schoolboy of Saint-Léons. Let us follow him to the Lycée of Rodez, which he entered as a day-boy at the age of ten:
I come to the time when I was ten years old and at Rodez College. My functions as a serving-boy in the chapel entitled me to free instruction as a day-boarder. There were four of us in white surplices and red skull-caps and cassocks. I was the youngest of the party, and did little more than walk on. I counted as a unit; and that was about all, for I was never certain when to ring the bell or when to move the missal from one side of the altar to the other. I was all of a tremble when we gathered, two on this side, two on that, with genuflexions, in the middle of the sanctuary, to intone the Domine, salvum fac regem at the end of mass. Let me make a confession: tongue-tied with shyness, I used to leave it to the others.
Nevertheless, I was well thought of, for, in the school, I cut a good figure in composition and translation. In that classical atmosphere there was talk [[66]]of Procas, King of Alba, and of his two sons, Numitor and Amulius. We heard of Cynægirus, the strong-jawed man, who, having lost his two hands in battle, seized and held a Persian galley with his teeth, and of Cadmus the Phœnician, who sowed a dragon’s teeth as though they were beans, and gathered his harvest in the shape of a host of armed men, who killed one another as they rose up from the ground. The only one who survived the slaughter was one as tough as leather, presumably the son of the big back grinder.
Had they talked to me about the man in the moon, I could not have been more startled. I made up for it with my animals, which I was far from forgetting amid this phantasmagoria of heroes and demigods. While honouring the exploits of Cadmus and Cynægirus, I hardly ever failed, on Sundays and Thursdays, to go and see if the cowslip or the yellow daffodil was making its appearance in the meadows, if the Linnet was hatching on the juniper-bushes, if the Cockchafers were plopping down from the wind-shaken poplars. Thus was the sacred spark kept aglow, ever brighter than before.[1]
At Rodez, as at Saint-Léons, natural objects provided him with the chief material of his recreations:
The thrice-blessed Thursday had come; our bit of translation was done, our dozen Greek roots had [[67]]been learnt by heart; and we trooped down to the far end of the valley, so many bands of madcaps. With our trousers turned up to our knees, we exploited, artless fishermen that we were, the peaceful waters of the river, the Aveyron. What we hoped to catch was the Loach, no bigger than our little finger, but tempting, thanks to his immobility on the sand amid the water-weeds. We fully expected to transfix him with our trident, a fork.
This miraculous catch, the object of such shouts of triumph when it succeeded, was very rarely vouchsafed to us; the Loach, the rascal, saw the fork coming and with three strokes of his tail disappeared!
We found compensation in the apple-trees in the neighbouring pastures. The apple has from all time been the urchin’s delight, above all when plucked from a tree which does not belong to him. Our pockets were soon crammed with the forbidden fruit.
Another distraction awaited us. Flocks of Turkeys were not rare, roaming at their own sweet will and gobbling up the Locusts around the farms. If no watcher hove in sight, we had great sport. Each of us would seize a Turkey, tuck her head under her wing, rock it in this attitude for a moment and then place her on the ground, lying on her side. The bird no longer budged. The whole flock of Turkeys was subjected to our hypnotic handling; and the meadow assumed the aspect of a battle-field strewn with the dead and dying.
And now look out for the farmer’s wife! The [[68]]loud gobbling of the harassed birds had told her of our wicked pranks. She would run up armed with a whip. But we had good legs in those days! And we had a good laugh too, behind the hedges, which favoured our retreat!
How did we, the little Rodez schoolboys, learn the secret of the Turkey’s slumber? It was certainly not in our books. Coming from no one knows where, indestructible as everything that enters into children’s games, it was handed down, from time immemorial, from one initiate to another.
Things are just the same to-day in my village of Sérignan, where there are numbers of youthful adepts in the art of putting poultry to sleep. Science often has very humble beginnings. There is nothing to tell us that the mischief of a pack of idle urchins is not the starting-point of our knowledge of hypnosis.[2]
The incident of which we have just read was the starting-point of the investigations which Fabre was to undertake fifty years later concerning the artificial sleep of birds and insects.
If he had hearkened only to his passion for Nature, the schoolboy of Rodez would soon have become one of the most ardent disciples of the school of the woods; that is, [[69]]he would have played truant. But he was, happily, from an early age, a worker; because industry was for him both a family inheritance and an imperious necessity. Had he not been sent to college on condition of winning prizes? Could he show himself an idle scholar when he saw his parents wearing themselves out in order to supply the needs of their family? Moreover, as he rose from class to class, the love of learning increased within him. Latin ceased to be repulsive, and became even wholly sympathetic, when he found, in the fifth class, thanks to the genius of Virgil, that it dignified the humble joys of rural life by the emphasis of skilfully chosen words and brilliant colours of the poet:
By easy stages I came to Virgil, and was much smitten with Melibœus, Corydon, Menalcas, Damœtas, and the rest of them. The scandals of the ancient shepherds fortunately passed unnoticed; and within the frame in which the characters moved were exquisite details concerning the Bee, the Cicada, the Turtle-dove, the Crow, the Nanny-goat, and the golden broom. A veritable delight were these stories of the fields, sung in sonorous verse; and the Latin poet left a lasting impression on my classical recollections.[3]