[2] Souvenirs, VII., pp. 29, 33. The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xv., “Suicide or Hypnosis?” [↑]
[3] Souvenirs, VI., p. 61. The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My Schooling.” [↑]
[4] Souvenirs, II., pp. 41–44, 46. Hunting Wasps, chap. xx., “A Modern Theory of Instinct.” [↑]
[5] Souvenirs, VI., p. 61. The Life of the Fly, chap. vi., “My Schooling.” [↑]
CHAPTER VI
THE PUPIL TEACHER: AVIGNON (1841–43)
The stroke of misfortune which suddenly interrupted Jean-Henri’s studies at the Rodez lycée made him an exile from his father’s house and banished him from his native countryside.
For the second time he was, as it were, dropped upon the road like Perrault’s Tom Thumb. And the fairy-tale comes to life again in the Odyssey of the poor boy who wandered at random, picking up his food at hazard, facing misfortune with a stout heart, and smiling whenever he could at the poem of Nature, who always had some fresh surprise in store for him.
Who can fail to be moved by pity and admiration, beholding him set forth upon the broad, white highroads, a wandering child, all but lost, seeking his way, seeking his livelihood even, without other relief, in his extremity of distress, and almost without other food than his love of Nature and his passion [[75]]for learning? See him, for example, on the day when, between Beaucaire and Nîmes, he contrived to make his dinner off a few bunches of grapes “plucked furtively at the edge of a field, after exchanging the poor remnant of his last halfpence for a little volume of Réboul’s poems; soothing his hunger by intoxicating himself with the verses of the workman poet,”[1] whose inspiration was of so noble and Christian a character.