THE SCHOOLMASTER: CARPENTRAS (CONTINUED)
If he had hearkened only to his tastes, the young schoolmaster of Carpentras would have devoted to the world of animals all the time that was not taken up by his pupils. But his profession itself and the requirements of his future prevented him from following the dominant attraction unchecked. He had formed a resolve “to raise himself above the level of the primary school, which at that time barely fed its teachers,” and to make a place for himself in the ranks of secondary instruction. He had, therefore, to renounce his natural history, since that as yet had no place in the curriculum, and he had to take up mathematics.
So we see him submerged in conic sections and the differential and integral calculus, without a guide, without advice, confronted for days on end by some obscure difficulty which tenacious meditation eventually robbed of its mystery. Mathematics, however, [[100]]formed only the first part of his programme, which comprised also physics and chemistry. These, no doubt, were less abstruse sciences, but the necessary equipment was also less simple. He needed a laboratory; he could not run to the expense of one; so he made one, an “impossible” one, by force of industry.
In this desperate struggle what became of the favourite branch of science of this great nature-lover? It was necessarily sacrificed.
“I reprimanded myself,” he says, “at the slightest longing for emancipation, fearing to let myself be seduced by some new grass, some unknown beetle. I did violence to myself. My books on natural history were condemned to oblivion, relegated to the bottom of a trunk.”
A fine lesson in perseverance in work and sacrifice, which all those who are inspired by some noble desire or merely by some legitimate ambition will find useful and comforting to contemplate:
“Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam
Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit;
Abstinuit venere et vino.”[1]
But this matter must be expounded in greater detail, were it only to confirm the [[101]]courage of other students disinherited by fortune, reduced as was Fabre to shaping themselves in the “harsh school of isolation.” They will witness miracles of perseverance; and they will realise that opportunities of exercising the mind and strengthening the will are seldom lacking to those who understand how to seize them.