Corsica, which vouchsafed Fabre the revelation of his vocation as naturalist, inspired him also with such love and enthusiasm as he had never hitherto known.
There the intense impressionability which the little peasant of Aveyron received at birth could only be confirmed and increased. He felt that this superb and luxuriant nature was made for him, and that he was born for it; to understand and interpret it. He would lose himself in a delicious intoxication, amid the deep woodlands, the mountains rich with [[125]]scented flowers, wandering through the maquis, the myrtle scrub, through jungles of lentisk and arbutus; barely containing his emotion when he passed beneath the great secular chestnut-trees of Bastelica, with their enormous trunks and leafy boughs, whose sombre majesty inspired in him a sort of melancholy at once poetic and religious. Before the sea, with its infinite distances, he lingered in ecstasy, listening to the song of the waves, and gathering the marvellous shells which the snow-white breakers left upon the beach, and whose unfamiliar forms filled him with delight.
Not that he had time to make a very rich harvest of facts and observations in this wonderful country. The most visible result of his sojourn in the “isle of beauty,” and the greatest benefit which he derived from it, seems to have been the fact that it brought his heart and mind—if I may be permitted the expression—into a state of entomological grace; I mean into a state of living and acting truly and beautifully in accordance with his vocation as a naturalist.
So it is that the name of this radiant daughter of the Mediterranean, which is so often written by his pen, seems to find its way thither in order to evoke one of the brightest [[126]]and most joyful periods of his life, rather than to localise observations or circumstantial experiences.
There is, however, one of these reminiscences which, despite the extreme sobriety of the characteristics recorded, denotes, in the youthful entomologist, a mind peculiarly attentive to the slightest indications and the least movements of his future clients of the animal world. It deals with the Spider,[5] that ill-famed creature whom all hasten to crush underfoot as an odious and maleficent insect, but which the entomologist holds in high esteem for its talents as a spinner, its hunting expedients, and other highly interesting characteristics. The author has just explained, on behalf of the poor, supposedly poisonous insect, that for us its bite has no serious results, producing less effect than the bite of a gnat: “Nevertheless, a few are to be feared; and foremost among these is the Malmignatte, the terror of the Corsican peasantry.”
By good fortune the only Tarantula that bit him in Corsica was the Tarantula of natural history.
But while he was not injured by the spiders, [[127]]he was less fortunate in defending himself against the mosquitoes, from whose bites he contracted an attack of malaria, in the myrtle maquis which he doubtless haunted more persistently than was wise.
This unfortunate incident persuaded him to apply for an appointment in France. [[128]]
[1] Esprit Requien (1788–1851), a French naturalist and collector, director of the museum and botanical gardens at Avignon and author of several works on botany and conchology.—A. T. de M. [↑]