It will be no less interesting to see by what varied and concurrent circumstances, by what personal interventions, a virtuosity and an activity so well co-ordinated were stimulated, directed and controlled, sustained and protected [[144]]against all causes of deviation or discouragement.
Not in vain does a man breathe at birth the air of the mountain-tops; not in vain does he live his earliest summers with the vision of the heights before him. He retains as it were a nostalgia for the heights, and a wild longing to climb them. It will not surprise us to learn that the child of the Haut-Rouergue, transplanted, by the vicissitudes of life, from the Lévézou mountains to the Provençal plains, should calm his brain, burning with the stress of study, by gazing at Mont Ventoux, and anticipating his approaching expedition to the mountain of his dreams.[2] We shall not be surprised to find that he never allowed himself to be repulsed by the difficulties of the enterprise, and that more than a score of ascents failed to produce satiety, whereas many another found his courage and his interest evaporate almost at the outset.[3] For the ascent of Mont Ventoux is a difficult task, more difficult than that of the majority of our mountains:
One might best compare the Ventoux with a heap of stones broken up for road-mending purposes. [[145]]Raise this heap suddenly to a height of a mile and a quarter, increase its base in proportion, cover the white of the limestone with the black stain of the forests, and you have a clear idea of the general aspect of the mountain. This accumulation of rubbish—sometimes small chips, sometimes huge blocks—rises from the plain without preliminary slopes or successive terraces that would render the ascent less arduous by dividing it into stages. The climb begins at once by rocky paths, the best of which is worse than the surface of a road newly strewn with stones, and continues, becoming ever rougher and rougher, right to the summit, the height of which is 6270 feet. Green swards, babbling brooks, the spacious shade of venerable trees, all the things, in short, that lend such charm to other mountains, are here unknown and are replaced by an interminable bed of limestone broken into scales, which slip under our feet with a sharp, almost metallic “click.” By way of cascades the Ventoux has rills of stones; the rattle of falling rocks takes the place of the whispering waters.[4]
But the unsatisfied eagerness that draws the exile from our cool green hills to repeat, again and again, the ascent of the rocky Provençal height, is based on something more than sensitiveness to impressions and a pre-established harmony; he is also strongly attracted [[146]]by the peculiar and unique variety of the flora growing upon its slopes:
Thanks to its isolated position, which leaves it freely exposed on every side to atmospheric influences; thanks also to its height, which makes it the topmost point of France within the frontiers of either the Alps or the Pyrenees, our bare Provençal mountain, Mont Ventoux, lends itself remarkably well to the study of the climatic distribution of plants. At its base the tender olive thrives, with all that multitude of semi-ligneous plants, such as the thyme, whose aromatic fragrance calls for the sun of the Mediterranean regions; on the summit, mantled with snow for at least half the year, the ground is covered with a northern flora, borrowed to some extent from Arctic shores. Half a day’s journey in an upward direction brings before our eyes a succession of the chief vegetable types which we should find in the course of a long voyage from south to north along the same meridian.[5]
To any one with any love of plants, to any one with blood in his veins, the expedition was a tempting one. So we see him set out for the twenty-third time in company with two colleagues[6] and five others. Let us join them if we wish to make the acquaintance of the [[147]]botanist of Mont Ventoux as well as the botany; for Fabre is one who throws himself wholly into all that he does, and his history can no more be divorced from that of his plants than from that of his beloved insects.
It is four o’clock in the morning. At the head of the caravan walks Triboulet, with his Mule and his Ass: Triboulet, the Nestor of the Ventoux guides. My botanical colleagues inspect the vegetation on either side of the road by the cold light of the dawn; the others talk. I follow the party with a barometer slung from my shoulder and a note-book and pencil in my hand.
My barometer, intended for taking the altitude of the principal botanical halts, soon becomes a pretext for attacks on the gourd with the rum. No sooner is a noteworthy plant observed than somebody cries:
“Quick, let’s look at the barometer!”
And we all crowd around the gourd, the scientific instrument coming later. The coolness of the morning and our walk make us appreciate these references to the barometer so thoroughly that the level of the stimulant falls even more swiftly than that of the mercury. In the interests of the immediate future I must consult Torricelli’s tube a little less often.
As the temperature grows too cold for them, first the oak and the ilex disappear by degrees; then the vine and the almond-tree; and next the mulberry, [[148]]the walnut-tree, and the white oak. Box becomes plentiful. We enter upon a monotonous region extending from the end of the cultivated fields to the lower boundary of the beech-woods, where the predominant plant is Satureia montana, the winter savory, known here by its popular name of pébré d’asé, Ass’s pepper, because of the acrid flavour of its tiny leaves, impregnated with essential oil. Certain small cheeses forming part of our stores are powdered with this strong spice. Already more than one of us is biting into them in imagination and casting hungry glances at the provision bags carried by the Mule. Our hard morning exercise has brought appetite, and more than appetite, a devouring hunger, what Horace calls latrans stomachus. I teach my colleagues how to stay this rumbling stomach until they reach the next halt; I show them a little sorrel-plant, with arrow-head leaves, the Rumex scutatus, or French sorrel; and, practising what I preach, I pick a mouthful. At first they laugh at my suggestion. I let them laugh and soon see them all occupied, each more eagerly than his fellow, in plucking the precious sorrel.
While chewing the acid leaves we come to the beeches. These are first big, solitary bushes, trailing on the ground; soon after, dwarf trees, clustering close together; and, finally, mighty trunks, forming a dense and gloomy forest, whose soil is a mass of rough limestone blocks. Bowed down in winter by the weight of the snow, battered all the year round by the fierce gusts of the Mistral, many of [[149]]the trees have lost their branches and are twisted into grotesque postures, or even lie flat on the ground. An hour or more is spent in crossing this wooded zone, which from a distance shows against the sides of the Ventoux like a black belt. Then once more the beeches become bushy and scattered. We have reached their upper boundary and, to the great relief of all of us, despite the sorrel-leaves, we have also reached the stopping-place selected for our lunch.
We are at the source of the Grave, a slender stream of water caught, as it bubbles from the ground, in a series of long beech-trunk troughs, where the mountain shepherds come to water their flocks. The temperature of the spring is 45° F.; and its coolness is a priceless boon for us who have come from the sultry oven of the plain. The cloth is spread on a charming carpet of Alpine plants, with glittering among them the thyme-leaved paronychia, whose wide, thin bracts look like silver scales. The food is taken out of the bags, the bottles extracted from their bed of hay. On this side are the joints, the legs of mutton stuffed with garlic, the stacks of loaves; on that, the tasteless chickens, for our grinders to toy with presently, when the edge has been taken off our appetite. At no great distance, set in a place of honour, are the Ventoux cheeses spiced with winter savory, the little pébré d’asé cheeses, flanked by Arles sausages, whose pink flesh is mottled with cubes of bacon and whole peppercorns. Over here, in this corner, are green olives still dripping with brine and black [[150]]olives soaking in oil; in that other, Cavaillon melons, some white, some orange, to suit every taste; and, down there, a jar of anchovies which make you drink hard and so keep your strength up. Lastly, the bottles are cooling in the ice-cold water of the trough over there. Have we forgotten anything? Yes, we have not mentioned the crowning side-dish, the onions, to be eaten raw with salt. Our two Parisians—for we have two among us, my fellow-botanists—are at first a little startled by this very invigorating bill of fare; soon they will be the first to burst into praises.[7]
But we will pass over the remarks made at breakfast and the incidents of the last stage of the climb; we will make direct for the summit of Mont Ventoux, where the leader of the expedition will give us a glimpse of the delights that await the naturalist at the end of his climb when he has taken the precaution to make it at the right moment:
Would you do some really fruitful botanising? Be there in the first fortnight of July; above all, be ahead of the grazing herds: where the sheep has browsed you will gather none but wretched leavings. While still spared by the hungry flocks, the top of the Ventoux in July is a literal bed of flowers; its loose stony surface is studded with [[151]]them. My memory recalls, all streaming with the morning dew, those elegant tufts of Androsace villosa, with its pink-centred white blooms; the Mont-Cenis violet, spreading its great blue blossoms over the chips of limestone; the spikenard valerian, which blends the sweet perfume of its flowers with the offensive odour of its roots; the wedge-leaved globularia, forming close carpets of bright green dotted with blue capitula; the Alpine forget-me-not, whose blue rivals that of the skies; the Candolla candy-tuft, whose tiny stalk bears a dense head of little white flowers and goes winding among the loose stones.[8]
Our naturalist is evidently fascinated by so many beauties, of such delicate quality. Will he not be tempted to forsake his insects for the flowers? Will not the botanical wealth of the Ventoux make him forget the entomological wonders of the “Sunken Road”? No; he is saved from such an error by God and the good genius that watches over the destiny of him who is to become the prince of entomologists. Even in his lectures on botanical subjects the insects are given their due; and now from time to time they claim his attention and seduce him from the spectacle of the vegetable curiosities which form the principal motive of [[152]]the expedition; it is now the Ammophila and now the Decticus[9] that crosses the path of the naturalist in search of plants and flowers, recalling, by some of the most curious problems of entomology, the first beginnings of his vocation and the great task of his life.