(Man’s an apprentice, and his master, sorrow.)
Like so many others, Fabre learned this by cruel yet fortunate experience. He had to suffer poverty, lack of success, and persecution, yet these were to him so many stepping-stones by which he rose to the serene and solitary height where his genius could at last unfurl its wings in freedom and soar at will.
While Fabre had no ambition in respect of the Académie, he was ambitious where the University was concerned. Absolutely careless of titles and dignities, he was particularly eager to learn and to teach others as widely and as completely as possible. It was not enough for him to possess the knowledge requisite for a professor in a lycée, as it had not been enough to qualify for a primary schoolmaster. He wanted to attain that rare degree of knowledge which the higher education demands; he dreamed of occupying a chair of natural history in a faculty. Then he could free himself from the material tasks that constituted the danger as well as the merit of the secondary schoolmaster; he could devote himself at leisure to those wonderful natural sciences in which he glimpsed, [[185]]not only a vitality and inspiration that appealed to his habit of mind, but a wealth of new subjects to be treated, of rich veins to be mined.
To serve this noble ambition he needed the prestige of the degrees that would lead to the coveted chair. He won them as he had won those that gave him access to the second degree of instruction, without guide or master, by the sole effort of his mind and will.
In 1858 he easily won his degree as licentiate in the natural sciences before the Faculty of Toulouse.
It is an eloquent fact that instead of being, as it is for so many others, a goal and an end in itself, the licentiate was for Fabre but a brief parenthesis in his life of study, a stage no sooner reached than crossed on the infinite path of knowledge.
The next step was that of the doctorate. It was achieved with no less ardour and success than the previous one. This is almost all we can say of it, for the hero of this history speaks of it only incidentally, because it is connected with the story of one of his insects. But for the Languedocian Scorpion the Souvenirs would leave us in ignorance of his degree of Doctor of Science. [[186]]
It was not long before Fabre saw that it was not enough to possess all the scientific degrees you will in order to realise the long-cherished project of teaching natural history in a Faculty.
It was an inspector-general and a mathematician of the name of Rollier who undertook to inform him of this. Here is the incident as related by Fabre himself:
My colleagues used to call him the Crocodile. Perhaps he had given them a rough time in the course of his inspections. For all his boorish ways he was an excellent man at heart. I owe him a piece of advice which greatly influenced my future studies.
That day he suddenly appeared, alone, in the schoolroom, where I was taking a class in geometrical drawing. I must explain that, at this time, to eke out my ridiculous salary, and, at all costs, to provide a living for myself and my large family, I was a mighty pluralist, both inside the college and out. At the college in particular, after two hours of physics, chemistry or natural history, came, without respite, another two hours’ lesson, in which I taught the boys how to make a projection in descriptive geometry, how to draw a geodetic plane, a curve of any kind whose law of generation is known to us. This was called graphics.
The sudden irruption of the dread personage causes me no great flurry. Twelve o’clock strikes, [[187]]the pupils go out and we are left alone. I know him to be a geometrician. The transcendental curve, perfectly drawn, may work upon his gentler mood. I happen to have in my portfolio the very thing to please him. Fortune serves me well, in this special circumstance. Among my boys there is one who, though a regular dunce at everything else, is a first-rate hand with the square, the compass, and the drawing-pen: a deft-fingered numskull, in short.
With the aid of a system of tangents of which I first showed him the rule and the method of construction, my artist has obtained the ordinary cycloid, followed by the interior and the exterior epicycloid, and, lastly, the same curves both lengthened and shortened. His drawings are admirable Spiders’ webs, encircling the cunning curve in their net. The draughtsmanship is so accurate that it is easy to deduce from it beautiful theorems which would be very laborious to work out by the calculus.
I submit the geometrical masterpieces to my chief-inspector, who is himself said to be smitten with geometry. I modestly describe the method of construction, I call his attention to the fine deductions which the drawing enables one to make. It is labour lost: he gives but a heedless glance at my sheets and flings each on the table as I hand it to him.
“Alas!” said I to myself. “There is a storm brewing; the cycloid won’t save you; it’s your turn for a bite from the Crocodile!” [[188]]
Not a bit of it. Behold the bugbear growing genial. He sits down on a bench, with one leg here, another there, invites me to take a seat by his side and, in a moment, we are discussing graphics. Then, bluntly:
“Have you any money?” he asks.
Astounded at this strange question, I answer with a smile.
“Don’t be afraid,” he says. “Confide in me. I’m asking you in your own interest. Have you any capital?”
“I have no reason to be ashamed of my poverty, Monsieur l’inspecteur général. I frankly admit, I possess nothing; my means are limited to my modest salary.”
A frown greets my answer; and I hear, spoken in an undertone, as though my confessor were talking to himself:
“That’s sad, that’s really very sad.”
Astonished to find my penury treated as sad, I ask for an explanation: I was not accustomed to this solicitude on the part of my superiors.
“Why, yes, it’s a great pity,” continues the man reputed so terrible. “I have read your articles in the Annales des sciences naturelles. You have an observant mind, a taste for research, a lively style and a ready pen. You would have made a capital university-professor.”
“But that’s just what I’m aiming at!”
“Give up the idea.”
“Haven’t I the necessary attainment?”
“Yes, you have; but you have no capital.” [[189]]
The great obstacle stands revealed to me: woe to the poor in pocket! University teaching demands a private income. Be as ordinary, as commonplace as you please; but, above all, possess the coin that lets you cut a dash. That is the main thing; the rest is a secondary condition.
And the worthy man tells me what poverty in a frock-coat means. Though less of a pauper than I, he has known the mortification of it; he describes it to me, excitedly, in all its bitterness. I listen to him with an aching heart; I see the refuge which was to shelter my future crumbling before my eyes:
“You have done me a great service, sir,” I answer. “You put an end to my hesitation. For the moment, I give up my plan. I will first see if it is possible to earn the small fortune which I shall need if I am to teach in a decent manner.”
Thereupon we exchanged a friendship grip of the hand and parted. I never saw him again. His fatherly arguments had soon convinced me: I was prepared to hear the blunt truth. A few months earlier I had received my nomination as an assistant-lecturer in zoology at the university of Poitiers. They offered me a ludicrous salary. After paying the costs of moving, I should have had hardly three francs a day left; and, on this income, I should have had to keep my family, numbering seven in all. I hastened to decline the very great honour.
No, science ought not to practise these jests. If we humble persons are of use to her, she should [[190]]at least enable us to live. If she can’t do that, then let her leave us to break stones on the highway. Oh, yes, I was prepared for the truth when that honest fellow talked to me of frock-coated poverty! I am telling the story of a not very distant past. Since then things have improved considerably; but, when the pear was properly ripened, I was no longer of an age to pick it.