Incapable of living without either of them, he found a way to devote himself to both, and so closely that the bond between them was truly one that held fast in life and death. Aglaé, Antonia, Claire, Emile, and Jules were recruited in turn, and Fabre informs us that their help was often of the greatest value in his entomological researches. And he liked to attach his children’s names to those of his insects and his discoveries. Jules above all was distinguished by these entomological honours, which a father’s gratitude piously laid, with regretful tears, upon his untimely grave.
Not content with dedicating to him the first volume of his Souvenirs, Fabre again [[206]]did homage to Jules in the second volume:
To my Son Jules.—Beloved child, my zealous collaborator in the study of insects, my perspicacious assistant in the study of plants, it was for your sake that I began this volume; I have continued it for the sake of your memory, and I shall continue it in the bitterness of my mourning. Ah! how hateful is death when it reaps the flower in all the radiance of its blossoming! Your mother and your sisters bring to your tomb wreaths gathered in the rustic flower-bed that you delighted in. To these wreaths, faded by a day’s sunshine, I add this book, which, I hope, will have a to-morrow. It seems to me that it thus prolongs our common studies, fortified as I am by my indomitable faith in a reawakening in the Beyond.[2]
When the separation from loved ones wounds the heart so grievously and wrings from the soul such accents of hope and faith, we need seek no other standard to judge a man’s moral worth.
The spectacle of a man, thus moved by the death of his dear ones, who yet welcomes his own death with serenity, is admirable. Such was the case with Fabre, as proved by the following episode of the same date—i.e. 1879. [[207]]
I am living at Orange in the year 1879. My house stands alone among the fields.…
After a hard winter, when the snow had lain on the ground for a fortnight, I wanted once more to look into the matter of my Halicti. I was in bed with pneumonia and to all appearances at the point of death. I had little or no pain, thank God, but extreme difficulty in living. With the little lucidity left to me, being able to do no other sort of observing, I observed myself dying; I watched with a certain interest the gradual falling to pieces of my poor machinery. Were it not for the terror of leaving my family, who were still young, I would gladly have departed. The after-life must have so many higher and fairer truths to teach us.
My hour had not yet come. When the little lamps of thought began to emerge, all flickering, from the dusk of unconsciousness, I wished to take leave of the Hymenoptera, my fondest joy, and first of all of my neighbour, the Halictus.[3] My son Emile took the spade and went and dug the frozen ground. Not a male was found, of course; but there were plenty of females, numbed with the cold in their cells.
A few were brought for me to see, and, roused from their torpor by the warmth of the room, they [[208]]began to wander about my bed, where I followed them vaguely with my failing eyes.[4]
It is very true that, on leaving Orange, Fabre still had “much to learn” from the company of Hymenoptera and other insects—the great period of his entomological career had not yet begun—but the regret with which he left Orange was soon dissipated by the wealth of observations and the facilities for study which his new home offered him.
Living in retirement at Orange, on the confines of the town, at the gate of the fields, he was as yet only in sight of the promised land. At Sérignan, in the quiet obscurity of quite a little village, in the very midst of “the great museum of the fields,” he was truly in possession of the country of his dreams; he had found his ideal abiding-place, the spot which was in most perfect conformity with his tastes and most favourable to his genius. [[209]]
[1] Souvenirs, II., pp. 202–203. The Life of the Spider, chap. i., “The Black-bellied Tarantula.” [↑]