[3] The Halicti produce two generations each year: one, in the spring, is the issue of mothers who, fecundated in the autumn, have passed through the winter; the other, produced in the summer, is the fruit of parthenogenesis, that is, of procreation by the maternal virtualities alone. Of the concourse of the two sexes only females are born; parthenogenesis gives rise to both males and females. [↑]
[4] Souvenirs, VIII., pp. 144–160. The Bramble-Bees, chap. xiv., “Parthenogenesis.” It was only a later date, by combining a series of successive observations which were spread over a great length of years, that he was able to define exactly the various modes of generation employed by the Halicti, as described in the preceding note. [↑]
CHAPTER XIV
THE HERMIT OF SÉRIGNAN (1879–1910)
Starting from Orange and crossing the Aygues, a torrent whose muddy waters are lost in the Rhône, but whose bed is dried by the July and August suns, leaving only a desert of pebbles, where the Mason-bee builds her pretty turrets of rock-work, we come presently to the Sérignaise country; an arid, stony tract, planted with vines and olives, coloured a rusty red, or touched here and there with almost the hue of blood; and here and there a grove of cypress makes a sombre blot. To the north runs a long black line of hills, covered with box and ilex and the giant heather of the south. Far in the distance, to the east, the immense plain is closed in by the wall of Saint-Amant and the ridge of the Dentelle, behind which the lofty Ventoux rears its rocky, cloven bosom abruptly to the clouds. At the end of a few miles of dusty road, swept by the powerful breath of the mistral, we suddenly reach a little village. It is a curious little community, with its central street adorned by a double row of plane-trees, its leaping fountains, and its almost Italian air. The houses are lime-washed, with flat roofs; and sometimes, at the side of some small or decrepit dwelling, we see the unexpected [[210]]curves of a loggia. At a distance the façade of the church has the harmonious lines of a little antique temple; close at hand is the graceful campanile, an old octagonal tower surmounted by a narrow mitre wrought in hammered iron, in the midst of which are seen the black profiles of the bells.
At the entrance of the little market-town, in a solitary corner, in the centre of an enclosure of lofty walls, which are taller than the crests of the pines and cypresses, Fabre’s dwelling is hidden away. A pink house with green shutters, half-hidden amid the sombre foliage, appears at the end of an alley of lilacs, “which sway in the spring under the weight of their balmy thyrsi.” Before the house are the shady plane-trees, where during the burning hours of August the cicada of the flowering ash, the deafening cacan, concealed beneath the leaves, fills the hot atmosphere with its eager cries, the only sound that disturbs the profound silence of this solitude.
There, in this “hermit’s retreat,” as he himself has defined it, the sage is voluntarily sequestered; a true saint of science, an ascetic living only on fruits, vegetables, and a little wine; so in love with retirement that even in the village he was for a long time almost unknown, so careful was he to go round instead of through it on his way to the neighbouring mountain, where he would often spend whole days alone with wild nature.
It is in this silent Thebaïd, so far from the atmosphere of cities, the vain agitations and storms of [[211]]the world, that his life has been passed, in unchanging uniformity; and here he has been able to pursue, with resolute labour and incredible patience, that prodigious series of marvellous observations which for nearly fifty years he has never ceased to accumulate.
François Sicard, in his faultless medal and his admirable bust, has succeeded with rare felicity in reproducing for posterity this rugged, shaven face, full of laborious years; a peasant face, stamped with originality, under the wide felt hat of Provence; touched with geniality and benevolence, yet reflecting a world of energy. Sicard has fixed for ever this strange mask; the thin cheeks, ploughed into deep furrows, the strained nose, the pendent wrinkles of the throat, the thin, shrivelled lips, with an indescribable fold of bitterness at the corners of the mouth. The hair, tossed back, falls in fine curls over the ears, revealing a high, rounded forehead, obstinate and full of thought. But what chisel, what graver could reproduce the surprising shrewdness of that gaze, eclipsed from time to time by a convulsive tremor of the eyelids! What Holbein, what Chardin could render the almost extraordinary brilliance of those black eyes, those dilated pupils—the eyes of a prophet, a seer; singularly wide and deeply set, as though gazing always upon the mystery of things, as though made expressly to scrutinise Nature and decipher her enigmas? Above the orbits, two short, bristling eye-brows seem set there to guide the vision; one, by dint of knitting itself above the magnifying-glass, [[212]]has retained an indelible fold of continual attention; the other, on the contrary, always updrawn, has the look of defying the interlocutor, of foreseeing his objections, of waiting with an ever-ready return-thrust.[1]
Is not the reader dazzled by the brilliant colours, the warm tones of this picture? The Provençal light shines upon his face, splendidly avenging us for the obscurity which had too long withheld him from the admiration of the world.
We could not choose a better guide to introduce us to the home of the Hermit of Sérignan, and to give us access to his person.
In front of the house, beyond a low wall, of a comfortable height to lean on, is the most unexpected and improbable of gardens, a kind of couderc—that is, a tract of poor, stony ground, of which the naturalist has made a sort of wild park, jealously protected from the access of the profane, and literally invaded by all sorts of plants and insects. Fabre speaks of this retreat as follows: