CHAPTER XV
THE HERMIT OF SÉRIGNAN (CONTINUED)
While the domain of the landowner and manufacturer ended at the walls of his field of pebbles and botanical garden, that of the entomologist extended far beyond them, as far as his eyes could see and his steps lead him.
For this reason a panoramic view of the surrounding country is desirable.
With its peaceful plains, its gracious hills, overgrown with strawberry-tree and ilex, and the sublime mountain of Provence rising upon the horizon, with its varied outlines and its sun-illumined flanks, the Sérignan landscape gently forces itself upon the spectator’s attention. And if the spirit moved him, Fabre had only to raise his head from his apparatus to find all about him something to soothe the eye and refresh the mind.
But however keen his feeling for the beauties of Nature, it is not so much as artist or dilettante but as the insect historiographer that he appreciates the value of the landscape, [[224]]and the wealth of the plains and hills outspread before him.
From this point of view the whole surroundings of his hermitage seem as though created to continue and complete the harmas, and the scientific pleasures which this affords him.
The Gymnopleuri abound in the pebbly plains of the neighbourhood, where the sheep pass amid the lavender and thyme; and, should we wish to vary the scene of observation, the mountain[1] is but a few hundred steps away, with its tangle of arbutus, rock-roses, and arborescent heather; with its sandy spaces dear to the Bembeces; with its marly slopes exploited by different Wasps and Bees.
We have already made mention of the Aygues, and the time has come to pay it a formal visit, as one of the favourite haunts of the Sérignan hermit:
The geographers define the Aygues as a watercourse. As an eye-witness I should call it rather a stream of flat pebbles. Understand me: I do not mean that the dry pebbles flow of their own accord; the feeble incline would not permit of such an avalanche. But let it rain: then they will flow. Then, from my home, which is more than a mile distant, I hear the uproar of the clashing pebbles. [[225]]
During the greater part of the year the Aygues is a vast sheet of flat white stones; of the torrent only the bed is left, a furrow of enormous width, comparable to that of its mighty neighbour, the Rhône. When persistent rains fall, when the snows melt on the slopes of the Alps, the dry furrow fills for a few days, complaining, overflowing to a great distance, and displacing, amid the uproar, its pebbly banks. Return a week later: the din of the flood is succeeded by silence. The terrible waters have disappeared, leaving on the banks, as a trace of their brief passage, some wretched muddy puddles quickly drunk up by the sun.
These sudden floods bring a thousand living gleanings, swept off the flanks of the mountains. The dry bed of the Aygues is a most curious botanical garden. You may find there numbers of vegetable species swept down from the higher regions, some temporary, dying without offspring in a season, others permanent, adapting themselves to the new climate. They come from far away from a great height, these exiles; to pluck certain of them in their actual home you would have to climb Ventoux, passing the girdle of beeches and reaching the height at which woody vegetation ceases.
An insect which is sometimes found by chance in the osier-beds of the Aygues, and is by itself worth the journey, is the Apoderus of the hazel-tree.
It tells us also many things, this little red Weevil “from the heights rich in hazel-bushes” [[226]]and carried by the storm into the alder-thickets of the Aygues.
It reminds us, too, of that other emigrant, whose intimate acquaintance it has become.
And we are touched by the analogy between its fate and his own. Fabre too was a child of the heights rich in hazel-bushes.[2] He too had to leave the place of his birth, carried away by the storm that tore him from the bosom of his native mountains to bear him into the plains of Provence. He too made the voyage with very poor and very fragile equipment. For a long time, terribly tossed by the waves, he was more than once sorely bruised, but was yet not broken upon the stones of the torrent; more than once he was whirled suddenly round, but he nevertheless continued to pursue his aim, and finally he pierced the husk and emerged from the shell, to give his activity free scope, as soon as he was able to free himself and establish his lot in a favourable environment.
However, contrary to what occurs in the case of the Apoderus, the conditions of his life seem [[227]]to have been modified as profoundly as those of his geographical habitat; they became perhaps even further removed from those of his origin and his forebears. We know what his paternal ancestors were, and that they had no intimate knowledge of the insect world. His mother’s people were equally regardless of and devoid of affection for the little creatures that so absorbed and delighted him.[3]
I did not know my maternal grandfather. This venerable ancestor was, I have been told, a process-server in one of the poorest parishes of the Rouergue.[4] He used to engross on stamped paper in a primitive spelling. With his well-filled pen-case and ink-horn, he went drawing out deeds up hill and down dale, from one insolvent wretch to another more insolvent still. Amid his atmosphere of pettifoggery, this rudimentary scholar, waging battle on life’s acerbities, certainly paid no attention to the insect; at most, if he met it, he would crush it under foot. The unknown animal, suspected of evil-doing, deserved no further inquiry. Grandmother, on her side, apart from her house-keeping and her beads, knew still less about anything. She looked on the alphabet as a set of hieroglyphics only fit to spoil your sight for nothing, unless you were scribbling on paper bearing [[228]]the government stamp. Who in the world, in her day among the small folk, dreamt of knowing how to read and write? That luxury was reserved for the attorney, who himself made but a sparing use of it. The insect, I need hardly say, was the least of her cares. If sometimes, when rinsing her salad at the tap, she found a Caterpillar on the lettuce-leaves, with a start of fright she would fling the loathsome thing away, thus cutting short relations reputed dangerous. In brief, to both my maternal grandparents the insect was a creature of no interest whatever and almost always a repulsive object, which one dared not touch with the tip of one’s finger. Beyond a doubt, my taste for animals was not derived from them. Nor from either of my own parents. My mother, who was quite illiterate, having known no teacher but the bitter experience of a harassed life, was the exact opposite of what my tastes required for their development. My peculiarity must seek its origin elsewhere; that I will swear.
Nor shall I find it in my father. The excellent man, who was hard-working and sturdily-built like grandad, had been to school as a child. He knew how to write, though he took the greatest liberties with spelling; he knew how to read and understood what he read, provided the reading presented no more serious literary difficulties than occurred in the stories in the almanack. He was the first of his line to allow himself to be tempted by the town, and he lived to regret it. Badly off, having but little outlet for his industry, making [[229]]God knows what shifts to pick up a livelihood,[5] he went through all the disappointments of the countryman turned townsman. Persecuted by bad luck, borne down by the burden for all his energy and good will, he was far indeed from starting me in entomology. He had other cares, cares more direct and more serious. A good cuff or two when he saw me pinning an insect to a cork was all the encouragement that I received from him. Perhaps he was right.
The conclusion is positive: there is nothing in heredity to explain my taste for observation. You may say that I do not go far enough back. Well, what should I find beyond the grandparents where my facts come to a stop? I know, partly. I should find even more uncultured ancestors: sons of the soil, ploughmen, sowers of rye, neat-herds; one and all, by the very force of things, of not the least account in the nice matters of observation.[6]