[5] The author’s father kept a café at Pierrelatte and other small towns in the south of France.—A. T. de M. [↑]
[6] Souvenirs, VI., pp. 26–37, 42. The Life of the Fly, chap. v., “Heredity.” [↑]
[7] Fabre had a sort of natural horror of luxury. [↑]
CHAPTER XVI
THE HERMIT OF SÉRIGNAN (CONTINUED)
Oh, if you could now observe at your ease, in the quiet of your study, with nothing to distract your mind from your subject, far from the profane wayfarer who, seeing you so busily occupied at a spot where he sees nothing, will stop, overwhelm you with queries, take you for some water-diviner, or—a graver suspicion this—regard you as some questionable character searching for buried treasure and discovering by means of incantations where the old pots full of coin lie hidden! Should you still wear a Christian aspect in his eyes, he will approach you, look to see what you are looking at, and smile in a manner that leaves no doubt as to his poor opinion of people who spend their time in watching Flies. You will be lucky indeed if the troublesome visitor, with his tongue in his cheek, walks off at last without disturbing things and without repeating in his innocence the disaster brought about by my two conscripts’ boots.
Should your inexplicable doings not puzzle the passer-by, they will be sure to puzzle the village keeper, that uncompromising representative of the law in the ploughed acres. He has long had his eye on you. He has so often seen you wandering [[233]]about, like a lost soul, for no appreciable reason; he has so often caught you rooting in the ground, or, with infinite precautions, knocking down some strip of wall in a sunken road, that in the end he has come to look upon you with dark suspicion. You are nothing to him but a gipsy, a tramp, poultry-thief, a shady person, or, at the best, a madman. Should you be carrying your botanising-case, it will represent to him the poacher’s ferret-cage; and you would never get it out of his head that, regardless of the game-laws and the rights of landlords, you are clearing the neighbouring warrens of their rabbits. Take care. However thirsty you may be, do not lay a finger on the nearest bunch of grapes: the man with the municipal badge will be there, delighted to have a case at last and so to receive an explanation of your highly perplexing behaviour.
I have never, I can safely say, committed any such misdemeanour; and yet, one day, lying on the sand, absorbed in the details of a Bembex’s household, I suddenly heard beside me:
“In the name of the law, I arrest you! You come along with me!”
It was the keeper of Les Angles, who, after vainly waiting for an opportunity to catch me at fault and being daily more anxious for an answer to the riddle that was worrying him, at last resolved upon the brutal expedient of a summons. I had to explain things. The poor man seemed anything but convinced:
“Pooh!” he said. “Pooh! You will never [[234]]make me believe that you come here and roast in the sun just to watch Flies. I shall keep an eye on you, mark you! And, the first time I …! However, that’ll do for the present.”[1]
We must recall these adventures and tribulations of his early days, and others of a like kind which we have already recorded, before we can understand the ease and the delight experienced by Fabre when he was able to take refuge within the walls of his hermitage. There, at least, no one would upset his plans, or distract him from his researches and observations. He could station himself where he pleased; he had room to turn round. He had leisure to await the opportunity and seize upon it when it occurred. He had nothing to think of now but himself and his insects, and the latter always ended by yielding to him and complying with all his wishes. They surrendered themselves to him as he to them. The days were over when he had to divide himself, as it were; when they kept him on the rack, maliciously waiting to make overtures or intimate disclosures to him just as he had to leave them, just as the class-bell rang or his holiday was over. Now there was nothing like that. He [[235]]was theirs from morning to night, from night to morning. He was always watching, always listening; his mind was always on the alert where they were concerned. And the veils were lifted, secrets were revealed, confidences followed confidences, and a light was shed upon points which had so far remained impenetrable for a space of twenty or thirty years.
In the laboratory of the harmas the day begins early; as soon as nature awakens with the first rays of sunlight, directly our hermit hears the call of his vigilant life-companions. This appeal is sometimes very early, when, for example, he pushes complaisance to the length of permitting the swallow to nest in his study.
The room is closed for the night. The father lies outside; the mother does the same when the fledglings are a certain size. Then, from the earliest dawn, they are at the windows, greatly troubled by the glass barricade. In order to open the window to the afflicted parents, I have to rise hurriedly with my eyelids still heavy with sleep.