We have already mentioned Fabre’s relations with Moquin-Tandon, Dufour, Pasteur, and Duruy. Other names might be added to complete the list of his friends, or the correspondents whom he succeeded in interesting in entomology and admitting more or less to participation in his researches.[10] We [[289]]will confine ourselves here to mentioning a worthy Brother of the Christian Colleges who afforded him one of the great pleasures of his life by enabling him to satisfy, at a small expense, without emptying his purse or too greatly curtailing his patient observations, one of the wilder longings of his youth, from which he was not always exempted by age:
To travel the world, by land and sea, from pole to pole; to cross-question life, under every clime, in the infinite variety of its manifestations: that surely would be glorious luck for him that has eyes to see; and it formed the radiant dream of my young years, at the time when Robinson Crusoe was my delight. These rosy illusions, rich in voyages, were soon succeeded by dull, stay-at-home reality. The jungles of India, the virgin forests of Brazil, the towering crests of the Andes, beloved by the condor, were reduced, as a field for exploration, to a patch of pebbles enclosed within four walls.
Heaven forfend that I should complain! The gathering of ideas does not necessarily imply distant expeditions. Jean-Jacques Rousseau herborised with the bunch of chick-weed whereon he fed his canary; Bernardin de Saint-Pierre discovered a world on a strawberry plant that grew by accident in a corner of his window; Xavier de Maistre, using an armchair by way of post-chaise, made one of the most famous of journeys around his room. [[290]]
This manner of seeing country is within my means, always excepting the post-chaise, which is too difficult to drive through the bushes. I go the circuit of my enclosure over and over again, a hundred times, by short stages; I stop here and I stop there; patiently I put questions and, at long intervals, I receive some scrap of a reply.
The smallest insect village has become familiar to me: I know each fruit-branch where the Praying Mantis perches; each bush where the pale Italian Cricket strums amid the calmness of the summer nights; each downy plant scraped by the Anthidium, that maker of cotton bags; each cluster of lilac worked by the Megachile, the Leaf-cutter.
If cruising among the nooks and corners of the garden do not suffice, a longer voyage shows ample profit. I double the cape of the neighbouring hedges and, at a few hundred yards, enter into relations with the Sacred Beetle, the Capricorn, the Geotrupes, the Copris, the Decticus, the Cricket, the Green Grasshopper, in short with a host of tribes the telling of whose story would exhaust a lifetime. Certainly, I have enough and even too much to do with my near neighbours, without leaving home to rove in distant lands.
Nevertheless, it were well to compare what happens under our eyes with that which happens elsewhere; it were excellent to see how, in the same guild of workers, the fundamental instinct varies with climatic conditions.
Then my longing to travel returns, vainer to-day than ever, unless one could find a seat on that carpet [[291]]of which we read in the Arabian Nights, the famous carpet whereon one had but to sit to be carried whithersoever he pleased. O marvellous conveyance, far preferable to Xavier de Maistre’s post-chaise! If I could only find just a little corner on it, with a return-ticket!
I do find it. I owe this unexpected good fortune to a Brother of the Christian Schools, to Brother Judulien, of the La Salle College at Buenos Aires. His modesty would be offended by the praises which his debtor owes him. Let us simply say that, acting on my instructions, his eyes take the place of mine. He seeks, finds, observes, sends me his notes and his discoveries. I observe, seek and find with him, by correspondence.
It is done; thanks to this first-rate collaborator, I have my seat on the magic carpet. Behold me in the pampas of the Argentine Republic, eager to draw a parallel between the industry of the Sérignan Dung-beetles and that of their rivals in the western hemisphere.[11]
To close the history of the Sérignan hermit by opening such remote perspectives is not so inconsistent as it may seem, for, after having obstinately imprisoned himself within the narrow horizon of his village all his life, the Provençal recluse was beginning to be [[292]]drawn out of it by the intelligent zeal of certain friends, who forced him to make a triumphant tour of France, and we might almost say of the world.
The magic carpet on which they made him sit for this magnificent journey was, however, by no means a borrowed article. It was he himself who had provided it. It was none other than the marvellous series, so rich and so varied, of his entomological works, which had only to be known in order to ensure for the author everywhere the welcome which he deserved, a truly enthusiastic welcome, and the place which was due to him: one of the foremost places among our scientists and our writers. [[293]]
[1] Souvenirs, X., pp. 102–109. [↑]
[2] Souvenirs, II., pp. 1 to 19. [↑]