[6] Darwin died at Down, in Kent, on the 19th of April, 1882.—A. T. de M. [↑]
[7] Souvenirs, II., p. 99. [↑]
[8] Souvenirs, II., p. 160. He makes this declaration in respect of an error which he had incorrectly attributed to Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of the famous Charles Darwin, on the faith of an unfaithful translation due to the entomologist Lacordaire. The mistake, which is really Lacordaire’s, not Erasmus Darwin’s, consisted in confusing the Sphex with a common Wasp. Charles Darwin, having informed Fabre that his grandfather had said “a wasp,” the French naturalist immediately inserted this correction in a note, in the second volume of the Souvenirs, which I had not yet come across when I cited the passage in question. I can therefore say with M. Fabre: “May this note amend, within the proper limits, the assertions which I made in all good faith.” [↑]
[9] Darwin died in 1882, and the second volume of the Souvenirs appeared in 1883. [↑]
[10] Souvenirs, I., pp. 188, 189; II., pp. 103; VI., pp. 25, 166, 203; VII., pp. 8, 9, 57, 161, etc. [↑]
[11] Souvenirs, VI., p. 70. The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. ix., “Dung-beetles of the Pampas.” There is also mention of Brother Judulien in a long note in vol. V., p. 131; The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, p. 238. [↑]
CHAPTER XIX
FABRE’S WRITINGS
My study-table, the size of a pocket-handkerchief, occupied on the right by the inkstand—a penny bottle—and on the left by the open exercise-book, gives me just the room which I need to wield the pen. I love that little piece of furniture, one of the first acquisitions of my early married life. It is easily moved where you wish: in front of the window, when the sky is cloudy; into the discreet light of a corner, when the sun is tiresome. In winter it allows you to come close to the hearth, where a log is blazing.
Poor little walnut board, I have been faithful to you for half a century and more. Ink-stained, cut and scarred with the pen-knife, you know how to lend your support to my prose as you once did to my equations. This variation in employment leaves you indifferent; your patient back extends the same welcome to my formulæ of algebra and the formulæ of thought. I cannot boast this placidity; I find that the change has not increased my peace of mind: the hunt for ideas troubles the brain even more than does the hunt for the roots of an equation.
You would never recognise me, little friend, if [[294]]you could give a glance at my grey mane. Where is the cheerful face of former days, bright with enthusiasm and hope? I have aged, I have aged. And you, what a falling off, since you came to me from the dealer’s, gleaming and polished and smelling so good with your beeswax! Like your master, you have wrinkles, often my work, I admit; for how many times, in my impatience, have I not dug my pen into you, when, after its dip in the muddy inkpot, the nib refused to write decently!
One of your corners is broken off; the boards are beginning to come loose. Inside you, I hear, from time to time, the plane of the Death-watch, who despoils old furniture. From year to year new galleries are excavated, endangering your solidity. The old ones show on the outside in the shape of tiny round holes. A stranger has seized upon the latter, excellent quarters, obtained without trouble. I see the impudent intruder run nimbly under my elbow and penetrate forthwith into the tunnel abandoned by the Death-watch. She is after game, this slender huntress, clad in black, busy collecting Wood-lice for her grubs. A whole nation is devouring you, you old table; I am writing on a swarm of insects! No support could be more appropriate to my entomological notes.
What will become of you when your master is gone? Will you be knocked down for a franc, when the family come to apportion my poor spoils? Will you be turned into a stand for the pitcher beside the kitchen-sink? Will you be the plank on which the cabbages are shredded? Or will my children, [[295]]on the contrary, agree among themselves and say:
“Let us preserve the relic. It was where he toiled so hard to teach himself and make himself capable of teaching others; it was where he so long consumed his strength to find food for us when we were little. Let us keep the sacred plank.”
I dare not believe in such a future for you. You will pass into strange hands, O my old friend; you will become a bedside-table laden with bowl after bowl of linseed-tea, until, decrepit, rickety, and broken-down, you are chopped up to feed the flames for a brief moment under the simmering saucepan. You will vanish in smoke to join my labours in that other smoke, oblivion, the ultimate resting-place of our vain agitations.[1]