CHAPTER II
THE URCHIN OF MALAVAL
Jean-Henri Fabre was born at Saint-Léons, the market-town and administrative centre of the canton of Vezins. In witness of which behold this extract from the register of baptisms, a certified copy transcribed by the Abbé Lafon, curé of Saint-Léons:
In the year 1823, on the 22nd September, was baptised Jean-Henri-Casimir Fabre, of the aforesaid Saint-Léons, the legitimate son of Antoine Fabre and Victoire Salgues, inhabitants of the same place:—His godfather was Pierre Ricard, primary schoolmaster. In proof of which—Fabre, vicar.[1]
Jean-Henri Casimir’s mother, by birth Victoire Salgues, was the daughter of the bailiff of Saint-Léons. His father, Antoine Fabre, was born in a little mas in the parish of Lavaysse, Malaval, where his parents were still cultivating the old family property [[11]]which since then has passed to the head of the Vaissière family.
It was thus at Malaval that the future entomologist “passed his earliest childhood,” as he told me when writing to me ten years ago.[2] There was no wallowing in abundance at Saint-Léons. In order to relieve the poor household of one mouth, he was confided to the care of his grandmother and sent to Malaval. “There, in solitude, amid the geese, the calves, and the sheep, my mind first awoke to consciousness. What went before is for me shrouded in impenetrable darkness.”
The spot which was the scene of this first awakening deserves description. When one follows the road from Laissac to Vezins, a short distance after passing Vaysse-Rodié, just as one has almost reached the crest of the height which by reason of its rocky helmet is called the puech del Roucas, on the line of the watershed dividing the limestone basin of the Aveyron from the granitic basin [[12]]of the Viaur, on turning sharply to the right one sees before one the austere Malavallis, dominated on the one hand by the height of Lavaysse with its ancient church, and enlivened a little on the other side by the tiny hamlet of Malaval, which consists, to-day, of two farm-houses; one whiter, more cheerful-looking, and on lower ground; the other standing higher, greyer in hue, and more difficult to discover in the shade of the oak-trees and thickets of broom and blackthorn which form a dense mantle of green about it. It was there, amid these trees, in this house, three thousand feet above the sea, in sight of the sturdy belfry of Lavaysse, that Jean-Henri Fabre was “born into the true life,” the life of the mind. Here, on this hillside, which directly faces the east, he made his earliest discoveries; here, one fine morning, as he will presently tell us, he discovered the sun; here, he saw not only the dawn of day, but also “that inward dawn, so far swept clear of the clouds of unconsciousness as to leave him a lasting memory.”
Nothing could take the place of the picturesqueness and sincerity of the narrative in which he has related these earliest impressions of his childhood: [[13]]
My grandparents[3] were people whose quarrel with the alphabet was so great that they had never opened a book in their lives; and they kept a lean farm on the cold granite ridge of the Rouergue [[14]]table-land. The house, standing alone amidst the heath and broom, with no neighbour for many a mile around and visited at intervals by the wolves, was to them the hub of the universe. But for a [[15]]few surrounding villages, whither the calves were driven upon fair-days, the rest was only very vaguely known by hearsay. In this wild solitude, the mossy fens, with their quagmires oozing with iridescent pools, supplied the cows, the principal source of wealth, with plentiful pasture. In summer, on the short sward of the slopes, the sheep were penned day and night, protected from beasts of prey by a fence of hurdles propped up with pitchforks. When the grass was cropped close at one spot, the fold was shifted elsewhither. In the centre was the shepherd’s rolling hut, a straw cabin. Two watch-dogs, equipped with spiked collars, were answerable for tranquillity if the thieving wolf appeared in the night from out the neighbouring woods.