But there were yet some of “time’s revenges” [[367]]to be taken for the injustice which Fabre had suffered.
We have spoken of his early struggles in the University, of his career, first hampered, then shattered, of the jealousies and persecutions evoked by this “irregular” self-taught pioneer; no doubt the work of a triumphant clique, which eventually drove him from the house and slammed the door. This was, as the reader may remember, on the occasion of his lecture to young girls at Saint-Martial.
But now, on the 23rd of April 1911, a fresh invasion of young girls, almost all pupils of the University, burst into the harmas.[2] And what had they to say? That they came from Paris to visit the glories of Provence, and that next to Mistral they had wished to see Fabre, after the “emperor of poetry,” the “king of science,” and they made it clear that it was not only to the scientist, but still more to the pioneer, the initiator—or why not say, with them, to the most illustrious of “cronies”[3]—that the girl “cronies,” as they called one another in their group, had come to present their heart-felt [[368]]homage. Who to-day would dare to contest their right to become his pupils, to seek with him “the freshest honey and the most poetical observations of the insects that people the boughs and the flowers,” to enter with him into the secret of all these little lives, “which are, like ourselves,” they said, “creatures of the good God”?
And serious personages[4] from the precincts of the Académie and the Université de France lent voice and gesture to the ingenuous utterance of radiant youth, which delightfully made amends for the past.
There was another official authority, the highest of all, to which Fabre had not much reason to be grateful. Long and brilliant services in the cause of public instruction, scientific works of the highest order, need of leisure and resources for his investigations, family responsibilities, and the struggle for life—what claims did not these represent to distinction and to the generosity of the public authorities! But what part or lot had he in these in reality? One might almost say none. One day, as though by chance, the perspicacity of a Minister of the Empire had all but rescued him from poverty and oblivion. A mere accident without sequence: [[369]]for it was immediately followed by the total collapse of the Empire and the institution of the Republic. Fabre was not even among the number of the pensioned!
It needed the trumpet-blast of the jubilee (1910) to remind the authorities to complete the beau geste of Victor Duruy, and after forty years to replace the rosette of the Legion of the Cross. And it took the loud outcry of indignation uttered by Mistral and the strong feeling aroused by the report, which was echoed by the whole Press, of their involuntary debt to the ex-professor, to obtain for the nonagenarian a pension of two thousand francs (£80) a year, which was nearly fifty years in arrears!
The reparation was far from adequate; but it could not be made by means of money.
“Come at once, or I will have my gendarmes bring you.” In summoning him thus to the Court in order to see and decorate this fine but timid genius, the Emperor, in 1869, had performed a generous action. The President of the Republic did still better, when, in 1913, in the course of his tour through Provence, he sought to honour by his visit him who had so greatly honoured his mother-country and his native and adopted provinces. [[370]]
Fabre, who was then in his ninetieth year, and could no longer stand upright, awaited M. Poincaré sitting in a chair before the threshold of his house, surrounded by his family; on his right hand stood the Sister who was watching over his welfare.
A week before the President’s visit, I went to Sérignan to see my distinguished relative and to bless the marriage of his son Paul Henri.