He had another manner, perhaps still more expressive, of rendering the same idea: he would puff into the air a cloud of smoke from his pipe, which never left him, and, before [[377]]the blue vanishing spiral: “That,” he would say, “is human glory!”
Here we recognise the man whom Rostand represented as follows in the verses inscribed upon a bas-relief which makes his collection of sonnets, entitled Fabre-des-Insectes, as it were the pendant of Charpentier’s monument:
“C’est un homme incliné, modeste et magistral,
Pensif—car dans ses doigts il a tenu des ailes
Poursuivant les honneurs moins que les sauterelles.”
(A man who stoops, modest and magisterial,
Thoughtful—for in his fingers he has held wings,
Pursuing honours less than the grasshoppers.)