Fabre, Poet of Science

by Georges Victor Legros

"I have never thought of profiting by my humble fungoid water-colours...Fate will perhaps decide otherwise.

"In this connection, permit me to make a confession, to which your nobility of character encourages me. Until latterly I had lived modestly on the product of my school-books. To‑day the weathercock has turned to another quarter, and my books no longer sell. So here I am, more than ever in the grip of that terrible problem of daily bread. If you think, then, that with your help and that of your friends, my poor pictures might help me a little, I have decided to let them go, but not without bitterness. It is like tearing off a piece of my skin, and I still hold to this old skin, shabby as it may be; a little for my own sake, much more for my family's, and much more again for the sake of my entomological studies, studies which I feel obliged to pursue, persuaded that for a long time to come no one will care to resume them, so ungrateful is the calling." [(16/18.)]

At the instigation of the poet the prefect Belleudy took it upon him to intercede with the Minister, from whom he finally wrung a grant of 40 pounds sterling, "in encouragement of the sciences." Finally he ventured to reveal the situation to the General Council of Vaucluse, and to require it to contribute at least its share, in order to ensure a peaceful and decent old age to a man who was not only the greatest celebrity of the department, but also one of the highest glories of the nation. He pleaded so well and so nobly that the assembly granted Fabre an annual sum of 20 pounds sterling, "as the public homage which his compatriots pay to his lofty science and his excessive modesty." [(16/19.)] At the same time, in a generous impulse, the Council placed at his disposal all the scientific equipment of the departmental laboratory of agricultural analysis, which was no longer used; there was indeed talk of suppressing it.

Now that the burden of his days weighed so heavily on him, and his task was virtually finished, everything, by the customary irony of things, was coming his way simultaneously: not only what was necessary and indispensable, but even something that was superfluous.

So one day all these delicate instruments, useless to a biologist who by the very nature of his labours had done without them all his life, and had never wearied of denying their utility, arrived at Sérignan. He did not possess even one modest thermometer; and as for the superb microscope over which he so often bent, the only costly instrument in his rustic laboratory, it was a precious present which, at the instigation of Duruy, Dumas the chemist had given him years before; but a simple lens very often sufficed him. "The secrets of life," he somewhere writes, "are to be obtained by simple, makeshift, inexpensive means. What did the best results of my inquiry into instinct cost me? Only time, and above all, patience."

It was then that a few of his disciples, finally affected by such abandonment, decided to celebrate his jubilee, hoping thus to reveal both his name and his wonderful books to the crowd that knew nothing of him. [(16/20.)]

It was time; a little longer, and, according to his racy phrase, "the violins would have come too late." The old master is daily nearer his decline; his sight, once so piercing, is now so obscured that he can barely see to sign his name, in a small, tremulous hand, confused and illegible. His muscles are so feeble now that he can walk only in short steps, on his wife's arm, leaning on a cane; and he would soon be piteously exhausted were not some seat available within immediate reach. Very soon now he will no longer hope to make the tour of this Harmas, which his feet have trodden daily for thirty years. In this failure of the body, all that survives are the two sparkling cavities of his eyes and his extraordinary memory.

But he is far from being mournful: he feels only an immense lassitude, and an infinite regret that perhaps he will not be able to bring his series of "Souvenirs" to the point he had desired; not wishing to die until he has pushed his career as far as is in his power; without having worked, on his feet, until the very hour when the light of this world is suddenly withdrawn, and his eyes open upon the infinite life, beyond the infinite worlds of space.

The festival took place on the 3rd of April of the year 1910, and was touching in its simplicity.

What an unforgettable day in the life of Fabre! That morning the gate of the Harmas was left open to all, and many of the people of Sérignan who invaded the garden were able to look for the first time on the face of their fellow-citizen, who had so long lived among them, and whom they had now, to their astonishment, discovered.