Fabre, Poet of Science

by Georges Victor Legros

But among the crowd of friends and admirers who, coming from all parts, pressed around the little pink house, the most amazed of all was Marius, the blind cabinet-maker, unable to contain his intense delight at the sudden burning of so much incense before his idol, for to him it had seemed that this day of apotheosis would never dawn!

For nothing was certain, although the day of the jubilee had long been fixed. In the first place there had been serious defections in the ranks of the official personages who were to take part in the ceremony. Then the weather was terrible for the time of year; the spring had commenced gloomily, a season of floods and catastrophes. But on this morning the rain of days had ceased to fall, and suddenly the sun appeared.

Among other compliments and marks of homage the old man was presented with a golden plaque, on one side of which Sicard, who stood revealed as a master of the burin, had engraved his portrait with rare fidelity. The reverse was resplendent with one of the most beautiful syntheses which the history of art has known; a surprising allegory, in which the imagination of the artist evoked the man of science, the singer of the insects, the landscape which had seen the birth of so many little lives, and the village amid the olive-trees, in front of the sun-steeped Ventoux.

At this festival, the jubilee of a scientist, the scientists were least numerous.

The banquet was given in the large room of a cafe in the midst of Sérignan; in order, no doubt, that in this humble life even glory should be modest.

As Fabre could not walk, he was helped into the carriage of ceremony, which was sent expressly from Orange, and the little procession, which was swelled by the municipal choral society, spurred on by Marius, moved slowly off along the sole central street.

It was a great family repast: one of those love-feasts in which all communicate in a single thought.

Edmond Perrier brought the naturalist the homage of the Institute, and expressed in unaffected terms the just admiration which he himself felt. The better to praise him, he gave a summary of his admirable career, and his immortal work. At the evocation of this long past of labour Fabre regretted his poor vanished joys, "the sole moments of happiness in his life."

Moved to tears, by his memories and by the simple and pious homage at last rendered to his genius, he wept, and many, seeing him weep, wept with him.

Others spoke in the name of the great anonymous crowd of friends, of all those who had found a source of infinite enjoyment in his works. At the same time the greatest writers, the greatest poets sent on the same day, at the same hour, their salutation or eloquent messages to the "Virgil of the insects" [(16/21.)], to the "good magician who knew the language of the myriad little creatures of the fields." [(16/22.)]