Fabre, Poet of Science

by Georges Victor Legros

Doubtless he would sooner or later have received full justice; but without this circumstance it is permissible to add that the end of his life would have passed amidst the completest oblivion, and that he would have taken leave of the world without attracting any particular attention. His death would have occurred unperceived, and when the little vault of Vaison stone, up in the small square enclosure of pebbles which serves as the village cemetery, where those he has loved await him, came to be opened for the last time, they would hardly have troubled to close it again.

Yet the honours paid him were far from being such as he merited.

Why, at this jubilee of the greatest of the entomologists, was not a single appointed representative of entomology present? [(16/22.)]

The fact is that the majority of those who "amid the living seek only for corpses," according to the expression of Bacon, unwilling to see in Fabre anything more than an imaginative writer, and being themselves incapable of understanding the beautiful and of distinguishing it in the true, reproached him, perhaps with more jealousy than conviction, with having introduced literature into the domains of science.

Other entomological specialists accuse him of presenting in the guise of science discoveries which have been made by others. But in the first place, as he has read very little, he certainly did not know all that had been done by others; and what matter if he had discovered nothing essential concerning this or that insect if the result of his study of it has been to impregnate it with something new, or to touch it with the breath of life?

Others, finally, who wished to see with their own eyes the proof of his statements, have reproached him with a few errors; but he observed so skilfully that these errors, if any have really slipped into his books, cannot be very serious.

He was one of the glories of the University, but it failed to add to the brilliance of this ceremony, and it is to be regretted that the Government could not amid its temporary preoccupations have done with all the spontaneity that might have been looked for the one thing which might on this memorable date have atoned for its unjust obliviousness. Since Duruy had created Fabre a chevalier of the Empire more than forty years had gone by, and in this long interval Fabre was absolutely ignored by the authorities. While the State daily raises so many commonplace men to the highest honours, it was afterwards needful to procure the intervention of influential persons, to justify his worth and to prove his deserts, in order to obtain his promotion through one degree of rank in that Legion of Honour which his eminent services had so long adorned.

This tardy reparation at least had the result of shedding a twilight of glory over the evening of his life, and from that day he suddenly appeared in his true place and took his rank as a man of the first order. Everybody began to read him, and presently no one was willing to seem ignorant of him, for more of his "Souvenirs entomologiques" were sold in a few months than had been disposed of in more than twenty years. [a](16/24.)]

At last Fabre experienced not only glory and renown, but also popularity. This was only justice, for his is essentially a popular genius. Has he not striven all his life to place the marvels of science within reach of all? And has he not written above all for the children of the people?

So at last people have learned the way to the Harmas; they go thither now in crowds, to visit the enclosure and the modest laboratory, as to a veritable place of pilgrimage which attracts from afar many fervent admirers.