Chapter XV: The Hermit of Sérignan (continued)

While the domain of the landowner and manufacturer ended at the walls of his field of pebbles and botanical garden, that of the entomologist extended far beyond them, as far as his eyes could see and his steps lead him.

For this reason a panoramic view of the surrounding country is desirable.

With its peaceful plains, its gracious hills, overgrown with strawberry-tree and ilex, and the sublime mountain of Provence rising upon the horizon, with its varied outlines and its sun-illumined flanks, the Sérignan landscape gently forces itself upon the spectator’s attention. And if the spirit moved him, Fabre had only to raise his head from his apparatus to find all about him something to soothe the eye and refresh the mind.

But however keen his feeling for the beauties of Nature, it is not so much as artist or dilettante but as the insect historiographer that he appreciates the value of the landscape, and the wealth of the plains and hills outspread before him.

From this point of view the whole surroundings of his hermitage seem as though created to continue and complete the harmas, and the scientific pleasures which this affords him.

The Gymnopleuri abound in the pebbly plains of the neighbourhood,
where the sheep pass amid the lavender and thyme; and, should we
wish to vary the scene of observation, the mountain [99] is but a
few hundred steps away, with its tangle of arbutus, rock-roses, and
arborescent heather; with its sandy spaces dear to the Bembeces;
with its marly slopes exploited by different Wasps and Bees.

We have already made mention of the Aygues, and the time has come to pay it a formal visit, as one of the favourite haunts of the Sérignan hermit:

The geographers define the Aygues as a watercourse. As an
eye-witness I should call it rather a stream of flat pebbles.
Understand me: I do not mean that the dry pebbles flow of their own
accord; the feeble incline would not permit of such an avalanche.
But let it rain: then they will flow. Then, from my home, which is
more than a mile distant, I hear the uproar of the clashing
pebbles.

During the greater part of the year the Aygues is a vast sheet of
flat white stones; of the torrent only the bed is left, a furrow of
enormous width, comparable to that of its mighty neighbour, the
Rhône. When persistent rains fall, when the snows melt on the
slopes of the Alps, the dry furrow fills for a few days,
complaining, overflowing to a great distance, and displacing, amid
the uproar, its pebbly banks. Return a week later: the din of the
flood is succeeded by silence. The terrible waters have
disappeared, leaving on the banks, as a trace of their brief
passage, some wretched muddy puddles quickly drunk up by the sun.

These sudden floods bring a thousand living gleanings, swept off
the flanks of the mountains. The dry bed of the Aygues is a most
curious botanical garden. You may find there numbers of vegetable
species swept down from the higher regions, some temporary, dying
without offspring in a season, others permanent, adapting
themselves to the new climate. They come from far away from a great
height, these exiles; to pluck certain of them in their actual home
you would have to climb Ventoux, passing the girdle of beeches and
reaching the height at which woody vegetation ceases.

An insect which is sometimes found by chance in the osier-beds of
the Aygues, and is by itself worth the journey, is the Apoderus of
the hazel-tree.

It tells us also many things, this little red Weevil “from the
heights rich in hazel-bushes” and carried by the storm into the
alder-thickets of the Aygues.

It reminds us, too, of that other emigrant, whose intimate
acquaintance it has become.

And we are touched by the analogy between its fate and his own.
Fabre too was a child of the heights rich in hazel-bushes. [100] He
too had to leave the place of his birth, carried away by the storm
that tore him from the bosom of his native mountains to bear him
into the plains of Provence. He too made the voyage with very poor
and very fragile equipment. For a long time, terribly tossed by the
waves, he was more than once sorely bruised, but was yet not broken
upon the stones of the torrent; more than once he was whirled
suddenly round, but he nevertheless continued to pursue his aim,
and finally he pierced the husk and emerged from the shell, to give
his activity free scope, as soon as he was able to free himself and
establish his lot in a favourable environment.

However, contrary to what occurs in the case of the Apoderus, the
conditions of his life seem to have been modified as profoundly as
those of his geographical habitat; they became perhaps even further
removed from those of his origin and his forebears. We know what
his paternal ancestors were, and that they had no intimate
knowledge of the insect world. His mother’s people were equally
regardless of and devoid of affection for the little creatures that
so absorbed and delighted him. [101]

I did not know my maternal grandfather. This venerable ancestor
was, I have been told, a process-server in one of the poorest
parishes of the Rouergue. [102] He used to engross on stamped paper
in a primitive spelling. With his well-filled pen-case and
ink-horn, he went drawing out deeds up hill and down dale, from one
insolvent wretch to another more insolvent still. Amid his
atmosphere of pettifoggery, this rudimentary scholar, waging battle
on life’s acerbities, certainly paid no attention to the insect; at
most, if he met it, he would crush it under foot. The unknown
animal, suspected of evil-doing, deserved no further inquiry.
Grandmother, on her side, apart from her house-keeping and her
beads, knew still less about anything. She looked on the alphabet
as a set of hieroglyphics only fit to spoil your sight for nothing,
unless you were scribbling on paper bearing the government stamp.
Who in the world, in her day among the small folk, dreamt of
knowing how to read and write? That luxury was reserved for the
attorney, who himself made but a sparing use of it. The insect, I
need hardly say, was the least of her cares. If sometimes, when
rinsing her salad at the tap, she found a Caterpillar on the
lettuce-leaves, with a start of fright she would fling the
loathsome thing away, thus cutting short relations reputed
dangerous. In brief, to both my maternal grandparents the insect
was a creature of no interest whatever and almost always a
repulsive object, which one dared not touch with the tip of one’s
finger. Beyond a doubt, my taste for animals was not derived from
them. Nor from either of my own parents. My mother, who was quite
illiterate, having known no teacher but the bitter experience of a
harassed life, was the exact opposite of what my tastes required
for their development. My peculiarity must seek its origin
elsewhere; that I will swear.

Nor shall I find it in my father. The excellent man, who was
hard-working and sturdily-built like grandad, had been to school as
a child. He knew how to write, though he took the greatest
liberties with spelling; he knew how to read and understood what he
read, provided the reading presented no more serious literary
difficulties than occurred in the stories in the almanack. He was
the first of his line to allow himself to be tempted by the town,
and he lived to regret it. Badly off, having but little outlet for
his industry, making God knows what shifts to pick up a livelihood,
[103] he went through all the disappointments of the countryman
turned townsman. Persecuted by bad luck, borne down by the burden
for all his energy and good will, he was far indeed from starting
me in entomology. He had other cares, cares more direct and more
serious. A good cuff or two when he saw me pinning an insect to a
cork was all the encouragement that I received from him. Perhaps he
was right.

The conclusion is positive: there is nothing in heredity to explain
my taste for observation. You may say that I do not go far enough
back. Well, what should I find beyond the grandparents where my
facts come to a stop? I know, partly. I should find even more
uncultured ancestors: sons of the soil, ploughmen, sowers of rye,
neat-herds; one and all, by the very force of things, of not the
least account in the nice matters of observation. [104]

Between the parents and the son, what a difference, what a change of life and of destiny! Quantum mutatus ab illis! This, no doubt, is the first thing to strike one; and here, too, we have one of the most salient features of the superiority of the human intelligence; this almost infinite possibility of transformation and progress, which forms such a striking contrast with the rigid immutability of instinct which is barely susceptible of the slightest variation.

But for all this Fabre still bears the stamp of the soil and of his ancestry, and I am certain that the pagès of the banks of the Viaur, were they to descend to the banks of the Aygues to visit the hermit of Sérignan, would recognise by more than one characteristic the child of their native soil and their own race. Under his wide felt hat, “in his linen jacket” [105] and his heavy shoes, with a face like theirs in its simplicity and good nature, he would see almost one of themselves. And if, after entering his home, they were to follow him into the enclosure, among his crops and his appliances, if they were to see him valiantly digging up the soil of the harmas in search of fresh burrows of the Scarabæi, or assembling a few thick planks to contrive some new entomological apparatus, or simply beating the brushwood over his inverted umbrella in search of insects, they would certainly be tempted to join in and lend him a hand as though dealing with a fellow-labourer.

Others may be surprised to find in the scholar and scientist the features and the manners of a peasant. Let us rather rejoice to see that our eminent fellow-countryman has never renounced the simplicity of his origins, and take pleasure in noting how closely the hermit of Sérignan resembles the urchin of Malaval.

We have attempted to show the hermit of Sérignan in his own setting, as he really is. It remains for us to see how he glorifies his solitude and ennobles his rustic life; how the poor, simple peasant whom he has always been has done more for science than the most elegantly dressed and profusely decorated savants.