Heredity 



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 loath- 

 some thing away, thus cutting short rela- 

 tions reputed dangerous. In short, to both my 

 maternal grandparents, the Insect was a crea- 

 ture of no Interest whatever and almost al- 

 ways 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. 



I have more precise information regarding 

 my grandparents on the father's slde,^ for 



^Pierre Jean Fabre, son of Pierre Fabre, a peasant pro- 

 prietor, and of Anne Fages, his wife, and Elisabeth Pou- 

 jade, daughter of Antoine Poujade and Frangoise Aze- 

 mar, his wife. They were married in 1791. Pierre 

 Fabre, a labourer, father to Pierre Jean Fabre and grand- 

 father to Antoine Fabre, the father of Jean Henri Casimir 

 Fabre, our author, was the son of Jean Fabre and of 

 Frangoise Desmazes, his wife, and was married in 1759 

 to Anne Fages, daughter of Pierre Fages and of Anne 

 Baumelou, his wife. — Translator's Note. 



119 



