52 HOW THE AUTHOR WAS LED TO 



aware that the case was not hopeless — that the waters were hidden, not 

 lost — that by their discovery we might restore vegetable life, and 

 eventually animal life, — I felt myself much stronger, refreshed, renewed. 

 For each spring that revealed itself, I gi-ew less athiret ; I felt its 

 waters rise within my soul. 



Ever fertile is Italy. She proved so to me through her very bar- 

 renness and poverty. The ruggedness of the bald Apennines, the lean 

 Ligurian coast, did but the more awaken, by contrast, the recollection 

 of that genial nature which cherishes the luxuriant richness of our 

 western France. I missed the animal life ; I felt its absence. From 

 the mute foliage of sombre orange-gardens I demanded the woodland 

 birds. For the first time I perceived the seriousness of human 

 existence when it is no longer surrounded by the grand society of 

 innocent beings whose movements, voices, and sports are, so to speak, 

 the smile of creation. 



A revolution took place in me which I shall, perhaps, some day 

 relate. I returned, with all the strength of my ailing existence, to the 

 thoughts which I had uttered, in 1846, in my book of "The People," 

 to that City of God where the humble and simple, peasants and 

 artisans, the ignorant and unlettered, barbarians and savages, children, 

 and those other children, too, w^hich we call animals, are all citizens 

 under different titles, have all their privileges and their laws, their 

 places at the great civic banquet. " I protest, for my part, that if any 

 one remains in the rear whom the City still rejects and does not 

 shelter with her rights, I myself will not enter in, but will halt upon 

 her threshold." 



Thus, all natural history I had begun to regard as a branch of 

 the political. Every living species came, each in its humble right, 

 striking at the gate and demanding admittance to the bosom of 

 Democracy. Why should their elder brothers repulse them beyond 

 the pale of those laws which the universal Father harmonizes with 

 the law of the world ? 



Such, then, was my renovation, this tardy new life (vita nuova), 

 which led me, step by step, to the natural sciences. Italy, whose 



