The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



the material for cloth, and was looked upon as 

 grandmother's private crop. 



Grandfather, therefore, was, before all, a herds- 

 man versed in the love of cows and sheep, but com- 

 pletely ignorant of aught else. How dumbfounded 

 he would have been to learn that, in the remote 

 future, one of his family would become enamoured 

 of those insignificant animals to which he had never 

 vouchsafed a glance in his life! Had he guessed 

 that that lunatic was myself, the scapegrace seated 

 at the table by his side, what a smack of the 

 head I should have caught, what a wrathful 

 look! 



" The idea of wasting one's time with that non- 

 sense ! " he would have thundered. 



For the patriarch was not given to joking. I 

 can still see his serious face, his undipped head 

 of hair, often brought back behind his ears with 

 a flick of the thumb and spreading its ancient 

 Gallic mane over his shoulders. I see his little 

 three-cornered hat, his small-clothes buckled at the 

 knees, his wooden shoes, stuffed with straw, that 

 echoed as he walked. Ah, no! Once childhood's 

 games were past, it would never have done to rear 

 the Grasshopper and unearth the Dung-beetle from 

 his natural surroundings. 



Grandmother, pious soul, used to wear the ec- 

 centric headdress of the Rouergue highlanders: a 

 large disk of black felt, stiff as a plank, adorned 

 in the middle with a crown a finger's-breadth high 

 and hardly wider across than a six-franc piece. A 

 black ribbon fastened under the chin maintained 



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