The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



gives a shiver and drops, as though struck by light- 

 ning: procumbit humi bos, as we used to say in 

 those days. 



I fled from the place like one possessed. After- 

 wards I wondered how it was possible, with a knife 

 almost identical with that which I used for priz- 

 ing open my walnuts and taking the skin off my 

 chestnuts, with that insignificant blade, to kill an 

 Ox and kill him so suddenly. No gaping wound, 

 no blood spilt, not a bellow from the animal. The 

 man feels with his ringer, gives a jab, and the 

 thing is done: the Bullock's legs double up under 

 him. 



This instantaneous death, this lightning-stroke, 

 remained an awesome mystery to me. It was only 

 later, very much later, that I learnt the secret of 

 the slaughter-house, at a time when, in the course 

 of my promiscuous reading, I was picking up a 

 smattering of anatomy. The man had cut through 

 the spinal marrow where it leaves the skull; he 

 had severed what our physiologists have called the 

 vital cord. To-day I might say that he had oper- 

 ated in the manner of the Wasps, whose lancet 

 plunges into the nerve-centres. 1 



This gloomy picture of a sudden, terrify- 

 ing, violent death may be compared with an- 

 other which, in some respects, is even more 

 tragic : that of the ruined home and the shat- 



1 Souvenirs, II., pp. 41-44, 46. Hunting Wasps, chap. 

 xx., " A Modern Theory of Instinct." 

 72 



