The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



ond and thus increase the small vocabulary which 

 I acquired in the days when I was translating 

 JEsop's Fables. It will be all the better for my 

 future studies. What luck! Board and lodging, 

 ancient poetry, the classical languages, all the good 

 things at once ! 



I did better still. Our science-master the real, 

 not the honorary one who came twice a week to 

 discourse of the rule of three and the properties 

 of the triangle, had the brilliant idea of letting 

 us celebrate the end of the school year with a feast 

 of learning. He promised to show us oxygen. As 

 a colleague of the chemist in the grammar-school, 

 he obtained leave to take us to the famous labora- 

 tory and there to handle the object of his lesson 

 under our very eyes. Oxygen, yes, oxygen, the 

 all-consuming gas; that was what we were to see 

 on the morrow. I could not sleep all night for 

 thinking of it. 



Thursday afternoon came at last. As soon as 

 the chemistry lesson was over, we were to go for 

 a walk to Les Angles, the pretty village over yon- 

 der, perched on a steep rock. We were therefore 

 in our Sunday best, our out-of-door clothes: black 

 frock-coats and tall hats. The whole school was 

 there, some thirty of us, in the charge of an usher, 

 who knew as little as we did of the things which 

 we were about to see. We crossed the threshold 

 of the laboratory, not without excitement. I en- 

 tered a great nave with a Gothic roof, an old, bare 

 church through which one's voice echoed, while the 

 light penetrated discreetly through stained-glass 

 82 



