The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



expected curves of a loggia. At a distance the 

 faqade of the church has the harmonious lines of 

 a little antique temple; close at hand is the grace- 

 ful campanile, an old octagonal tower surmounted 

 by a narrow mitre wrought in hammered iron, in 

 the midst of which are seen the black profiles of 

 the bells. 



At the entrance of the little market-town, in a 

 solitary corner, in the centre of an enclosure of 

 lofty walls, which are taller than the crests of 

 the pines and cypresses, Fabre's dwelling is hidden 

 away. A pink house with green shutters, half- 

 hidden amid the sombre foliage, appears at the 

 end of an alley of lilacs, " which sway in the spring 

 under the weight of their balmy thyrsi." Before 

 the house are the shady plane-trees, where during 

 the burning hours of August the cicada of the flow- 

 ering ash, the deafening cacan, concealed beneath 

 the leaves, fills the hot atmosphere with its eager 

 cries, the only sound that disturbs the profound 

 silence of this solitude. 



There, in this " hermit's retreat," as he himself 

 has defined it, the sage is voluntarily sequestered ; 

 a true saint of science, an ascetic living only on 

 fruits, vegetables, and a little wine; so in love with 

 retirement that even in the village he was for a 

 long time almost unknown, so careful was he to 

 go round instead of through it on his way to the 

 neighbouring mountain, where he would often spend 

 whole days alone with wild nature. 



It is in this silent Theba'id, so far from the atmos- 

 phere of cities, the vain agitations and storms of 

 2IO 



