The Last Heights 



the blue vanishing spiral : " That," he would 

 say, " is human glory ! " 



Here we recognise the man whom Rostand 

 represented as follows in the verses inscribed 

 upon a bas-relief which makes his collection 

 of sonnets, entitled Fabre-des-Insectes, as it 

 were the pendant of Charpentier's monu- 

 ment: 



" C'est un homme incline, modeste et magistral, 

 Pensif car dans ses doigts il a tenu des ailes 

 Poursuivant les honneurs moins que les sauterelles." 



(A man who stoops, modest and magisterial, 

 Thoughtful for in his fingers he has held wings, 

 Pursuing honours less than the grasshoppers.) 



II 



The fine and unusual qualities of Fabre's 

 career consist in this; he has attained fame 

 while seeking nothing but truth : and what a 

 truth! the truth concealed in the humblest 

 of created things 1 



Before Fabre's time entomology was a 

 poor little science, with no savour of life or 

 freshness about it, without a ray of sunshine, 

 without a soul; like those poor little insects 

 under glass or stuck on pins, which it was its 

 mission to study. 



In his hands and in his books, as though by 

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