CHAPTER XIII 



RETIREMENT: ORANGE 



IT is commonly enough thought that a pro- 

 fessor on his vacations and a pensioned 

 official are very much the same — that both 

 art created and put into the world merely to 

 kill time and savour the delights of far niente. 

 Such was never Fabre's opinion. While he 

 loved nothing so well as his Thursdays and 

 vacations, this was because he then had more 

 freedom to devote himself to his favourite 

 studies. If he resigned himself readily to a 

 premature retirement, if he was even happy 

 to shake off the yoke of the lycee, this was 

 because he had quite definitely determined to 

 work more quietly and continuously; because 

 he hoped to increase the ardour and fertility 

 of his mind by a closer and more lasting in- 

 tercourse with the world of Nature. 



At the same time he found himself com- 

 pelled to look to his pen for that assurance 

 of material life which his retorts had refused 

 him, and which his meagre professor's pen- 

 sion afforded but Insufficiently. " What Is 

 to be done now?'' he cried, after the col- 

 199 



