Fabre's Writings 



soon perceive, on reading him, how much method, 

 selection, and persevering determination have pre- 

 sided over all these investigations, v^hich may ap- 

 pear almost incoherent, and are, on the contrary, 

 profoundly systematic and definitely ordered.^ 



Frangois Coppee, in a delightful story, shows us 

 an austere landscape gardener fiercely destroying 

 all the sparrows and, above all, the blackbirds, 

 which disturb and dishonour the magnificent sym- 

 metry of his paths, which were clipped straight with 

 the aid of a taut cord. Our gentleman does not 

 leave a single one alive. . . . But on the other 

 side of the party wall is a true poet, who, not hav- 

 ing the same aesthetic, buys every day a quantity of 

 birds in the market, and indefatigably " puts back 

 the blackbirds " into his neighbour's shrubberies.^ 



Fabre's work is that of a conscientious 

 architect who has sought to keep the shrub- 

 beries and alleys of his garden in strict or- 

 der, but the racial poet lurking behind the 

 architect has released so many blackbirds 

 that he seems to have destroyed the tidiness 

 of the garden. Just at first, the Souvenirs 

 produce somewhat the same impression as 

 the harmaSy where the thousand actors of 

 the rural stage follow one another, appear 

 and reappear, at varied intervals, at the will 



i^J. p. Lafitte, La Nature, March 26, 1910. 

 2 Jean Aicard, Eloge de F. Coppee. 



