The Last Heights 



Cicadae, amid the thyme, lavender, and rose- 

 mary. Now he was seen there no longer; 

 hardly were the traces of his footsteps yet 

 visible through the untrlmmed boughs that 

 crossed the paths and the grass that was 

 Invading them. 



His life: it was his study, his museum of 

 natural history, his laboratory, where, with 

 closed doors, face to face with Nature, he 

 repeated. In order to perfect them, to con- 

 sign them to writing, his open-air researches, 

 his observations of the to-day or yesterday. 

 Now he no longer sets foot in it, and now 

 one saw — with what respect and tenderness 

 i — only the marks left by his footsteps upon 

 the tiled floor, as he came and went about the 

 big observation-table, which occupies all the 

 middle of the room, in pursuit of the solu- 

 tion of the problems propounded by his 

 insects. 



And we have a feeling that we are look- 

 ing upon, and handling, relics, when on this 

 table we still see the pocket-lenses, the micro- 

 scopes and modest apparatus which has 

 served for his experiments. And we have 

 the same feeling before the collections in the 

 glass-topped cases of polished pine which 

 stand against the whitewashed walls, and 

 before the hundred and twenty volumes of 

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