Preface xxix 



prising their little secrets, which are the reverse 

 of our greatest mysteries, fifty years of a 

 solitary existence, misunderstood, poor, often 

 very near to penury, but lit up every day 

 by the joy which a truth brings, which is the 

 greatest of all human joys. Petty truths, I 

 shall be told, those presented by the habits of 

 a spider or a grasshopper. There are no petty 

 truths to-day ; there is but one truth, whose 

 looking-glass, to our uncertain eyes, seems 

 broken, though its every fragment, whether 

 reflecting the evolution of a planet or the 

 flight of a bee, contains the supreme law. 



And these truths thus discovered had the 

 good fortune to be grasped by a mind which 

 knew how to understand what they themselves 

 can but ambiguously express, to interpret what 

 they are obliged to conceal and, at the same 

 time, to appreciate the shimmering beauty, 

 almost invisible to the majority of mankind, 

 that shines for a moment around all that exists, 

 especially around that which still remains very 

 close to nature and has hardly left its primeval 

 obscurity. 



To make of these long annals the generous 

 and delightful work of literature that they are 



