The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



took them to the pond, I watched them have their 

 bath, I brought them back again, carrying the more 

 tired ones in a basket. 



A month or two after, the little birds of my 

 dreams were a reality. There were twenty-four 

 of them. They had been hatched by two hens, of 

 whom one, the big black one, was an inmate of 

 the house, while the other was borrowed from 

 a neighbour. 



To bring them up, the former is sufficient, so 

 careful is she of her adopted family. At first 

 everything goes perfectly: a tub with two fingers' 

 depth of water serves as a pond. On sunny days 

 the ducklings bathe in it under the anxious eye 

 of the hen. 



A fortnight later, the tub is no longer enough. 

 It contains neither cresses crammed with tiny Shell- 

 fish nor Worms and Tadpoles, dainty morsels both. 

 The time has come for dives and hunts amid the 

 tangle of the water-weeds; and for us the day 

 of trouble has also come. True, the miller, down 

 by the brook, has fine ducks, easy and cheap to 

 rear; the tallow-smelter, who has extolled his burnt 

 fat so loudly, has some as well, for he possesses 

 the advantage of the waste water from the spring 

 at the bottom of the village; but how are we, 

 right up there, at the top, to procure aquatic sports 

 for our broods? In summer we have hardly water 

 to drink! 



Near the house, in a freestone recess, a scanty 

 spring trickles into a basin made in the rock. Four 

 or five families have, like ourselves, to draw their 



44 



