The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



of Procas, King of Alba, and of his two sons, 

 Numitor and Amulius. We heard of Cynaegirus, 

 the strong-jawed man, who, having lost his two 

 hands in battle, seized and held a Persian galley 

 with his teeth, and of Cadmus the Phoenician, who 

 sowed a dragon's teeth as though they were beans, 

 and gathered his harvest in the shape of a host of 

 armed men, who killed one another as they rose 

 up from the ground. The only one who survived 

 the slaughter was one as tough as leather, presum- 

 ably the son of the big back grinder. 



Had they talked to me about the man in the 

 moon, I could not have been more startled. I made 

 up for it with my animals, which I was far from 

 forgetting amid this phantasmagoria of heroes and 

 demigods. While honouring the exploits of Cadmus 

 and Cynaegirus, I hardly ever failed, on Sundays 

 and Thursdays, to go and see if the cowslip or the 

 yellow daffodil was making its appearance in the 

 meadows, if the Linnet was hatching on the juni- 

 per-bushes, if the Cockchafers were plopping down 

 from the wind-shaken poplars. Thus was the sa- 

 cred spark kept aglow, ever brighter than before. 1 



At Rodez, as at Saint-Leons, natural ob- 

 jects provided him with the chief material of 

 his recreations: 



The thrice-blessed Thursday had come; our bit 

 of translation was done, our dozen Greek roots had 



1 Souvenirs, VI., p. 60. The Life of the Fly, chap, vi., 

 "My Schooling." 



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