The Professor: Avignon 



immense whirl of humanity. To get away, to get 

 away was my one idea. 1 



In re-reading this curious and attractive 

 episode of Fabre's career, our mind was 

 haunted by the no less attractive memory of 

 another illustrious son of our Aveyron, which 

 shares his glory with Provence. 2 



Like the author of the Souvenirs entomolo- 

 giques, the writer of the Poesie des Betes is 

 the son of humble Aveyron peasants, who 

 raised himself by his own efforts from the 

 first to the second grade of school teachers, 

 and whose genius, like that of Fabre, faith- 

 ful to the environment in which he was born, 

 confines itself, with jealous care, like that 

 of the naturalist, to the " incomparable mu- 

 seum of the fields," which he describes with 

 the same clearness of vision and the same 

 sincerity of feeling. 



Like Fabre, Fabie is a modest man, who 

 does not readily emerge from the obscurity 

 in which his native timidity delights. In his 

 case again it needed the perspicacity and 

 kindliness of Duruy, " the champion of the 



1 Souvenirs, x., pp. 343 et seg. The Life of the Fly, 

 chap xx., " Industrial Chemistry." 



2 M. Francois Fabie, ex-professor in the lycee of Tou- 

 lon, still lives in the neighbourhood of the city, in the 

 Villa des Troenes. 



I8l 



