The Professor: Avignon 



ruy and his gendarmes, although they were 

 capable of making him come to Paris, were 

 incapable of keeping him there. 



Fortunately Fabre's work is not of the 

 kind that needs, for its survival, the facti- 

 tious glitter of honours. By its own merit 

 it assures his name of an immortality greater 

 than that of the Immortal Forty. 



There were three men, at this period of 

 Fabre's life, who contributed not a little to 

 kindle or revive the fires of his scientific ac- 

 tivity. Dufour's essays furnished the spark 

 that made the inward flame burst into a mag- 

 nificent blaze of light. Experience and the 

 example of Pasteur added fuel to the fire, by 

 teaching him to keep as far as possible in 

 close contact with nature. Duruy's good will 

 brought to this blaze the vivifying breath 

 without which all ardour becomes chilled and 

 all light extinguished. 



But genius does not merely develop under 

 the impulse of the inner life, and the influ- 

 ence of the external life, which in some men 

 is more potent and more active; it is deter- 

 mined also by the pressure of events, of which 

 the most painful are not always the least 

 effectual. Who does not know that famous 

 line of Musset's, which has almost become a 

 proverb : 



183 



