The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



Butterflies wave voluptuously, intoxicating 

 themselves with the nectar of the flowers. 



" Nothing in all this is far-fetched or de- 

 liberate. Henri Fabre has never plumed 

 himself on his literary achievements; it is his 

 real self, it is his whole mind that expresses 

 itself in his Souvenirs ; the mind of an ardent 

 and passionately interested but precise ob- 

 server, a mind open to every emotion," * and 

 sensitive to all the impressions received from 

 all these little lives, that have no secrets from 

 him. This mind and these lives, intimately 

 and sincerely mingled, and ingenuously re- 

 flected in the pages of his books; this is the 

 secret of the most vital, the most picturesque, 

 and the least conventional style that can be 

 imagined. 



Thus, it is that, aiding his imagination and 

 his sensibility, the insects themselves became 

 the entomologist's foremost collaborators. 

 Was not this the most graceful way of recog- 

 nising the services which he has rendered 

 them, and of repaying the love which he has 

 always borne them? 



If they have received much, they have 

 also given much; so much, that we may well 

 ask who can have gained the most — they or 

 the entomologist — by this exchange of bene- 



1 E. Perrier, loc cit. 



256 



