Fabre's Writings 



dren, on the contrary, agree among themselves and 

 say: 



" Let us preserve the relic. It was where he 

 toiled so hard to teach himself and make himself 

 capable of teaching others; it was where he so long 

 consumed his strength to find food for us when 

 we were little. Let us keep the sacred plank." 



I dare not believe in such a future for you. You 

 will pass into strange hands, O my old friend ; you 

 will become a bedside-table laden w T ith bowl after 

 bowl of linseed-tea, until, decrepit, rickety, and 

 broken-down, you are chopped up to feed the flames 

 for a brief moment under the simmering saucepan. 

 You will vanish in smoke to join my labours in 

 that other smoke, oblivion, the ultimate resting- 

 place of our vain agitations. 1 



The little table protests to-day. It has no 

 desire whatever to go up in smoke with the 

 labour in which it has borne its part; it flat- 

 ters itself, on the contrary, with the hope 

 that having shared in the toil it may also 

 have some chance of sharing the honour. 

 Rather than this unjust sentence of death, it 

 seems to hear a summons to life : 



" Let us go back, O my table, to the days 

 of our youth, the days of your French polish 

 and my smiling illusions," and it stands 

 proudly upon its legs, as though to serve as 



1 Souvenirs, ix., pp. 184-186. The Life of the Fly, chap, 

 xiii., "Mathematical Memories: My Little Table." 



295 



