The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



seems, proposes to erect a bust of me. At 

 this very moment I have, staying in the house, 

 the sculptor Charpentier, who is making my 

 statue for a monument they are going to set 

 up in the Normal College of Avignon. In 

 my opinion there's a good deal of the beauti- 

 ful saints about it! " * 



This reminds us of a remark whispered 

 into a neighbour's ear on the occasion of the 

 jubilee celebrations, in the midst of all the 

 fashionable folk by whom he was sur- 

 rounded : " I must be very queer to look at ! " 



Here is a more sober if not more weighty 

 remark. One day some one was reminding 

 him, in my presence, of all the marks of 

 honour lavished upon him during his last two 

 days. I heard him reply quickly with the fa- 

 mous apostrophe : Maraiorij? jxotTaioTrfTGov, 

 Hal ndvra fj.arai6rrj<^. 2 



He had another manner, perhaps still more 

 expressive, of rendering the same idea : he 

 would puff into the air a cloud of smoke from 

 his pipe, which never left him, and, before 



1 In Provence, as in Italy, the plaster statues sold by 

 itinerant Italians are known as santi belli = beautiful 

 saints. — B. M. 



2 The text is from Ecclesiastes, i. 2: "Vanity of van- 

 ities, all is vanity," but Fabre cites it according to the 

 Discours contre Eutrope, in which he had learnt it at 

 school, alluding to the appropriate reflection of Saint 

 John Chrysostom: 'Ael pev t pn^tara Zevnve ijx ai P 0V tlrre^l 

 uaratdTw, etc. (Semper quidem, nunc vero maxime 

 opportunum est dicere: Vanitas, etc. 



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