The Last Heights 



the blue vanishing spiral : " That," he would 

 say, " is human glory ! " 



Here we recognise the man whom Rostand 

 represented as follows in the verses inscribed 

 upon a bas-relief which makes his collection 

 of sonnets, entitled Fabre-des-Insectes, as it 

 were the pendant of Charpentier's monu- 

 ment: 



" C'est un homme incline, modeste et magistral, 

 Pensif — car dans ses doigts il a tenu des ailes 

 Poursuivant les honneurs moins que les sauterelles." 



(A man who stoops, modest and magisterial, 

 Thoughtful — for in his fingers he has held wings, 

 Pursuing honours less than the grasshoppers.) 



II 



The fine and unusual qualities of Fabre's 

 career consist in this; he has attained fame 

 while seeking nothing but truth : and what a 

 truth ! — the truth concealed in the humblest 

 of created things ! 



Before Fabre's time entomology was a 

 poor little science, with no savour of life or 

 freshness about it, without a ray of sunshine, 

 without a soul; like those poor little insects 

 under glass or stuck on pins, which it was its 

 mission to study. 



In his hands and in his books, as though by 



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