The Last Heights 



suffering attaching to these, for all labour has 

 its burden, all light its shadow. 



This none knew better than he whose 

 genius was a protracted patience and his life 

 a hard-fought battle. And as though it was 

 his destiny to suiter to the end, he did suffer 

 still when the tardy hour of his fame had 

 struck. Was it not an ordeal still to be as- 

 sailed by visits and speeches when " nothing 

 was left but rest and silence " ? How can a 

 man delight in the incense of his admirers 

 when he is broken with fatigue? 



To express this contrast, to show that all 

 was not unmixed joy in these flattering visits 

 to the patriarch of Serignan, I will borrow 

 the delicate brush of an artist friend of 

 Fabre's : 



Night falls upon Serignan, serene, limpid, vio- 

 let and amethyst. The sounds of day fade one by 

 one. Still a few distant hoots from the horns of 

 motor-cars flying along the dusty roads, or the 

 sound of a dog baying the new moon, which shows 

 its slender sickle on the horizon; sometimes, too, 

 as though to eclipse the first stars, a rocket roars, a 

 prelude to the fireworks which are about to con- 

 clude the apotheosis. . . . J. H. Fabre, the hero of 

 the fete, the lover of the Sphex, the Mantis, the 

 Dung-beetle, is very tired. Think of it — ninety years 

 of age, and almost ninety years of labour! . . . and 



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