The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



nearer the God of the Gospel than when we 

 most feel the want of Him. 



IV 



More than ninety years of life and almost 

 as many of labour, nearly five years of over- 

 whelming fame, and almost as many of un- 

 speakable suffering: must not a man be 

 " built of heart of oak," as they say in 

 Aveyron, to survive so many trials? 



Like the oaks of his native parts, the pa- 

 triarch of Serignan continued to brave the 

 assaults of time, and even when he began to 

 feel that his life was declining, it seemed as 

 though it was only withdrawing itself from 

 its long and manifold ramifications in the 

 external world to take refuge, as in an inex- 

 pugnable asylum, in the depths and roots of 

 his being. He was one of those of whom 

 people say with us that they " cannot die." 



Fabre's work is immortal — that is agreed. 

 But the artisan ? 



Let us resume our comparison. Like the 

 oak that loses its boughs, one after the other, 

 he saw falling one by one the several factors 

 of his life. His life was the harmas, that 

 paradise of insects, that laboratory after his 

 own heart, where he could make his observa- 

 tions under the blue skv, to the song of the 



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