52 HOW THE AUTHOR WAS LED TO 
aware that the case was not hopeless—that the waters were hidden, not 
lost—that by their discovery we might restore vegetable life, and 
eventually animal life, —I felt myself much stronger, refreshed, renewed. 
For each spring that revealed itself, I grew less athirst; I felt its 
waters rise within my soul. 
Ever fertile is Italy. She proved so to me through her very bar- 
renness and poverty. The ruggedness of the bald Apennines, the lean 
Ligurian coast, did but the more awaken, by contrast, the recollection 
of that genial nature which cherishes the luxuriant richness of our 
western France. I missed the animal life; I felt its absence. From 
the mute foliage of sombre orange-gardens I demanded the woodland 
birds. For the first time I perceived the seriousness of human 
existence when it is no longer surrounded by the grand society of 
innocent beings whose movements, voices, and sports are, so to speak, 
the smile of creation. 
A revolution took place in me which I shall, perhaps, some day 
relate. I returned, with all the strength of my ailing existence, to the 
thoughts which I had uttered, in 1846, in my book of “The People,” 
to that City of God where the humble and simple, peasants and 
artisans, the ignorant and unlettered, barbarians and savages, children, 
and those other children, too, which we call animals, are all citizens 
under different titles, have all their privileges and their laws, their 
places at the great civic banquet. ‘I protest, for my part, that if any 
one remains in the rear whom the City still rejects and does not 
shelter with her rights, I myself will not enter in, but will halt upon 
her threshold.” 
Thus, all natural history I had begun to regard as a branch of 
the political. Every living species came, each in its humble right, 
striking at the gate and demanding admittance to the bosom of 
Democracy. Why should their elder brothers repulse them beyond 
the pale of those laws which the universal Father harmonizes with 
the law of the world ? 
Such, then, was my renovation, this tardy new life (vita nuova), 
which led me, step by step, to the natural sciences. Italy, whose 
