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We should belittle his thought, we should dwarf the man himself, were we to seek to confine to any particular thesis his spiritualistic conception of the universe. Fabre recognizes and adores in nature only the great eternal Power, whose imprint is everywhere revealed by the phenomena of matter.
I myself why conceal the fact? was not without a certain satisfaction as I piously carried that most delicate and precious apparatus, the historic five-franc graphometer. The scene of operations was an untilled, flinty plain, a harmas, as we call it in the district. "The Life of the Fly", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter 1.
Day after day the door grew heavier and stronger. The builder worked at it on the under side, adding new layers of silk. There is always a layer of the soil worked into the door to give it weight and strength. Spiders, like reptiles, can go months without food. The young, according to Fabre, go seven months without eating.
Fabre, like a true artist, finds all sorts of expressions to describe the tiny, fragile eggs of his insects; little shining pearls, delicious coffers of nickel or amber, miniature pots of translucid alabaster, "which we might think were stolen from the cupboard of a fairy."
Fabre has a mind propitious to such processes; and if, by chance, circumstances had directed his attention to medicine, that science which is based upon an abundant provision of facts, but in which good sense and a kind of divination play a still wider part, there is no doubt that he would have been capable of becoming a shining light in this new arena.
Trust rather to common sense and learn, by degrees, at your own cost, that to hit back, above all if you can do so promptly, is still the best way to intimidate the enemy. Cf. "The Glow-worm and Other Beetles," by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapters 8 to 15.
"Mademoiselle Fabre, at M. Urbain Fabre's, Rue Saint-Dominique-D'Enfer, No. 17." Thenardier seized the letter with a sort of feverish convulsion. "Wife!" he cried. The Thenardier woman hastened to him. "Here's the letter. You know what you have to do. There is a carriage at the door. Set out at once, and return ditto." And addressing the man with the meat-axe:
But we must set apart, as surpassing all others in interest, the letters which Fabre addressed to his brother during the years spent as schoolmaster at Carpentras or Ajaccio; for these are more especially instructive in respect of the almost unknown years of his youth; these most of all reveal his personality and are one of the finest illustrations that could be given of his life, a true poem of energy and disinterested labour.
Respectful of all traditions, he has kept up the observance of old customs; no Christmas Eve has ever been passed under the roof of his Harmas without the consecrated meats upon the table; the heart of celery, the nougat of almonds, the dish of snails, and the savoury-smelling turkey. At Sérignan Fabre is little known and little appreciated.
Nevertheless, he adored music, of which he knew something, having learned it, as he learned his drawing, without a master; but he preferred the naive songs of the country, or the melody of a flute; to the most scholarly concert-music. Like Rollinat, Fabre rightly considers that music should complete, accentuate, and release that which poetry has perforce left incomplete or indefinite.
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