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He was shortly after seized with a serious illness, when he was sent to the hospital, where he found many Huguenot convicts imprisoned, like himself, because of their religion. Repeated applications were made to Saint-Florentin, the Secretary of State, by Fabre's relatives, friends, and fellow Protestants for his liberation, but without result.
Her faithfulness and love for the heroic galley-slave had never been shaken, and she resolved to remain constant to him, to remain unmarried if need be, or to wait for his liberation until death! It is probable that her noble decision determined Fabre and Fabre's friends to make a renewed effort for his liberation.
The artist then comes forward to co-ordinate all these scattered fragments, to assemble them, to breathe vitality into them, to restore these inert truths to life. But what a strange manner of working was Fabre's; what a curious method of composition!
Let us go once more into Fabre's garden and admire the Thomisus: absorbed in her maternal function, the little spider lying flat on her nest can strive no longer and is wasting away, but persists in living, mere ruin that she is, in order to open the door to her family with one last bite.
I need not here remind the reader of the wasps' and bees' genius for building, the social and economic organization of the hive and the ant-hill, the spider's snares, the eumenes' nest and hanging egg, the odynerus' cell with its neat stacks of game, the sacred beetle's filthy but ingenius ball, the leafcutter's faultless disks, the brick-laying of the mason-bee, the three dagger-thrusts which the aphex administers to the three nerve-centres of the cricket, the lancet of the cerceris, who paralyses her victims without killing them and preserves them for an indefinite period as fresh meat, nor a thousand other features which it would be impossible to enumerate without recapitulating the whole of Henri Fabre's work and completely altering the proportions of the present essay.
Bergson, quoting Fabre, has made play with the supposed extraordinary accuracy of the solitary wasp Ammophila, which lays its eggs in a caterpillar. On this subject I will quote from Drever's "Instinct in Man," p. 92: "According to Fabre's observations, which Bergson accepts, the Ammophila stings its prey EXACTLY and UNERRINGLY in EACH of the nervous centres.
For this reason Fabre's books are an education for all those who wish to devote themselves to observation; a manual of mental discipline, a true "essay upon method," which should be read by every naturalist, and the most interesting, instructive, familiar and delightful course of training that has ever been known.
What a contrast and a deliverance in these little books of Fabre's, so clear, so luminous, so simple, which for the first time spoke to the heart and the understanding; for "work which one does not understand disgusts one." To initiate others into science or art, it is not enough to have understood them oneself; it is not enough even that one should be an artist or a scientist.
Then he trotted out of the house and away to the Little Chemist, who came passively with him. All that day, and for many days, they fought to save Pomfrette's life. The Cure came also; but Pomfrette was in fever and delirium. Yet the good M. Fabre's presence, as it ever did, gave an air of calm and comfort to the place.
Indeed, that piece is the best of this author. It is the Philinte de Moliere, which, in some measure, forms a sequel to the comedy of the Misanthrope. Nevertheless, this title is ill chosen; for the character of the Philinte in the piece of MOLIERE, and that of FABRE'S piece scarcely bear any resemblance. We might rather call it the Egoiste.
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