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To tell the truth, Requien was not a man of learning so much as an enthusiastic collector. Very few would have felt capable of competing with him when it came to giving the name or the geographical distribution of a plant. A blade of grass, a pad of moss, a scab of lichen, a thread of seaweed: he knew them all. The scientific name flashed across his mind at once.
What an unerring memory, what a genius for classification amid the enormous mass of things observed! I stood aghast at it. I owe much to Requien in the domain of botany. Had death spared him longer, I should doubtless have owed more to him, for his was a generous heart, ever open to the troubles of novices.
Meanwhile, Ajaccio received the visit of a famous Avignon botanist, Requien by name, who, with a box crammed with paper under his arm, had long been botanizing all over Corsica, pressing and drying specimens and distributing them to his friends. We soon became acquainted. I accompanied him in my free time on his explorations and never did the master have a more attentive disciple.
The ancient Abbey of Saint-Martial, where these lectures were given, was occupied also by the Requien Museum, of which Fabre had charge. It was here that he one day met John Stuart Mill. The celebrated philosopher and economist had just lost his wife: "the most precious friendship of his life" was ended.
It was then that he became the pupil of Requien of Avignon, the retired botanist, a lofty but somewhat limited mind, who was hardly capable of opening up other horizons to him. But Requien did at least enrich his memory by a prodigious quantity of names of plants with which he had not been acquainted.
In the following year, I met Moquin-Tandon, with whom, thanks to Requien, I had already exchanged a few letters on botany. The illustrious Toulouse professor came to study on the spot the flora which he proposed to describe systematically.
He revealed to him the immense flora of Corsica, which he himself had come to study, and for which Fabre was to gather such a vast amount of material. Fabre found in Requien more especially a friend "proof against anything"; and when the latter died almost suddenly at Bonifacio, Fabre was overwhelmed by the sad news.
Now he was anxious not to leave the Vaucluse district, the scene of his first success, and a place so fruitful in subjects of study. He wished to remain close to his insects, and also near the precious library and the rich collections which Requien had left by will to the town of Avignon.
But the most admirably fruitful encounter, as it exercised the profoundest influence upon his destiny, was his meeting with Moquin-Tandon, a Toulouse professor who followed Requien to Corsica, to complete the work which the latter had left unfinished: the complete inventory of the prodigious wealth of vegetation, of the innumerable species and varieties which Fabre and he collected together, on the slopes and summits of Monte Renoso, often botanizing "up in the clouds, mantle on back and numb with cold."
There is, however, a very fine tower and east end in S. Didier, a church of the fourteenth century, another in the Hotel de Ville built round with a tasteless Classic structure that obscures it from view. The Musee Requien is in an old convent, the chapel of which is given up to the Protestants; it has a rich flamboyant window to the north, unfortunately blocked.
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