many "exquisite details concerning the cicada, the goat, and the laburnum."

Thus four years went by: but then his parents were constrained to seek
their fortune elsewhere, and transported their household to Toulouse, where
again the father kept a café. The young Henri was admitted gratuitously to
the seminary of the Esquille, where he managed to complete his fifth year.
Unfortunately his progress was soon interrupted by a new exodus on the part
of his family, which emigrated this time to Montpellier, where he was
haunted for a time by dreams of medicine, to which he seemed notably
adapted. Finally, a run of bad luck persisting, he had to bid farewell to
his studies and gain his bread as best he could. We see him set out along
the wide white roads: lost, almost a wanderer, seeking his living by the
sweat of his brow; one day selling lemons at the fair of Beaucaire, under
the arcades of the market or before the barracks of the Pré; another day
enlisting in a gang of labourers who were working on the line from
Beaucaire to Nîmes, which was then in process of construction. He knew
gloomy days, lonely and despairing. What was he doing? of what was he
dreaming? The love of nature and the passion for learning sustained him in
spite of all, and often served him as nourishment; as on the day when he
dined on a few grapes, plucked furtively at the edge of a field, after
exchanging the poor remnant of his last halfpence for a little volume of
Reboul's poems; soothing his hunger by reciting the verses of the gentle
baker-poet. Often some creature kept him company; some insect never seen
before was often his greatest pleasure; such as the pine-chafer, which he
encountered then for the first time; that superb beetle, whose black or
chestnut coat is sprinkled with specks of white velvet; which squeaks when
captured, emitting a slight complaining sound, like the vibration of a pane
of glass rubbed with the tip of a moistened finger. (1/8.)

Already this young mind, romantic and classic at once, full of the ideal,