Even his temper, ordinarily gentle and easy, would suddenly become hasty
and violent, and would break out into terrible explosions when a sudden
annoyance set him beside himself; for instance, when he was the butt of
some ill-natured trick, or when, in spite of the lucidity of his
explanations, he felt that he had not been properly understood. Perhaps he
inherited this from his mother, a rebellious, crotchety, somewhat fantastic
person, by whose temper he himself had suffered.

But the young people who surrounded him were far from being upset by these
contrasts of temperament, in which they themselves saw nothing but natural
annoyance, and the corollary, as it were, of his abounding vitality.
(4/19.)

It was because he was the only university teacher in Avignon to occupy
himself with entomology that Pasteur visited him in 1865. The illustrious
chemist had been striving to check the plague that was devastating the
silkworm nurseries, and as he knew nothing of the subject which he proposed
to study, not even understanding the constitution of the cocoon or the
evolution of the silkworm, he sought out Fabre in order to obtain from his
store of entomological wisdom the elementary ideas which he would find
indispensable. Fabre has told us, in a moving page (4/20), with what a
total lack of comprehension of "poverty in a black coat" the great
scientist gazed at his poor home. Preoccupied by another problem, that of
the amelioration of wines by means of heat, Pasteur asked him point-blank--
him, the humble proletarian of the university caste, who drank only the
cheapest wine of the country--to show him his cellar. "My cellar! Why not
my vaults, my dusty bottles, labelled according to age and vintage! But
Pasteur insisted. Then, pointing with my finger, I showed him, in a corner
of the kitchen, a chair with all the straw gone, and on this chair a two-