madder; a crude preparation which necessitated long and expensive
manipulations. (4/23.)

He had been working at this for eight years when Victor Duruy, Minister of
Public Instruction and Grand Master of the University, came to surprise him
in his laboratory at Saint-Martial, in the full fever of research. Whatever
was Duruy's idea in entering into relations with him, it seems that from
their first meeting the two men were really taken with one another: there
were, between them, so many close affinities of taste and character. Duruy
found in Fabre a man of his own temper; for his, like Fabre's, was a modest
and simple nature. Both came of the people, and the principal motive of
each was the same ideal of work, emancipation, and progress.

A little later Duruy summoned the modest sage of Avignon to Paris, with
particular insistence; he was full of attentions and of forethought, and
made him there and then a chevalier of the Legion of Honour; a distinction
of which Fabre was far from being proud, and which he was careful never to
obtrude; but he nevertheless always thought of it with a certain
tenderness, as a beloved "relic" in memory of this illustrious friend.

On the following day the naturalist was conveyed to the Tuileries to be
presented to the Emperor. You must not suppose that he was in the least
disturbed at the idea of finding himself face to face with royalty. In the
presence of all these bedizened folk, in his coat of a cut which was
doubtless already superannuated, he cared little for the impression he
might produce. As good an observer of men as of beasts, he gazed quietly
about him; he exchanged a few words with the Emperor, who was "quite
simple," almost suppressed, his eyes always half-closed; he watched the
coming and going of "the chamberlains with short breeches and silver-
buckled shoes, great scarabaei, clad with café au lait wing-cases, moving