had reduced it to a tedious and useless study in which the letter "killed
the life."

He knew the secret of communicating his conviction, his profound faith, to
his hearers: that sacred fire which animated him, that passion for all the
creatures of nature.

These lectures took place in the evening, twice a week, alternately with
the municipal lectures, to which Fabre brought no less application and
ardour. In the intention of those who instituted them these latter were
above all to be practical and scientific, dealing with science applied to
agriculture, the arts, and industry.

But might he not also expect auditors of another quality, in love only with
the ideal, "who, without troubling about the possible applications of
scientific theory, desired above all to be initiated into the action of the
forces which rule nature, and thereby to open to their minds more wondrous
horizons"?

Such were the noble scruples which troubled his conscience, and which
appeared in the letter which he addressed to the administration of the
city, when he was entrusted by the latter with what he regarded as a lofty
and most important mission.

"...Is it to be understood that every purely scientific aspect, incapable
of immediate application, is to be rigorously banished from these lessons?
Is it to be understood that, confined to an impassable circle, the value of
every truth must be reckoned at so much per hundred, and that I must
silently pass over all that aims only at satisfying a laudable desire of
knowledge? No, gentlemen, for then these lectures would lack a very