But he was not one to speak of his troubles to the first comer; and it was
only after the sixth volume of the "Souvenirs entomologiques" had appeared
that his reserve was somewhat mitigated. Yet it was necessary that he
should speak of these troubles, that he should tell everything; and, thanks
to his conversation and his letters, I have been able to revive the past.

Among the greatest of my pleasures I count the notable honour of having
known him, and intimately. As an absorbed and attentive witness I was
present at the accomplishment of his last labours; I watched his last years
of work, so critical, so touching, so forsaken, before his ultimate
resurrection. What fruitful and suggestive lessons I learned in his
company, as we paced the winding paths of his Harmas; or while I sat beside
him, at his patriarchal table, interrogating that memory of his, so rich in
remembrances that even the remotest events of his life were as near to him
as those that had only then befallen him; so that the majority of the
judgments to be found in this book, of which not a line has been written
without his approval, may be regarded as the direct emanation of his mind.

As far as possible I have allowed him to speak himself. Has he not sketched
the finest pages of his "biography of a solitary student" in those racy
chapters of his "Souvenirs": those in which he has developed his genesis as
a naturalist and the history of the evolution of his ideas?
(Introduction/1.) In all cases I have only introduced such indications as
were essential to complete the sequence of events. It would have been idle
to re-tell in the same terms what every one may read elsewhere, or to
repeat in different and less happy terms what Fabre himself has told so
well.

I have therefore applied myself more especially to filling the gaps which