It was at this period above all that he felt so "lonely, abandoned,
struggling against misfortune; and before one can philosophize one has to
live." (5/9.)

And his incessant labour was aggravated by a bitter disappointment. In the
year of Mill's death Fabre was dismissed from his post as conservator of
the Requien Museum, which he had held in spite of his departure from
Avignon, going thither regularly twice a week to acquit himself of his
duties. The municipality, working in the dark, suddenly dismissed him
without explanation. To Fabre this dismissal was infinitely bitter; "a
sweeper-boy would have been treated with as much ceremony." (5/10.) What
afflicted him most was not the undeserved slight of the dismissal, but his
unspeakable regret at quitting those beloved vegetable collections,
"amassed with such love" by Requien, who was his friend and master, and by
Mill and himself; and the thought that he would henceforth perhaps be
unable to save these precious but perishable things from oblivion, or
terminate the botanical geography of Vaucluse, on which he had been thirty
years at work!

For this reason, when there was some talk of establishing an agronomic
station at Avignon, and of appointing him director, he was at first warmly
in favour of the idea. (5/11.) Already he foresaw a host of fascinating
experiments, of the highest practical value, conducted in the peace and
leisure and security of a fixed appointment. It is indeed probable that in
so vast a field he would have demonstrated many valuable truths, fruitful
in practical results; he was certainly meant for such a task, and he would
have performed it with genuine personal satisfaction. He had already
exerted his ingenuity by trying to develop, among the children of the
countryside, a taste for agriculture, which he rightly considered the