on fruits, vegetables, and a little wine; so in love with retirement that
even in the village he was for a long time almost unknown, so careful was
he to go round instead of through it on his way to the neighbouring
mountain, where he would often spend whole days alone with wild nature.

It is in this silent Thebaïd, so far from the atmosphere of cities, the
vain agitations and storms of the world, that his life has been passed, in
unchanging uniformity; and here he has been able to pursue, with resolute
labour and incredible patience, that prodigious series of marvellous
observations which for nearly fifty years he has never ceased to
accumulate.

Let us indeed remember how much time has been required and what effort has
been expended to complete the long and patient inquiries which he had
hitherto accomplished; obliged, as he was, to allow himself to be
interrupted at any moment, and to postpone his observations often at the
most interesting moment, in order to undertake some enervating labour, or
the disagreeable and mechanical duties of his profession. Remember that his
first labours already dated from twenty-five years earlier, and at the
moment when we observe him in his solitude at Sérignan he had only just
painfully gathered together the material for his first book. What a
contrast to the thirty fruitful years that were to follow! Now nearly ten
volumes, no less overflowing with the richest material, were to succeed one
another at almost regular intervals--about one in every three years.

To be sure, he would have gathered his harvest in no matter what corner of
the world, provided he had found within his reach, in whatever sphere of
life he had been placed, any subject of inquiry whatever; such was
Rousseau, botanizing over the bunch of chickweed provided for his canary;
such was Bernardin Saint-Pierre, discovering a world in a strawberry-plant