him, hoping to see some unknown talent awaken or expand within them, only
to find themselves incapable of producing anything, and to consume
themselves in an insurmountable and barren ennui! One must be rich in one's
own nature, rich in will and in ability, to live apart and seek new paths
in solitude, and it is not without reason that the majority prefer the
turmoil of cities and the murmur of men to the silence of the country.

The atmosphere of a great capital, for instance, is singularly conducive to
work. Living constantly within the circle of light shed by the masters,
within reach of the laboratories and the great libraries, we are less
likely to go astray; we are stimulated by the contact of others; we profit
by their advice and experience; and it is easy to borrow ideas if we lack
them. Then there is the stimulant of self-respect, the sense of rivalry,
the eager desire to advance, to distinguish oneself, to shine, to attract
attention, to become in one's turn an arbiter, an object of wonder and
envy, without which stimulus many would merely have existed, and would
never have become what they are.

On the other hand, a man needs an intrinsic radio-activity, and a real
talent; and the aid, moreover, of exceptional circumstances, if fame is to
consent to come to him and take him by the hand in the depths of some
unknown Maillane, some obscure Sérignan; even, as in the case of Fabre, at
the end only of a long life.

But he, by a kind of fatality inherent in his nature, loved "to
circumscribe himself," according to the happy expression of Rousseau; and
he profited, rather than otherwise, by living entirely to himself; for he
had long been, indeed he always was, the man who, at twenty-five, writing
to his brother, had said, in speaking of his native countryside: