The better to belong to himself, he eluded all invitations, even those from
his nearest or most intimate friends; he hated to go away even for a few
hours, preferring to enjoy in his own house their presence amidst his
habitual and delightful surroundings. Everything in this still unexplored
country was new to him. What would he do elsewhere, even in his beloved
Carpentras, whither his faithful friend and pupil Devillario, who had
formerly followed him in his walks around Avignon, would endeavour from
time to time to draw him? Devillario was a magistrate, a collector and
palaeontologist; his simple tastes, his wide culture, and his passion for
natural history would surely have decided Fabre to accept his invitations,
but that he forbade himself the pleasure. "I am afraid the hospitable
cutlet that awaits me at your table will have time to grow cold; I am up to
the neck in my work (6/8.)...But you, when you can, escape from your
courts, and we will philosophize at random, as is our custom when we can
manage to pass a few hours together. As for me, it is very doubtful whether
the temptation will seize me to come to Carpentras. A hermit of the Thebaïd
was no more diligent in his cell than I in my village home." (6/9.)


CHAPTER 7. THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE.

Was there not indeed a sufficiency of captivating matters all about him,
and beneath his very feet?

In his deep, sunny garden a thousand insects fly, creep, crawl, and hum,
and each relates its history to him. A golden gardener-beetle trots along
the path. Rose-beetles pass, in snoring flight, on every hand, the gold and
emerald of their elytra gleaming; now and again one of them alights for a
moment on the flowering head of a thistle; he seizes it carefully with the
tips of his nervous, pointed fingers, seems to caress it, speaks to it, and