buried in the soil or creeping over leaf or blade have for him been
sufficient to evoke the most important, the most fascinating problems, and
have revealed a whole world of miracle and poetry.

He saw the light at Saint-Léons, a little commune of the canton of Vezins
in the Haut Rouergue, on the 22nd December, 1823, some seven years earlier
than Mistral, his most famous neighbour, the greater lustre of whose
celebrity was to eclipse his own.

Here he essayed his earliest steps; here he stammered his first syllables.

His early childhood, however, was passed almost wholly at Malaval, a tiny
hamlet in the parish of Lavaysse, whose belfry was visible at quite a short
distance; but to reach it one had to travel nearly twenty-five rough,
mountainous miles, through a whole green countryside; green, but bare, and
lacking in charm. (1/1.)

All his paternal forebears came from Malaval, and thence one day his
father, Antoine Fabre, came to dwell at Saint-Léons, as a consequence of
his marriage with the daughter of the huissier, Victoire Salgues, and in
order to prepare himself, as working apprentice, in the tricks and quibbles
of the law. (1/2.)

In the roads of Malaval, bordered with brambles, in the glades of bracken,
and amid the meadows of broom, he received his first impressions of nature.
At Malaval too lived his grandmother, the good old woman who could lull him
to sleep at night with beautiful stories and simple legends, while she
wound her distaff or spun her bobbin.

But what were all these imaginary marvels, what were the ogres who smelt