But the manner of speaking, describing, and depicting is none the less an integral part of the truth when it is a matter of expounding and transmitting the latter. To express it feebly is often to compromise it, to diminish it; and even to betray it. There are terms which say better than others what has to be said. "Words have their physiognomy; if there are lifeless words, there are also picturesque and richly-coloured words, comparable to the brush strokes which scatter flecks of light on the grey background of the picture." There are particular terms of expression, felicities which present things in a better light, and the writer must search in his memory, his imagination, and his heart, for the fitting accent; for the flexibility of language and the wealth of words which are needful if he would fully succeed in the portrayal of living creatures; if he would tender the living truth, reproduce in all its light and shade the spectacle of the world, arouse the imagination, and faithfully interpret the mysterious spirit which impregnates matter and is reflected in thought. The artist then comes forward to co-ordinate all these scattered fragments, to assemble them, to breathe vitality into them, to restore these inert truths to life. But what a strange manner of working was Fabre's; what a curious method of composition! However full of ideas his mind might be, he was incapable of expressing them if he remained in one place and assumed the ordinary preliminary attitude of a man preparing to write. Seated and motionless, his limbs at rest, pen in hand, with a blank page before him, it seemed to him that all his faculties became of a sudden paralysed. He must first move about; activity helped him to pursue his ideas; it was in action that he recovered his ardour and uncovered the sources of inspiration. Just as he never observed without enthusiasm, so he found it impossible to write without exaltation, and it was precisely because he so ardently loved the truth that he felt himself compelled to show it in all its beauty. Moving like a circus-horse about the great table of his laboratory, he would begin to tramp indefatigably round and round, so that his steps have worn in the tiles of the floor an ineffaceable record of the concentric track in which they moved incessantly for thirty years. His mind would grow clear and active as he walked, smoking his pipe and "using his marrow-bones." (12/1.) He was already at work; he was "hammering" his future chapters in his brain; for the idea would be all the more precise as the form was more finished and more irreproachable, more closely identified with the thought; he would wait until the word quivered, palpitated, and lived; until the transcription was no longer an illusion, a phantom, a vision devoid of reality, but a faithful echo, a sincere translation, a finished interpretation, reflecting entire the fundamental essence of the thing; in a word, a work of art, a parallel to nature.