Now he is "at leisure: the half-day is over" (15/2.); and he can satisfy his immense need not of repose, but of relaxation and distraction in less severe occupations; for he is never at any time nor anywhere inactive; incessantly making notes, with little stumps of pencil which he carries about in his pockets, and on the first scrap of paper that comes to hand, of all that passes through his mind. Those eternal afternoons, which usually, in the depth of the French provinces, prove so dull and wearisome, seem short enough to him. Now he will halt before his plants, now stoop to the ground, the better to observe a passing insect; always in search of some fresh subject of study; or now bending over his microscope. (15/3.) Then he undertakes, for his later-born children at Sérignan, the duties which he formerly performed for the elder family at Orange: he teaches them himself; he has much to do with them, for their sake and for his own as well, for he is jealous of possessing them, and he regrets parting with them. They too have their tasks arranged in advance. They are his assistants, his appointed collaborators, who keep and relieve guard, undertaking, in his absence, some observation already in hand, so that no detail may be lost, no incident of the story that unrolls itself sometimes with exasperating slowness beneath the bell-covers of the laboratory or on some bush in the garden. He inspires the whole household with the fire of his own genius, and all those about him are almost as interested as he. At home, in the house, always wearing his eternal felt hat, and absorbed in meditation, he speaks little, holding that every word should have its object, and only employing a term when he has tested its weight and meaning. Silence at mealtimes again is a rule that no one of his household would infringe. But he unbends his brow when he receives a friend at his hospitable table, where but lately his smiling wife would sit, full of little attentions for him. (15/4.)