After these his intellectual foster-parents have been Courrier, Toussenel, of whom he is passionately fond, and Rousseau, of whom he cares for little but his "Lettres sur la botanique," full of such fresh impressions, in which we feel not the literary man but the "craftsman"; he also cherishes Michelet; so full of intuition, although he never handled actual things and knew nothing of the practice of the sciences; not learned, but overflowing with love; his magic pen, his powers of evocation, and his deft brushwork delight Fabre, despite the poverty and insufficiency of his fundamental facts (15/17.); sometimes Michelet had been his inspiration. The two do really resemble one another; Michelet was no less fitted than Fabre to play the confidant to Nature, and his heart was of the same mettle. Since I have spoken of his favourites, let me also speak of his dislikes; Racine, whom he cannot bear; Molière, whom he does not really like; Buffon, whom he frankly detests for his too fluent prose, his ostentatious style, and his vain rhetoric. The only naturalist whom he might really have delighted in, had he possessed his works and been able to read them at leisure, is Audubon, the enthusiastic painter of the birds of America. In him he felt the presence of a mind and a temper almost identical with his own. CHAPTER 16. TWILIGHT. How he has laboured in this solitude! For he considers that he is still far from having completed his task. He feels more and more that he has scarcely done more than sketch the history of this singular and almost unknown world. "The more I go forward," he wrote to his brother in 1903, "the more clearly I see that I have struck my pick into an inexhaustible vein, well worthy of being exploited." (16/1.) What studies he has undertaken, what observations he has carried out, "almost at the same time, the same moment!" His laboratory is crowded with these subjects of experiments. "As though I had a long future before me"-- he was then just eighty years old--"I continue indefatigably my researches into the lives of these little creatures." (16/2.) Work in solitude seems to him, more and more, the only life possible, and he cannot even imagine any other. "The outer world scarcely tempts me at all; surrounded by my little family, it is enough for me to go into the woods from time to time, to listen to the fluting of the blackbirds. The very idea of the town disgusts me. Henceforth it would be impossible for me to live in the little cage of a citizen. Here I am, run wild, and I shall be so till the end." (16/3.) For him work has become more than ever an organic function, the true corollary of life. "Away with repose! For him who would spend his life properly there is nothing like work--so long as the machine will operate." Is this not the great law for all creatures so long as life lasts?