In spite of the poverty of his surroundings, Henri was not unhappy. He was too young to worry much about his appearance. It is true that his clothes were rough and shabby. He generally wore a rough frieze frock which flapped against his bare legs, but his hardships were forgotten in his great love for the animals around that little farm. He loved the flowers, but even more he loved the living things all around him. Butterflies, grasshoppers, bees, spiders, wasps, in fact, every living thing the boy watched, and, when in the evening the family sat around the rough table to eat, Henri told them of his love for all these creatures. The other members of the family just laughed at Henri. How little they thought that some day Henri would know more about these insects than any one else in the world. When he was seven the time came for him to go to school, so he returned to his father's house in Saint Leons. The school he attended, which was the schoolmaster's home, consisted of one room, which had to serve as school, kitchen, bedroom, dining-room, and, sometimes, chicken-house and piggery. The schoolmaster himself was not a man of much learning, and seemed more interested in his chickens and pigs than in anything else, but he managed to teach the pupils their letters and some elementary subjects. Often in the middle of a lesson the door would be burst open, and a dozen hungry little pigs would scamper in, followed by a brood of chickens. By the time they had been put out the schoolmaster would have considerable difficulty in getting his scholars' attention back to the lesson. It was a noisy school indeed. All the boys loved the arithmetic lesson because it gave them a chance to shout. The whole class would recite the multiplication table in unison, and they would simply yell until even the little pigs became scared, and bolted out of the school. Just about this time something happened which had a great influence over Henri Fabre. As a reward for doing well at school he was given a prize--a book about animals, with scores of pictures in it. True, it was only a cheap edition, with paper covers, but to Henri it seemed priceless. How he pored over its contents, and looked at the pictures of coons, foxes, wolves, dogs, cats, asses, rabbits, and dozens of other animals! This served to kindle his love for living things, and when the schoolmaster told the boys to go into his garden and kill the insects Henri crammed them into his pockets. Snails, beetles, and even wasps, all seemed to him too interesting to be ruthlessly killed.