Deprived of the means of subsistence by his conscientiousness, he left Paris almost penniless, and sought an asylum successively in the Pyrenees and on the Normandy coast. In 1856 appeared the book with which the name of Michelet will hereafter be most worthily associated--the one which may be said to have been written with his heart’s blood. That the taste of the reading world was not entirely corrupt, was proved by the rapid sale of this the most popular of all his productions. A new edition of _L’Oiseau_ came from the press each year for a long period of time, and it has been translated into various European languages. How far the attractiveness of the book, through the illustrative genius of Giacomelli, influenced the buying public; how far the surpassing merits of the style and matter of the work--we will not stay to determine; but it is certain that _The Bird_ at once established his popularity as a writer, and relieved his pecuniary needs. _L’Oiseau_ was followed by several other eloquent interpretations of Nature. But the first--there can be no question with persons of taste--remains the masterpiece. It is, indeed, unique in its kind in literature--by the intense sympathy and love for the subject which inspired the writer. It is the only book which treats the Bird as something more than an object of interest to the mere classifier, to the natural-history collector, or to the “sportsman.” It considers the winged tribes--those of the non-raptorial kinds--as possessed of a high intelligence, of a certain moral faculty, of devoted maternal affection--of a soul, in fine. Of his remaining writings, _La Bible de l’Humanité_ (1863) is one of the most notable, characteristic as it is of the author’s method of treatment of historical and ethnographical subjects. The calamities of his native land he so greatly loved, through the corrupt government which had brought upon it the devastations of a terrible war, ending, by a natural sequence, in the fearful struggle of the suffering proletariat, deeply affected the aged champion of the rights of humanity. Almost broken-hearted, he withdrew from his accustomed haunts and went to Switzerland, and afterwards to Italy. He died at Hyères, in 1874, in the 77th year of his age. A public funeral, attended by great numbers of the working classes, awaited him in the capital. In the following passage Michelet _virtually_ subscribes to the creed of Vegetarianism. The saving clause, in which he seems to suppose the diet of blood to be imposed upon our species by the “cruel fatalities” of life, it is pretty certain he would have been the first to wish to cancel, had he enjoyed the opportunity of investigating the scientific basis of dietetic reform:--