There was a certain coolness among us at the evening meal. I read mute reproaches, because of my experiment, in the eyes of my home-circle; I read an unspoken accusation of cruelty all around me. The death of the unfortunate Sparrow had saddened the whole family. I myself was not without some remorse of conscience: the poor result achieved seemed to me too dearly bought. I am not made of the stuff of those who, without turning a hair, rip up live Dogs to find out nothing in particular. [88] Is there not something touching in the simplicity of the father who, with such good will, becomes a child with his children; and in the compassionate kindness of the man who cannot without grieving witness the death of a Sparrow? Fabre indeed possessed in no common degree that quality which, according to Saint Augustine, is the foremost characteristic of spiritual beauty and, according to the poet of the animals, constitutes the essential nobility of the French mind: “La bonté, c’est le fond de tout âme française.” (Kindness, the base of every Frenchman’s mind.) It was, at all events, the basis of his own. And we are conscious of a fundamental emotion, an intimate reprobation, that ascends from the depths of his being to oppose all ideas of violence and hatred. It does not surprise us to see the serene kindliness of our compatriot veiling itself in dejection and becoming almost pugnacious when confronted by the melancholy exploits of force; for how could he remain unaffected before the stupendous barbarism and iniquity of 1870? At the time of his retirement to Orange, Fabre was already the father of five children: Antonia, Aglaé, Claire, Emile, and Jules, who, in course of time, were joined by three others, Paul, Anna, and Marie-Pauline. It was not with Fabre as with some intellectuals, whose thoughts and life remain almost strangers to the home which they establish one day as though in a moment of distraction, and who divide their lives into two parts—one being devoted to their professional labours and the other reserved for the exigencies of family life.