It is in this silent Thebaïd, so far from the atmosphere of cities, the vain agitations and storms of the world, that his life has been passed, in unchanging uniformity; and here he has been able to pursue, with resolute labour and incredible patience, that prodigious series of marvellous observations which for nearly fifty years he has never ceased to accumulate. François Sicard, in his faultless medal and his admirable bust, has succeeded with rare felicity in reproducing for posterity this rugged, shaven face, full of laborious years; a peasant face, stamped with originality, under the wide felt hat of Provence; touched with geniality and benevolence, yet reflecting a world of energy. Sicard has fixed for ever this strange mask; the thin cheeks, ploughed into deep furrows, the strained nose, the pendent wrinkles of the throat, the thin, shrivelled lips, with an indescribable fold of bitterness at the corners of the mouth. The hair, tossed back, falls in fine curls over the ears, revealing a high, rounded forehead, obstinate and full of thought. But what chisel, what graver could reproduce the surprising shrewdness of that gaze, eclipsed from time to time by a convulsive tremor of the eyelids! What Holbein, what Chardin could render the almost extraordinary brilliance of those black eyes, those dilated pupils—the eyes of a prophet, a seer; singularly wide and deeply set, as though gazing always upon the mystery of things, as though made expressly to scrutinise Nature and decipher her enigmas? Above the orbits, two short, bristling eye-brows seem set there to guide the vision; one, by dint of knitting itself above the magnifying-glass, has retained an indelible fold of continual attention; the other, on the contrary, always updrawn, has the look of defying the interlocutor, of foreseeing his objections, of waiting with an ever-ready return-thrust. [92] Is not the reader dazzled by the brilliant colours, the warm tones of this picture? The Provençal light shines upon his face, splendidly avenging us for the obscurity which had too long withheld him from the admiration of the world. We could not choose a better guide to introduce us to the home of the Hermit of Sérignan, and to give us access to his person. In front of the house, beyond a low wall, of a comfortable height to lean on, is the most unexpected and improbable of gardens, a kind of couderc—that is, a tract of poor, stony ground, of which the naturalist has made a sort of wild park, jealously protected from the access of the profane, and literally invaded by all sorts of plants and insects. Fabre speaks of this retreat as follows: