My hermitage contains an alley of lilacs, long and wide. When May is here, when the two rows of bushes, yielding beneath the burden of the heads of blossom, bow themselves, forming pointed arches, this walk becomes a chapel, in which the most beautiful festival of the year is celebrated in the enchanting morning sunlight; a quiet festival, without flags flapping at the windows, without the burning of gunpowder, without quarrels after drinking; the festival of the simple, disturbed neither by the raucous brass band of the dancers, nor by the shouts of the crowd.... Vulgar delights of maroons and libations, how far removed are you from this solemnity! I am one of the faithful in the chapel of the lilacs. My prayer is not such as can be translated by words; it is an intimate emotion that stirs in me gently. Devoutly I make my stations from one pillar of verdure to the next; step by step I tell my observer’s rosary. [107] His “prayer is an Oh! of admiration,” addressed to that creative Power who, in His works, is always the geometer, according to Plato’s sublime saying: which is, that He everywhere sheds order, light, and harmony. Ἀεὶ ὀ Θεος γεωμετρεῖ. [108] The contemplation of the living world that is stirring all about him gives him yet further cause to marvel at the wisdom of Him “who has made the plans on which life is working.” [109] It is easy to understand that, for Fabre, the harmas assumed the colours and the charms of Eden, and that his solitary life therein was like a perpetual ecstasy. For the rest, the scene changes as well as the protagonists. After the harmas with its breeding-cages and its customary inhabitants, the Sérignan country-side with its fortuitous encounters. When the weather is propitious the whole household sets out in a party. But the heat is torrid and the time of day unsuitable for walking. The naturalist sets out none the less. Bull alone dares to brave with his master the blazing heat of the sun. But even he will not hold out to the end! The goal is reached; but the most difficult thing is not to walk the distance to the post of observation; it is to settle down and remain there, under the scorching sun, waiting for an opportunity that is often slow to occur. Ah, how long the hours seem, spent motionless, under a burning sun, at the foot of a declivity which sends the heat of an oven beating down upon you! Bull, my inseparable companion, has retired some distance into the shade, under a clump of evergreen oaks. He has found a layer of sand whose depths still retain some traces of the last shower. He digs himself a bed; and in the cool furrow the sybarite stretches himself flat upon his belly. Lolling his tongue and thrashing the boughs with his tail, he keeps his soft, deep gaze fixed upon me: