“The insect is no longer, for him, the lowest of creatures, disdained by all; you would think it was a person, a friend, whose thoughts and emotions he divines, in whose joys and sorrows he shares; he speaks to it, reassures it, consoles it, advises it by voice and gesture, and even helps it in its labours when it seems at the end of its resources. Of all these shared feelings, these anxieties experienced in common, he retains a vivid memory, and his ready, sympathetic, vibrant pen runs across the page, halts, starts off again, scratching the paper, uttering cries of joy, or weeping, as it records the drama all of whose vicissitudes he has experienced.” Not in vain are the insects “the children of summer,” and not in vain has he contemplated them “in the blessed season” under the brilliance and the ardours of noon. “All the sunshine of Provence is reflected by his picturesque style; and it seems as though a miraculous fairyland is unfolded before us, whose scenery is all of the mother-of-pearl, the gold, and the rainbow hues that Nature has spread upon the aerial oars of the Dragon-flies and the Bees, on the cuirass of the Scarabæi, on the blazing fans that the Butterflies wave voluptuously, intoxicating themselves with the nectar of the flowers. “Nothing in all this is far-fetched or deliberate. Henri Fabre has never plumed himself on his literary achievements; it is his real self, it is his whole mind that expresses itself in his Souvenirs; the mind of an ardent and passionately interested but precise observer, a mind open to every emotion,” [121] and sensitive to all the impressions received from all these little lives, that have no secrets from him. This mind and these lives, intimately and sincerely mingled, and ingenuously reflected in the pages of his books; this is the secret of the most vital, the most picturesque, and the least conventional style that can be imagined. Thus, it is that, aiding his imagination and his sensibility, the insects themselves became the entomologist’s foremost collaborators. Was not this the most graceful way of recognising the services which he has rendered them, and of repaying the love which he has always borne them? If they have received much, they have also given much; so much, that we may well ask who can have gained the most—they or the entomologist—by this exchange of benefits? Were one of their number aware of the merits of their partnership he would doubtless consider that they have contributed to his fame no less than he has magnified theirs. Conquered himself without reservation by the unexpected beauties of entomology, Fabre was fortunate enough to see a like fascination exerting itself, as a result of his teaching and example, in those about him, his neighbours and his friends, just as it now exerts itself through his books upon all his readers.