Poor people, what a hard life is yours: honourable above all, but of all the most uncertain! You exhaust yourselves with labour, and when you are almost within sight of its reward a few hours of a cold night, which has come upon you suddenly, have destroyed the harvest. To help these afflicted women would, it seemed to me, be a very difficult task. However, I tried, guided by botany, which recommended me to offer, as a substitute for the mulberry, the plants of related families: the elm, the nettle-tree, the nettle, the pellitory. Their budding leaves, chopped small, were offered to the silkworms. Other experiments, much less logical, were tried according to individual inspiration. None of them succeeded. [132] One and all, the newly-born larvæ starved to death. My fame as a quack must have suffered somewhat from this failure. But was it really my fault? No, it was the silk-worm’s, too faithful to its mulberry-leaf.... Larvæ that live on a vegetable diet will not by any means lend themselves to a change of food. Each has its plant or group of plants, apart from which nothing is acceptable. [133] Science as this great naturalist understands it is amiable and by no means pedantic; full of sympathy with the humble, since he himself has never ceased to be one of them, he does not disdain to consider their least preoccupations, and to become, by turns, their master and their disciple. CHAPTER XVIII THE COLLABORATORS: (CONTINUED) Not all the naturalist’s experiments are dedicated to practical folk; some are reserved rather for the intellectual. Let us proceed to the facts: To-day is Shrove Tuesday, a reminiscence of the ancient Saturnalia. I am meditating, on this occasion, a fantastic dish which would have delighted the gourmets of Rome.... There will be eight of us; first of all my family, and then two friends, probably the only persons in the village before whom I could permit myself such eccentricities of diet without jocular comment upon what would be regarded as a depraved mania. One of these is the schoolmaster. Since he permits it and does not fear the comments of the foolish, if by chance the secret of our feast should be divulged, we will call him by his name, Jullian. A man of broad views and reared upon science, his mind is open to truth of every kind.