The magnificent Bee herself, with her dark-violet wings and black-velvet raiment, her rustic edifices on the sun-blistered pebbles amid the thyme, her honey, providing a diversion from the severities of the compass and the square, all made a great impression on my mind; and I wanted to know more than I had learnt from the schoolboys, which was just how to rob the cells of their honey with a straw. As it happened, my bookseller had a gorgeous work on insects for sale. It was called Histoire naturelle des animaux articulés, by de Castelnau, E. Blanchard, and Lucas, and boasted a multitude of most attractive illustrations; but the price of it, the price of it! No matter: was not my splendid income supposed to cover everything, food for the mind as well as food for the body? Anything extra that I gave to the one I could save upon the other; a method of balancing painfully familiar to those who look to science for their livelihood. The purchase was effected. That day my professional emoluments were severely strained: I devoted a month’s salary to the acquisition of the book. I had to resort to miracles of economy for some time to come before making up the enormous deficit. The book was devoured; there is no other word for it. In it I learnt the name of my black Bee; I read for the first time various details of the habits of insects; I found, surrounded in my eyes with a sort of halo, the revered names of Réaumur, Huber, and Léon Dufour; and, while I turned over the pages for the hundredth time, a voice within me seemed to whisper: “You also shall be of their company!” [33] CHAPTER VIII THE SCHOOLMASTER: CARPENTRAS (CONTINUED) If he had hearkened only to his tastes, the young schoolmaster of Carpentras would have devoted to the world of animals all the time that was not taken up by his pupils. But his profession itself and the requirements of his future prevented him from following the dominant attraction unchecked. He had formed a resolve “to raise himself above the level of the primary school, which at that time barely fed its teachers,” and to make a place for himself in the ranks of secondary instruction. He had, therefore, to renounce his natural history, since that as yet had no place in the curriculum, and he had to take up mathematics. So we see him submerged in conic sections and the differential and integral calculus, without a guide, without advice, confronted for days on end by some obscure difficulty which tenacious meditation eventually robbed of its mystery. Mathematics, however, formed only the first part of his programme, which comprised also physics and chemistry. These, no doubt, were less abstruse sciences, but the necessary equipment was also less simple. He needed a laboratory; he could not run to the expense of one; so he made one, an “impossible” one, by force of industry.