But we will pass over the remarks made at breakfast and the incidents of the last stage of the climb; we will make direct for the summit of Mont Ventoux, where the leader of the expedition will give us a glimpse of the delights that await the naturalist at the end of his climb when he has taken the precaution to make it at the right moment: Would you do some really fruitful botanising? Be there in the first fortnight of July; above all, be ahead of the grazing herds: where the sheep has browsed you will gather none but wretched leavings. While still spared by the hungry flocks, the top of the Ventoux in July is a literal bed of flowers; its loose stony surface is studded with them. My memory recalls, all streaming with the morning dew, those elegant tufts of Androsace villosa, with its pink-centred white blooms; the Mont-Cenis violet, spreading its great blue blossoms over the chips of limestone; the spikenard valerian, which blends the sweet perfume of its flowers with the offensive odour of its roots; the wedge-leaved globularia, forming close carpets of bright green dotted with blue capitula; the Alpine forget-me-not, whose blue rivals that of the skies; the Candolla candy-tuft, whose tiny stalk bears a dense head of little white flowers and goes winding among the loose stones. [63] Our naturalist is evidently fascinated by so many beauties, of such delicate quality. Will he not be tempted to forsake his insects for the flowers? Will not the botanical wealth of the Ventoux make him forget the entomological wonders of the “Sunken Road”? No; he is saved from such an error by God and the good genius that watches over the destiny of him who is to become the prince of entomologists. Even in his lectures on botanical subjects the insects are given their due; and now from time to time they claim his attention and seduce him from the spectacle of the vegetable curiosities which form the principal motive of the expedition; it is now the Ammophila and now the Decticus [64] that crosses the path of the naturalist in search of plants and flowers, recalling, by some of the most curious problems of entomology, the first beginnings of his vocation and the great task of his life. But the silent language of the tiny creatures destined to be his most intimate companions through life was seconded, at an opportune moment, by the more expressive language of human speech. Here we have one of those events that were landmarks in Fabre’s life, marking the starting-point of a fresh phase in the evolution of his ideas and his labours. He alone can describe for us the actual nature and exact significance of this incident: