The spot which was the scene of this first awakening deserves description. When one follows the road from Laissac to Vezins, a short distance after passing Vaysse-Rodié, just as one has almost reached the crest of the height which by reason of its rocky helmet is called the puech del Roucas, on the line of the watershed dividing the limestone basin of the Aveyron from the granitic basin of the Viaur, on turning sharply to the right one sees before one the austere Malavallis, dominated on the one hand by the height of Lavaysse with its ancient church, and enlivened a little on the other side by the tiny hamlet of Malaval, which consists, to-day, of two farm-houses; one whiter, more cheerful-looking, and on lower ground; the other standing higher, greyer in hue, and more difficult to discover in the shade of the oak-trees and thickets of broom and blackthorn which form a dense mantle of green about it. It was there, amid these trees, in this house, three thousand feet above the sea, in sight of the sturdy belfry of Lavaysse, that Jean-Henri Fabre was “born into the true life,” the life of the mind. Here, on this hillside, which directly faces the east, he made his earliest discoveries; here, one fine morning, as he will presently tell us, he discovered the sun; here, he saw not only the dawn of day, but also “that inward dawn, so far swept clear of the clouds of unconsciousness as to leave him a lasting memory.” Nothing could take the place of the picturesqueness and sincerity of the narrative in which he has related these earliest impressions of his childhood: My grandparents [12] were people whose quarrel with the alphabet was so great that they had never opened a book in their lives; and they kept a lean farm on the cold granite ridge of the Rouergue table-land. The house, standing alone amidst the heath and broom, with no neighbour for many a mile around and visited at intervals by the wolves, was to them the hub of the universe. But for a few surrounding villages, whither the calves were driven upon fair-days, the rest was only very vaguely known by hearsay. In this wild solitude, the mossy fens, with their quagmires oozing with iridescent pools, supplied the cows, the principal source of wealth, with plentiful pasture. In summer, on the short sward of the slopes, the sheep were penned day and night, protected from beasts of prey by a fence of hurdles propped up with pitchforks. When the grass was cropped close at one spot, the fold was shifted elsewhither. In the centre was the shepherd’s rolling hut, a straw cabin. Two watch-dogs, equipped with spiked collars, were answerable for tranquillity if the thieving wolf appeared in the night from out the neighbouring woods.