This friendly voice, this helping hand, which Fabre failed to find in the great benefactor of humanity who witnessed his distress—so true is it that the best of us have their defects and their seasons of inattention—he was presently to find unexpectedly enough, in one of his official chiefs, whose first appearance in his life was to him like a warm “ray of sunlight” piercing the icy atmosphere of winter. The incident is worth recording: it is all the more delightful in that Fabre, instead of thrusting himself forward, sought rather to draw back, seeming more anxious to avoid than to recommend himself for administrative favours. The chief inspectors visited our grammar-school. These personages travel in pairs: one attends to literature, the other to science. When the inspection was over and the books checked, the staff was summoned to the principal’s drawing-room, to receive the parting admonitions of the two luminaries. The man of science began. I should be sadly put to it to remember what he said. It was cold professional prose, made up of soulless words which the hearer forgot once the speaker’s back was turned, words merely boring to both. I had heard enough of these chilly sermons in my time; one more of them could not hope to make an impression on me. The inspector in literature spoke next. At the first words which he uttered, I said to myself: “Oho! This is a very different business!” The speech was alive and vigorous and imageful; indifferent to scholastic commonplaces, the ideas soared, hovering gently in the serene heights of a kindly philosophy. This time, I listened with pleasure; I even felt stirred. Here was no official homily: it was full of impassioned zeal, of words that carried you with them, uttered by an honest man accomplished in the art of speaking, an orator in the true sense of the word. In all my school experience, I had never had such a treat. When the meeting broke up my heart beat faster than usual: “What a pity,” I thought, “that my side, the science side, cannot bring me into contact, some day, with that inspector! It seems to me that we should become great friends.” I inquired his name of my colleagues, who were always better-informed than I. They told me it was Victor Duruy.