And the worthy man tells me what poverty in a frock-coat means. Though less of a pauper than I, he has known the mortification of it; he describes it to me, excitedly, in all its bitterness. I listen to him with an aching heart; I see the refuge which was to shelter my future crumbling before my eyes: “You have done me a great service, sir,” I answer. “You put an end to my hesitation. For the moment, I give up my plan. I will first see if it is possible to earn the small fortune which I shall need if I am to teach in a decent manner.” Thereupon we exchanged a friendship grip of the hand and parted. I never saw him again. His fatherly arguments had soon convinced me: I was prepared to hear the blunt truth. A few months earlier I had received my nomination as an assistant-lecturer in zoology at the university of Poitiers. They offered me a ludicrous salary. After paying the costs of moving, I should have had hardly three francs a day left; and, on this income, I should have had to keep my family, numbering seven in all. I hastened to decline the very great honour. No, science ought not to practise these jests. If we humble persons are of use to her, she should at least enable us to live. If she can’t do that, then let her leave us to break stones on the highway. Oh, yes, I was prepared for the truth when that honest fellow talked to me of frock-coated poverty! I am telling the story of a not very distant past. Since then things have improved considerably; but, when the pear was properly ripened, I was no longer of an age to pick it. However, notwithstanding Rollier’s confidences, Fabre had deferred rather than definitely abandoned the execution of his project. Since his impecuniosity was the only obstacle to the realisation of his wishes, could he not seek to uplift himself, as others had done, by daring and willing? In the meantime was it not better to make a great effort in this direction than to remain for ever sunk in the material anxieties and ungrateful tasks of the lycée? The question as to how to free and simultaneously uplift himself exercised the mind of Fabre at this time. And what was I to do now [he writes] to overcome the difficulty mentioned by my inspector and confirmed by my personal experience? I would take up industrial chemistry. The municipal lectures at Saint-Martial placed a spacious and fairly well-equipped laboratory at my disposal. Why not make the most of it? The chief manufacture of Avignon was madder. The farmer supplied the raw material to the factories, where it was turned into purer and more concentrated products. My predecessor had gone in for it and done well by it, so people said. I would follow in his footsteps and use the vats and furnaces, the expensive plant which I had inherited. So to work.