tter to acquire a laboratory in the open fields,
when harassed by a terrible anxiety about one's daily bread. For forty
years have I fought, with steadfast courage, against the paltry plagues
of life; and the long-wished-for laboratory has come at last. What it
has cost me in perseverance and relentless work I will not try to say.
It has come; and, with it--a more serious condition--perhaps a little
leisure. I say perhaps, for my leg is still hampered with a few links
of the convict's chain.

The wish is realized. It is a little late, O! my pretty insects! I
greatly fear that the peach is offered to me when I am beginning to
have no teeth wherewith to eat it. Yes, it is a little late: the wide
horizons of the outset have shrunk into a low and stifling canopy, more
and more straitened day by day. Regretting nothing in the past, save
those whom I have lost; regretting nothing, not even my first youth;
hoping nothing either, I have reached the point at which, worn out by
the experience of things, we ask ourselves if life be worth the living.

Amid the ruins that surround me, one strip of wall remains standing,
immovable upon its solid base: my passion for scientific truth. Is that
enough, O! my busy insects, to enable me to add yet a few seemly pages
to your history? Will my strength not cheat my good intentions? Why,
indeed, did I forsake you so long?

Friends have reproached me for it. Ah, tell them, tell those friends,
who are yours as well as mine, tell them that it was not forgetfulness
on my part, not weariness, nor neglect: I thought of you; I was
convinced that the Cerceris' (A species of Digger-wasp.--Translator's
Note.) cave had more fair secrets to reveal to us, that the chase of
the Sphex held fresh surprises in store. But time failed me; I was
alone, deserted, struggling against misfortune. Before philosophizing,
one had to live. Tell them that, and they will pardon me.

Others have reproached me with my style, which has not the solemnity,
nay, better, the dryness of the schools. They fear lest a page that is
read without fatigue should not always be the expression of the truth.
Were I to take their word for it, we are profound only on condition of
being obscure. Come here, one and all of you--you, the sting-bearers,
and you, the wing-cased armour-clads--take up my defence and bear
witness in my favour. Tell of the intimate terms on which I live with
you, of the patience with which I observe you, of the car