Note 4 — Chapter I · THE SÉRIGNAN JUBILEE

Not only in the certainty and the detailed nature of his facts, but also in the colour and reality of his descriptions is his mastery revealed. In him the naturalist is reduplicated by a man of letters and a poet, who “understands how to cast over the naked truth the magic mantle of his picturesque language,”4 making each of his humble protagonists live again before our eyes, each with its characteristic achievements. So striking is this power of his that Victor Hugo described him as “the insects’ Homer,” while one of the most accomplished of our scientists, Mr. Edmond Perrier, Director of the Museum of Natural History, not content with saluting him as “one of the princes of natural history,” speaks of his literary work in the following terms: