Note 2 — Chapter XIII · RETIREMENT: ORANGE

To my Son Jules.—Beloved child, my zealous collaborator in the study of insects, my perspicacious assistant in the study of plants, it was for your sake that I began this volume; I have continued it for the sake of your memory, and I shall continue it in the bitterness of my mourning. Ah! how hateful is death when it reaps the flower in all the radiance of its blossoming! Your mother and your sisters bring to your tomb wreaths gathered in the rustic flower-bed that you delighted in. To these wreaths, faded by a day’s sunshine, I add this book, which, I hope, will have a to-morrow. It seems to me that it thus prolongs our common studies, fortified as I am by my indomitable faith in a reawakening in the Beyond.2