Note 3 — Chapter XVII · THE COLLABORATORS
Bernard Miall translation
“Nothing in all this is far-fetched or deliberate. Henri Fabre has never plumed himself on his literary achievements; it is his real self, it is his whole mind that expresses itself in his Souvenirs; the mind of an ardent and passionately interested but precise observer, a mind open to every emotion,”3 and sensitive to all the impressions received from all these little lives, that have no secrets from him. This mind and these lives, intimately and sincerely mingled, and ingenuously reflected in the pages of his books; this is the secret of the most vital, the most picturesque, and the least conventional style that can be imagined.