M. Figuier never allowed me to oppose him. He rose and took down one of the volumes, opened to a preface, and read me with many a gesture and with increasing warmth of tone the following observations:
"The first book to put into the hands of a child should treat of natural history. Instead of calling the attention of young minds to the fables of La Fontaine, the adventures of Puss in Boots, or the Twelve Labors of Hercules, they should be directed to the simple and naive pictures of Nature—the structure of a tree, the composition of a flower, the organs of animals, the perfection of crystalline forms. It is because the nourishment of the young has been falsehood that the present generation includes so many false, feeble, and irresolute minds.
"If I live a hundred years I shall never forget the frightful confusion into which the reading of my first book threw my young head. It was an abridgment of mythology; and you know what one finds there: Deucalion, who creates the human race by throwing stones over his shoulders; Jupiter, who cracks his skull and lets out Minerva and all her accessories; Venus, who one fine morning is born from the sea foam; old Saturn, with his vicious habit of eating his children; and all the rest of that Olympus where the gods and goddesses commit so many bad actions. How can the head of a four-year-old resist such an upsetting of common sense?"
And so M. Figuier wrote his nine big volumes. Unquestionably they have contributed to interesting the young, not alone of France but of a large part of the world, in the phenomena of Nature; and if they have not yet driven out La Fontaine, Perrault. Mother Goose, and the fascinating inhabitants of Olympus, they have at least entered into healthy competition with them.
His great hobby as a literary worker was system. "System, classification," he would repeat, "it is through them I have done my great work. Every note I take goes into its proper place. So with everything I own. You have asked for data of my life. I can give them to you without looking! See here!" He opened a drawer in a cabinet in the room, and out came a great bundle of clippings—press notices on his work, reviews of his books, sketches of his life. A goodly number of them were American.
"Yes," he said, regarding them with a frown, "I get press notices from America by paying an agency, but that is all. My books have been steadily reproduced there for thirty years. See here, notice after notice of my last book. Happiness beyond the Tomb, and I have been unable to get even a copy of the translation."
It was while pursuing his favorite subject of "system" that M. Figuier revealed to me the great passion of his life.
