Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/32

 "… After supper I go into the garden where we water the plants, or I watch over the cows in a field, in Mamma's company, or I go and talk to M. Julien. Most often the whole family sit in front of the door and scarcely is the sun set when thousands of grasshoppers do the same; they come out of their holes … and are so happy that they make unending music.… I sleep near the barn and there is always some grasshopper lost in the dry fodder who lulls me to sleep with the monotonous noise of his song.'"

When he left the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Jaurès returned to the South and for two years taught in the lycée at Albi so as to be near his parents, whom he was able to see every week. In 1883 he was given a lectureship at the University of Toulouse. He soon began to take an active part in politics and it was not till 1891, during an interval when he was not in the Chamber of Deputies, that he presented his "thèses"—the final step for a young Frenchman before having fully graduated. He was now docteur-es-lettres. The "thèse" represents a piece of original work which in Jaurès' case appears to have been of value. His French thesis was philosophical and was called "De la realité du monde sensible," and his Latin essay was "On the origins of German Socialism." It is of interest that in both writings the ideas expressed are prophetic of what Jaurès' later mental