A Boston school teacher fights with a group of impoverished Frenchmen for possession of an inherited château. Elizabeth Rockwell is indignant when she finds her château filled with squatters, a widower with five messy children, who have no regard for private property rights.

It centres on the life of the entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre and his total devotion to studying insect behavior, travelling from Avignon to Paris, from Paris to his death in Sérignan. He is honoured by the French president Raymond Poincaré and his patience, obstinacy and knowledge are also recognised by Napoleon III, the publisher Charles Delagrave and the philosopher John Stuart Mill. They reach their climax in his book, Souvenirs entomologiques.

A Boston school teacher fights with a group of impoverished Frenchmen for possession of an inherited château. Elizabeth Rockwell is indignant when she finds her château filled with squatters, a widower with five messy children, who have no regard for private property rights.