1868-70.] AN .//VVy.A'CT/C ATTACK. 179 



being the only "cure" he followed, with the relish of 

 an old walker, accustomed since his life at Metiers, 

 Orbe, and Concise to ramble in search of animals 

 and plants. As soon as he could write, he began a 

 correspondence with the .trustees and his assistants at 

 the Museum and his old scientific friends in Europe, 

 showing how miraculously his health had recuperated, 

 and activity returned into his frame, like the rebound- 

 ing of an elastic ball. In November, 1870, he returned 

 to his dear museum, and was able to resume his lectures. 

 Although Agassiz never meddled, or even troubled 

 himself much, with politics, he followed with an intense 

 interest the Franco-German War. The abuse of victory 

 by the new German emperor paKticularly wounded him ; 

 he thought better of a Prussian king, and from the 

 moment he read the autocratic and exacting terms of 

 the peace forced on France by an ungenerous and 

 impolitic victor, he turned against Germany, all his 

 old French instincts and early impressions of the great 

 services rendered to liberal ideas and science by France 

 and Frenchmen coming back to his memory, and blot- 

 ting out all the sympathies aroused during his student 

 life in German universities. It was a complete rever- 

 sion of sentiment, and he at once wrote a letter full of 

 sympathy to his old friend, M. Thiers, then president 

 of the French republic, receiving a most flattering letter 

 of thanks some months later. Agassiz knew too well 

 what was due to French influence in every department 

 of human knowledge to accept all that was said against 

 France and the French nation. His original Vaudois 

 blood revolted, and from that moment, until his death, 



