1870—1872 189 



by a decree of the Convention on June 10, 1793, 



was Bombarded, 



under the reign of Wilhelm I King of 



Prussia, Count von Bismarck, Chancellor, 



by the Prussian army, during the night 



of January 8-9, 1871. 



It had until then been respected by all parties 



and all powers, national or 



foreign. 



Pasteur, on reading this protest, regretted more than ever 

 that he had not been there to sign it. It then occurred to him 

 that he too might give vent to the proud plaint of the van- 

 quished from his little house at Arbois. He remembered with 

 a sudden bitterness the diploma he had received from the Uni- 

 versity of Bonn. Many years had passed since the time in 

 the First Empire when one of the 110 French Departments had 

 been that of Rhine and Moselle, with Coblentz as its prefecture 

 and Bonn and Zimmern as sous-prefectures. When, in 1815, 

 Prussia's iron hand seized again those Rhenish provinces which 

 had become so French at heart, the Prussian king and his 

 ministers hit upon the highly politic idea of founding a Univer- 

 sity on the picturesque banks of the Rhine, thus morally con- 

 quering the people after reducing them by force. That 

 University had been a great success and had become most 

 prosperous. The Strasburg Faculty under the Second Empire, 

 with its few professors and its general penury, seemed very 

 poor compared to the Bonn University, with its fifty-three 

 professors and its vast laboratories of chemistry, physics and 

 medicine, and even a museum of antiquities. Pasteur and 

 Duruy had often exchanged remarks on that subject. But that 

 rivalry between the two Faculties was of a noble nature, ani- 

 mated as it was by the great feeling that science is superior to 

 national distinctions. King Wilhelm had once said, ''Prussia's 

 conquests must be of the moral kind,'' and Pasteur had rot 

 thought of any other conquests. 



When in 1868 the University of Bonn conferred upon him 

 the diploma of Doctor of Medicine, saying that ''by his very 

 penetrating experiments, he had much contributed to the know- 

 ledge of tlie history of the generation of micro-organisms, and 

 had happily advanced the progress of the science of fermenta- 

 tions,'' he had been much pleased at this ai?kiiowledgment of 



