1870—1872 20 



o 



his son, who was shot down immediately afterwards. The two 

 corpses, afterwards mutilated with bayonets, remained lying 

 by the water side; the neighbours succeeded in preventing the 

 mother and her two daughters from leaving their house until 

 the bodies had been placed in a coffin. On the tombs of Antoine 

 and Charles Ducret the equivocal inscription was placed "Fell 

 at Arbois, January 25, 1871, under Prussian fire." For the 

 honour of humanity, a German officer, having heard these de- 

 tails, offered the life of the sergeant to Ducret 's widow; but 

 she entertained no thoughts of revenge. "His death would 

 not give them back to me," she said. 



Pasteur could not become resigned to the humiliation of 

 France, and, tearing his thoughts from the nightmare of the 

 war and the Commune, he dwelt continually on the efforts 

 that would be necessary- to carry out the great task of raising 

 the country once again to its proper rank. In his mind it was 

 the duty of every one to say, "In what way can I be useful?" 

 Each man should strive not so much to play a great part as to 

 give the best of his ability. He had no patience with those 

 who doubt everything in order to have an excuse for doing 

 nothing. 



He had indeed known dark moments of doubt and mis- 

 givings, as even the greatest minds must do, but notwith- 

 standing these periods of discouragement he was convinced that 

 science and peace will ultimately triumph over ignorance and 

 war. In spite of recent events, the bitter conditions of peace 

 which tore unwilling Alsace and part of Lorraine away from 

 France, the heavy tax of gold and of blood weighing down future 

 generations, the sad visions of young men in their prime cut 

 down on the battlefield or breathing their last in hospitals all to 

 no apparent purpose; in spite of all these sad memories he was 

 persuaded that thinkers would gradually awaken in the nations 

 ideas of justice and of concord. 



He had now for nine years been following with a passionate 

 interest some work begun in his own laboratory by Raulin, his 

 first curator. Some of the letters he wrote to Raulin during 

 those nine years give us a faint idea of the master that Pasteur 

 was. It had been with great regret that Raulin had left the 

 laboratory in obedience to the then laws of the University in 

 order to take up active work at the Brest college, and Pasteur's 

 letters (December, 1862) brought him joy and encouragement: 

 "Keep up your courage, do not allow the idleness of pro- 



