348 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



his art the very confines of the springs of life, Renan went 

 on to speak of truth as he would have spoken of a woman: 

 *' Truth, Sir, is a great coquette; she will not be sought with 

 too much passion, but often is most amenable to indifference. 

 She escapes when apparently caught, but gives herself up 

 if patiently waited for; revealing herself after farewells have 

 been said, but inexorable when loved with too much fervour." 

 And further: ''Nature is plebeian, and insists upon work, 

 preferring horny hands and careworn brows." 



He then commenced a courteous controversy. Whilst 

 Pasteur, with his vision of the Infinite, showed himself as 

 religious as Newton, Renan, who enjoyed moral problems, 

 spoke of Doubt with delectation. ''The answer to the enigma 

 which torments and charms us will never be given to us. 

 . . . What matters it, since the imperceptible corner of 

 reality which we see is full of delicious harmonies, and since 

 life, as bestowed upon us, is an excellent gift, and for each of 

 us a revelation of infinite goodness?" 



Legend will probably hand to posterity a picture of Renan 

 as he was in those latter days, ironically cheerful and 

 unctuously indulgent. But, before attaining the quizzical 

 tranquillity he now exhibited to the Academy, he had gone 

 through a complete evolution. When about the age of forty- 

 eight, he might bitterly have owned that there was not one 

 basis of thought which in him had not crumbled to dust. 

 Reliefs, political ideas, his ideal of European civilization, all 

 had fallen to the ground. After his separation from the 

 Church, he had turned to historical science; Germany had 

 appeared to him, as once to Madame de Stael and so many 

 others, as a refuge for thinkers. It had seemed to him 

 that a collaboration between France, England, and Germany 

 would create "An invincible trinity, carrying the world along 

 the road of progress through reason." But that German 

 facade which he took for that of a temple hid behind it the 

 most formidable barracks which Europe had ever known, and 

 beside it were cannon foundries, death-manufactories, all the 

 preparations of the German people for the invasion of France. 

 His awakening was bitter; war as practised by the Prussians, 

 with a method in their cruelty, filled him with grief. 



Time passed and his art, like a lily of the desert growing 

 amongst ruins, gave flowers and perfumes to surrounding 

 moral devastation. A mixture of disdain and nobility now 



