682 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
tut. How many times have we thus walked together down the rue de 
l’Ecole de Médécin and the rue Mazarin while he chatted with me 
on the results of his researches or explained to me his ideas on the 
latest sensational discovery! But it was principally at the station de 
Chimie végétale de Bellevue-Meudon, where he came each year in 
April or May and installed himself and his family, that he willingly 
received his pupils on Sunday mornings. Thus, during his last so- 
journ at Meudon, I was chatting with him one October morning just 
before his return to Paris. Very busy with his researches on radio- 
activity, he showed me all the specimens of quartz he had colored 
in violet under the influence of radium, thus producing for the first 
time the synthesis of the amethyst. Then we passed to an examina- 
tion of experiments he was conducting, of which he was destined 
never to know the results. Small glass tubes filled with different 
substances had for several days been ranged about a central tube 
containing a piece of radium. No transformation was yet apparent, 
but he was awaiting some interesting modifications by the time he 
should return the following spring, if, however, he added, he were 
still alive. 
Berthelot’s conversation was never trivial; his phrases were always 
correct, accurate, and simple, as those of a scholar and thinker should 
be. He gave immediately the impression of a superior man. He 
was, moreover, a man of delicate temperament. ‘“ There never was 
between us,” said Renan, “I will not say a moral relaxation, but a 
plain vulgarity. We always acted toward one another as toward a 
lady we respect.” 
It was a genuine treat to listen to him at the private receptions 
presided over with such distinction by Madame Berthelot. He would 
then lay aside his thoughts of science to devote himself entirely to 
the interests of his wife and his friends. The Goncourts have de- 
scribed in their “ Journal ” the dinners at the home of Magny, where 
Berthelot was listened to with keen interest by everyone. ‘“ Renan,” 
says Goncourt, “ followed the trend of his thoughts without failing, 
and I am certain that many of the ideas afterwards uttered by the 
philosopher in his volumes were collected in the course of conversa- 
tions with the chemist.” Berthelot had, in fact, a powerful influence 
on the greatest minds of his time. Both Renan and Taine had a 
deep admiration for the learned man. It would be interesting some 
day to say more about the share of collaboration in Renan’s work 
that can be traced back to the man of science. 
Berthelot had six children—four sons and two daughters. He had 
the misfortune to lose one of his daughters, and more recently a 
grandson, who was tragically killed in an accident on the chemin de 
fer du Nord. ‘ No loss,” he wrote, “ can be compared to the loss of a 
child who has grown up under the eyes of its parents, surrounded 
