192 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



and other similar instruments had been carefully knocked out of 

 shape with a hammer." In a corner was a heap of ashes ; they 

 were the registers, notes, manuscripts, all Eegnault's work of 

 the last ten years. "Such cruelty," exclaimed J. B. Dumas, 

 " is unexampled in history. The Koman soldier who butchered 

 Archimedes in the heat of the onslaught may be excused he 

 did not know him ; but with what sacrilegious meanness could 

 such a work of destruction as this be accomplished 1 ! ! " 



On the very day when the Academic des Sciences was con- 

 doling with Henri Eegnault's sorrowing father, Pasteur, 

 anxious at having had no news of his son, who had been fight- 

 ing before Hericourt, determined to go and look for him in the 

 ranks of the Eastern Army Corps. By Poligny and Lons-le- 

 Saulnier, the roads were full of stragglers from the various 

 regiments left several days behind, their route completely lost, 

 who begged for bread as they marched, barely covered by the 

 tattered remnants of their uniforms. The main body of the 

 army was on the way to Besancon, a sad procession of French 

 soldiers, hanging their heads under the cold grey sky and tramp- 

 ing painfully in the snow. 



Bourbaki, the general-in-chief, a hero of African battlefields, 

 was becoming more and more unnerved by the combinations 

 of this war. Whilst the Minister, in a dispatch from Bordeaux, 

 had ordered him to move back towards Dole, to prevent the 

 taking of Dijon, then to hurry to Nevers or Joigny, where 

 20,000 men would be ready to be incorporated, Bourbaki, over- 

 whelmed by the lamentable spectacle under his eyes, could see 

 no resource for his corps but a last line of retreat, Pontarlier. 



It was among that stream of soldiers that Pasteur attempted 

 to find his son. His old friend and neighbour, Jules Vercel, 

 saw him start, accompanied by his wife and daughter, on Tues- 

 day, January 24, in a half broken down old carriage, the last 

 that was left in the town. After journeying for some hours 

 in the snow, the sad travellers spent the night in a little way- 

 side inn near Montrond ; the old carriage with its freight of 

 travelling boxes stood on the roadside like a gipsy's caravan. 

 The next morning they went on through a pine forest where the 

 deep silence was unbroken save by the falling masses of snow 

 from the spreading branches. They slept at Censeau, the next 

 day at Chaff ois, and it was only on the Friday that they reached 

 Pontarlier, by roads made almost impracticable by the snow, 

 the carriage now a mere wreck. 



