NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



begins. It is a large-featured, rather heavy face, 

 with deep-set, grayish eyes from which the joy and 

 sparkle have gone, if they were ever there. They 

 are not dull eyes, but they are mournful, and some- 

 thing in them takes hold of you and grips. The 

 small, slender body seems weighted with such a 

 head, and stoops and rounds a little. The low, 

 monologuing tone of the lecture never rises; occa- 

 sionally there is a gleam of rather mordant humor, 

 perhaps a passing reference to " some ideas trbs a la 

 mode." You have in the easy tolerance, the slight 

 disdain of the phrase, the key of a mind that has 

 seen systems come and go, and through long years 

 learned, no doubt, of the evanescence of ideas. 



Thus, at seventy-five, M. Berthelot continues to 

 deliver, twice a year, his course of lectures; it is a 

 habit which, after half a century, is a little diffi- 

 cult to put aside. He is easily the foremost man of 

 science in France, the first chemist of Europe. And 

 a scant dozen of students and curious, like myself, 

 make up his audience. The occupants of the other 

 chairs in this same old institution lecture twice a 

 week some once. M. Berthelot gives three, " ac- 

 cording to his custom," he observed. The day I 

 was there he announced that the usual Thursday 

 lecture would be omitted, " on account of duties else- 

 where." These duties were the ceremony of his 

 admission to a chair in the French Academy, where 



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