PIERRE EUGENE MARCELLIN BERTHELOT 103 



and willing, too, to hear all varieties of view, even those 

 contrary to his own opinion. 



His persistence, energy of character, and devotion to 

 duty were inherited from his father. Berthelot used to 

 regret that he had not inherited his mother's optimism. 

 He used to say that when a misfortune overtook her, she 

 had what the French call a crise de larmes, soon over 

 and followed by her usual optimistic cheerfulness ; that a 

 rainbow generally rose through her tears, and that she 

 became gaily resigned to the incurable evil. 



After the demolition of the Rue du Mouton, the family 

 moved to Neuilly, then quite in the country. Renan often 

 looked in on Sundays as a guest at their midday meal. 

 In one of his private letters he tells how Berthelot and 

 he became friends. He had just renounced his clerical 

 orders, and was maUre-repetiteur in a school, where he 

 led a lonely and melancholy existence, depressed by the 

 mental struggles which he had come through, and far 

 from his family and his native Brittany. One day, a 

 pupil about four years younger than himself accosted 

 him; the talk became intimate, and a friendship with 

 Berthelot was soon formed, destined to endure for life. 

 Their intercourse was frequent ; begun early, when both 

 were slender youths, never a year, hardly a month, passed 

 without their seeing each other. Renan used sometimes 

 to poke fun at Berthelot; the tale is told that, passing a 

 cemetery, Renan said to him : ' La, voici la seule place que 

 tu n'as jamais convoitee.' Such sallies were always received 

 with amusement and good temper. On another occasion, 

 provoked by the remark that his coat was worn with the 

 air of a cassock, Renan retorted : ' What is there in you, 

 Marcellin, that gives you the air of just having left off 

 fighting behind a barricade ? ' While Berthelot retained 

 his slender form, Renan became very corpulent ; Berthelot, 

 nervous and active, maintained to the last his almost 



