104 ESSAYS BIOGRAPHICAL AND CHEMICAL 



feverish love of work; Renan was meditative almost a 

 dreamer. It was Berthelot's sad duty to speak of his 

 lost friend when the monument at Treguier was raised to 

 his memory. He emphasised Renan's lucidity even to 

 the end, his power of work, his great mental activity ; the 

 words were applicable with equal force to himself. 



Never was there a more devoted couple than Monsieur 

 and Madame Berthelot. After he had ended his brilliant 

 career at the Lycee Henri iv., Berthelot gained the prize 

 of honour at the open competition in 1846. Without any 

 coaching, he passed successively all his degrees Bachelier, 

 Licencie, and Docteur-es-Sciences ; for the doctorate he 

 presented a somewhat sensational thesis, entitled, ' The 

 Compounds of Glycerine with Acids, and the Artificial 

 Production of the Natural Fats.' While working at this 

 research, he was lecture-assistant (preparateur) to Balard, 

 at the College de France. In 1861, largely through the 

 influence of Duruy, then Minister of Public Instruction, 

 Berthelot was promoted to the Chair of Organic Chemistry 

 in that institution; and there he remained all his life. 

 In that year he was awarded by the Academy of Sciences 

 the Jecker Prize for his remarkable researches on the 

 artificial production of organic compounds by synthesis, 

 and at the same time the Academy recommended the 

 creation of the special chair which Berthelot filled so long 

 and so illustriously. In his own words: 'Adonne, des 

 mes debuts dans la vie, au culte de la verite pure, je ne 

 me suis jamais mele a la lutte des interets pratiques qui 

 divisent les hommes. J'ai vecu dans mon laboratoire 

 solitaire, entoure de quelques eleves, mes amis.' 



When he won the Jecker Prize, he was in his thirty- 

 fifth year. The appointment to the Chair at the College 

 de France made it possible for him to marry Mademoiselle 

 Breguet, the daughter of a French Swiss, whose family 

 had made money by manufacturing watches, famed since 



