1870—1872 181 



with the twofold feeling with which every man must be im- 

 bued : humility before the Great Mystery, and admiration for 

 those who, raising a corner of the veil, prove that genius is 

 divinely inspired. Such reading helped Pasteur through the 

 sad time of anxious waiting, and he would repeat as in brighter 

 days, " Labor emus." 



But sometimes, when he was sitting quietly with his wife 

 and daughter, the trumpet call would sound, with which the 

 Arbois crier preceded the proclaiming of news. Then every- 

 thing was forgotten, the universal order of things of no account, 

 and Pasteur's anguished soul would concentrate itself on that 

 imperceptible corner of the universe, France, his suffering 

 country. He would go downstairs, mix with groups standing 

 on the little bridge across the Cuisance, listen breathlessly to 

 the official communication, and sadly go back to the room where 

 the memories of his father only emphasized the painful contrast 

 with the present time. In the most prominent place hung 

 a large medallion of General Bonaparte, by the Franc-Comtoi<» 

 Huguenin, the habit of authority visible in the thin energetic 

 face ; then a larger effigy in bronzed plaster of Napoleon in 

 profile, in a very simple uniform; by the mantelpiece a litho- 

 graph of the little King of Kome with his curly head ; on the 

 bookshelves, well within reach, books on the Great Epoch, 

 read over and over again by the old soldier who had died in the 

 humble room which still reflected some of the Imperial glory. 



That glory, that legend had enveloped the childhood and 

 youth of Pasteur, who, as he advanced in life, still preserved 

 the same enthusiasm. His imagination pictured the Emperor, 

 calm in the midst of battles, or reviewing his troops sur- 

 rounded by an escort of field marshals, entering as a sovereign 

 a capital not his own, then overwhelmed by numbers at 

 Waterloo, and finally condemned to exile and inactivity, and 

 dying in a long drawn agony. Glorious or lugubrious, those 

 visions came back to him with poignant insistency in those 

 days of September, 1870. What was Waterloo compared to 

 Sedan ! The departure for St. Helena had the grandeur of "the 

 end of an epic ; it seemed almost enviable by the side of that 

 last episode of the Second Empire, when Napoleon III, van- 

 quished, spared by the death which he wooed, left Sedan by 

 the Donchery road to enter the cottage where Bismarck was to 

 inform him of the rendezvous given by the King of Prussia. 



The Emperor had now but a shadow of power, having made 



