1870—1872 191 



from the thrilling moments of battle, giving to hatred and 

 cruelty a cold-blooded sanction of discipline ; in the vanquished 

 nation, an irrepressible revolt, an intoxication of sacrifice. 

 I Those who have not seen war do not know what love of the 

 I mother country means. 



France was the more loved that she was more oppressed ; 

 she inspired her true sons with an infinite tenderness. Sully- 

 Prudhomme, the poet of pensive youth, renouncing his love for 

 Humanity in general, promised himself that he would hence- 

 forth devote his life to the exclusive love of France. A greater 

 poet than he, Victor Hugo, wrote at that time the first part 

 | of his Annee Terrible, with its mingled devotion and despair. 



The death of Henri Eegnault was one of the sad episodes of 

 i the war. This brilliant young painter— he was only twenty- 

 i seven years of age — enlisted as a garde nationale, though 

 i exempt by law from any military service through being a 

 j laureate of the prix de Rome. 1 He did his duty valiantly, and 

 on January 19, at the last sortie attempted by the Parisians, at 

 Buzenval, the last Prussian shot struck him in the forehead. 

 The Acad^mie des Sciences, at its sitting of January 23, ren- 

 dered homage to him whose coffin enclosed such dazzling 

 prospects and some of the glory of France. The very heart of 

 Paris was touched, and a great sadness was felt at the funeral 

 procession of the great artist who seemed an ideal type of all 

 the youth and talent so heroically sacrificed — and all in vain — 

 for the surrender of Paris had just been officially announced. 



Eegnault's father, the celebrated physicist, a member of the 

 Institute, was at Geneva when he received this terrible blow. 

 Another grief — not however comparable to the despair of a 

 bereaved parent — befell him — an instance of the odious side of 

 war, not in its horrors, its pools of blood and burnt dwellings, 

 but in its premeditated cruelty. Regnault had left his labora- 

 tory utensils in his rooms at the Sevres porcelain manufactory, 

 ,of which he was the manager. Everything was apparently 

 jleft in the same place, not a window was broken, no locks 

 iforced; but a Prussian, evidently an expert, had been there. 

 "Nothing seemed changed," writes J. B. Dumas, "in that 

 ibode of science, and yet everything was destroyed; the glass 

 ;ubes of barometers, thermometers, etc., were broken; scales 



1 Prix de Borne. A competition takes place every year amongst the 

 students of the Ecole des Beaux Arts for this prize; the successful com- 

 petitor is sent to Rome for a year at the expense of the Ecole. [Trans.] 



