1870—1872 201 



country in distress, a material situation better than it can 

 offer me." 



" Nevertheless allow me to tell you, Sir (he wrote to Signor 

 Toscanelli, refusing his offer), in all sincerity, that the memory 

 of your offer will remain in the annals of my family as a title 

 of nobility, as a proof of Italy's sympathy for France, as a 

 token of the esteem accorded to my work. And as far as you, 

 M. le Depute, are concerned it will remain in my eyes a 

 brilliant proof of the way in which public men in Italy regard 

 science and its grandeur." 



And now what was Pasteur to do — he who could not live 

 away from a laboratory? In April, 1871, he could neither go 

 back to Paris and the Commune nor to Arbois, now trans- 

 formed into a Prussian depot. It seemed, indeed, from the 

 letters he received that his fellow citizens were now destined 

 but to feed and serve a victorious foe, whose exactions were all 

 the more rigorous that the invasion of the town on January 25 

 had been preceded by an attempt at resistance on the part of the 

 inhabitants. On that morning, a few French soldiers who were 

 seeking their regiments and a handful of franc tireurs had 

 posted themselves among the vines. About ten o'clock a first 

 shot sounded in the distance ; in a turn of the sinuous Besancon 

 road, when the Prussian vanguard had appeared, a Zouave — 

 who the day before was begging from door to door, shaking with 

 ague, and who had taken refuge in the village of Montigny, 

 two kilometres from Arbois — had in despair fired his last 

 cartridge. A squad of Prussians left the road and rushed to- 

 wards the smoke of the gun. The soldier was seized, shot 

 down on the spot, and mutilated with bayonets. Whilst the 

 main column continued their advance towards the town, de- 

 tachments explored the vines on either side of the road, shoot- 

 ing here and there. An old man who, with a courageous 

 indifference, was working in his vineyard was shot down at his 

 work. A little pastrycook's boy, nicknamed Biscuit by the 

 Arboisians, who, led by curiosity, had come down from the 

 upper town to the big poplar trees at the entrance of Arbois, 

 suddenly staggered, struck by a Prussian bullet. He was just 

 able to creep back to the first house, his eyes already dimmed by 

 death. 



Those were but the chances of war, but other crueller 

 episodes thrilled Pasteur to the very depths of his soul. Such 

 things are lost in history, just as a little blood spilt disappears 



