202 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



in a river, but, for the witnesses and contemporaries of the 

 facts, the trace of blood remains. An incident will help the 

 reader to understand the lasting indignation the war excited 

 in Pasteur. 



One of the Prussian sergeants, who, after the shot fired at 

 Montigny, were leading small detachments of soldiers, thought 

 that a house on the outskirts of Arbois, in the faubourg of 

 Verreux, looked as if it might shelter franc tireurs. He 

 directed his men towards it and the house was soon reached. 



It was now twelve o'clock, all fighting had ceased, and the 

 first Prussians who had arrived were masters of the town. 

 Others were arriving from various directions ; a heavy silence 

 reigned over the town. The mayor, M. Lefort, led by a 

 Prussian officer who covered him with a revolver whenever he 

 addressed him, was treated as a hostage responsible for abso- 

 lute submission. Every door in the small Town Hall was opened 

 in succession in order to see that there were no arms hidden.; 

 The mayor was each time made to pass first, so that he should 

 receive the shot in case of a surprise. In the library, three 

 flags, which General Delort had brought back from the Ehine 

 campaign when he was a captain in the cavalry and given to 

 his native town, were torn down and the general's bust over- 

 turned. 



The sergeant, violently entering the suspected house with 

 his men, found a whole family peacefully sitting down to their 

 dinner— the husband, wife, a son of nineteen, and two young 

 daughters. The invaders made no search nor asked any ques- 

 tions of those poor people, who had probably done nothing worse 

 than to offer a few glasses of wine to French soldiers as they 

 passed. The sergeant did not even ask the name of the master 

 of the house (Antoine Ducret, aged fifty-nine), but seized him 

 by his coat and ordered his men to seize the son too. The 

 woman, who rushed to the door in her endeavour to prevent her 

 husband and her son from being thus taken from her, was 

 violently flung to the end of the room, her trembling daughters 

 crouching around her as they listened to the heavy Prussian 

 boots going down the wooden stairs. There is a public drinking 

 fountain not far from the house ; Ducret was taken there and 

 placed against a wall. He understood, and cried out, " Spare 

 my son!!" " What do you say? " said the sergeant to the 

 boy. "I will stay with my father," he answered simply. The 

 father, struck by two bullets at close range, fell at the feet of 



