Neither could he understand how the war had been allowed to come about. He thought it ought to have been avoided, and considered the authorities guilty for not having done so. He said that nothing could compensate the harm done by this insane butchery.
The deserted laboratories, the interruption of scientific work, filled his soul with melancholy. For, he said, all the great, all the real questions should have been solved by Science and were kept waiting....
He also had material worries, the war having brought great perturbation in his affairs. The fate of his mobilised pupils preoccupied him constantly. The least indisposition, however trifling, of those he loved made him unhappy. His sensibility, which had always been very marked, increased still more, and consumed him; it surely was one of the causes that had worn his heart out. When already very weak and ill, he constantly thought of giving pleasure to those who were with him; he read innumerable reviews and periodicals, and would tell each friend what he had found of particular interest to the latter, even when speech was difficult to him. His gentleness and cordiality were most touching during the whole of his illness, though he preserved his usual outspokenness.... It seemed to me that this offended no one; they all understood Elie now.
He sought a refuge from his sufferings in his own ivory tower; these sufferings themselves were to him a source of observations. He studied his body and his soul as he would have studied any subject under experiment. Every day he wrote down his auto-observations, and carefully read the diary which I kept for him.
During the whole of the winter he had ups and downs. Towards the end of December the cough and respiratory symptoms increased, and at the beginning of January he expectorated clots of blood, due to a passive congestion of the right lung.
On the 19th January, some liquid appeared in the pleura on the same side. Pleurisy persisted for a whole month and necessitated three punctures. Every time we feared to tell him that the puncture was necessary, but he received the news with complete coolness, saying that he had always been in favour of radical measures.
After the third puncture, which took place on the 19th February, a marked relief supervened, and the improvement lasted for some time; it was the only moment when we saw a ray of hope.
Though keeping to his bed, he worked a great deal, read, and received not only his friends but other visitors. At the beginning of March and at the end of April he again expectorated blood, and the terrible, tragical nights began again. Yet the days were fairly good.
During that period, he had the pleasure of seeing some of his pupils again, and of receiving several Russian deputies and journalists. They talked to him of political events, of the war, of the moral state of Russia. All that interested him immensely; he plied them with the most varied questions. It must be remembered that, before that interview, we had lost all touch with Russia.