The records of the 3rd Regiment allow us to follow step by step this valiant little troop, and among the rank and file, doing his duty steadily through terrible hardships, that private soldier (a corporal in July, 1812, and a sergeant in October, 1813) whose name was Pasteur. The battalion returned to France at the end of January, 1814. It formed a part of that Leval division which, numbering barely 8,000 men, had to fight at Bar-sur-Aube against an army of 40,000 enemies. The 3rd Regiment was called “brave amongst the brave.” “If Napoleon had had none but such soldiers,” writes Thiers in his History of the Consulate and the Empire, “the result of that great struggle would certainly have been different.” The Emperor, touched by so much courage, distributed crosses among the men. Pasteur was made a sergeant-major on March 10, 1814, and received, two days later, the cross of the Legion of Honour.
At the battle of Arcis-sur-Aube (March 21) the Leval division had again to stand against 50,000 men—Russians, Austrians, Bavarians, and Wurtembergers. Pasteur’s battalion, the 1st of the 3rd Regiment, came back to St. Dizier and went on by forced marches to Fontainebleau, where Napoleon had concentrated all his forces, arriving on April 4. The battalion was now reduced to eight officers and 276 men. The next day, at twelve o’clock, the Leval division and the remnant of the 7th corps were gathered in the yard of the Cheval Blanc Inn and were reviewed by Napoleon. The attitude of these soldiers, who had heroically fought in Spain and in France, and who were still offering their passionate devotion, gave him a few moments’ illusion. Their enthusiasm and acclamations contrasted with the coldness, the reserve, the almost insubordinations of Generals like Ney, Lefebvre, Oudinot and MacDonald, who had just declared that to march on Paris would be folly.
Marmont’s defection hastened events; the Emperor, seeing himself forsaken, abdicated. Jean Joseph Pasteur had not, like Captain Coignet, the sad privilege of witnessing the Emperor’s farewell, his battalion having been sent into the department of Eure on April 9. On April 23 the white cockade replaced the tricolour.
On May 12, 1814, a royal order gave to the 3rd line Regiment the name of “Régiment Dauphin”; it was reorganized at Douai, where Sergeant-major Pasteur received his discharge from the service. He returned to Besançon with grief and anger in his heart: for him, as for many others risen from the people, Napoleon was a demi-god. Lists of victories, principles of equality, new ideas scattered throughout the nations, had followed each other in dazzling visions. It was a cruel trial for half-pay officers, old sergeants, grenadiers, peasant soldiers, to come down from this imperial epic to every-day monotony, police supervision, and the anxieties of poverty; their wounded patriotism was embittered by feelings of personal humiliation. Jean Joseph resigned himself to his fate and went back to his former trade. The return from Elba was a ray of joy and hope in his obscure life, only to be followed by renewed darkness.
He was living in the Faubourg Champtave a solitary life in accordance with his tastes and character when this solitude was interrupted for an instant. The Mayor of Salins, a knight of Malta and an ardent royalist, ordered all the late soldiers of Napoleon, the “brigands de la Loire” as they were now called, to bring their sabres to the Mairie. Joseph Pasteur reluctantly obeyed; but when he heard that these glorious weapons were destined to police service, and would be used by police agents, further submission seemed to him intolerable. He recognized his own sergeant-major’s sabre, which had just been given to an agent, and, springing upon the man, wrested the sword from him. Great excitement ensued—a mixture of indignation, irritation and repressed enthusiasm; the numerous Bonapartists in the town began to gather together. An Austrian regiment was at that time still garrisoned in the town. The Mayor appealed to the colonel, asking him to repress this disobedience; but the Austrian officer refused to interfere, declaring that he both understood and approved the military feelings which actuated the ex-sergeant-major. Pasteur was allowed to keep his sword, and returned home accompanied by sympathizers who were perhaps more noisily enthusiastic than he could have wished.
Having peacefully resumed his work he made the acquaintance of a neighbouring family of gardeners, whose garden faced his tannery on the other bank of the “Furieuse,” a river rarely deserving its name. From the steps leading to the water Jean Joseph Pasteur often used to watch a young girl working in the garden at early dawn. She soon perceived that the “old soldier”—very young still; he was but twenty-five years old—was interested in her every movement. Her name was Jeanne Etiennette Roqui.
Her parents, natives of Marnoz, a village about four kilometres from Salins, belonged to one of the most ancient plebeian families of the country. The Salins archives mention a Roqui working in vineyards as far back as 1555, and in 1659 there were Roqui lampmakers and plumbers. The members of this family were in general so much attached to each other that “to love like the Roqui” had become proverbial; their wills and testaments mentioned legacies or gifts from brother to brother, uncle to nephew. In 1816 the father and mother of Jeanne Etiennette were living very quietly in the old Salins faubourg. Their daughter was modest, intelligent and kind; Jean Joseph Pasteur asked for her hand in marriage. They seemed made for each other; the difference in their natures only strengthened their mutual affection: he was reserved, almost secretive, with a slow and careful mind apparently absorbed in his own inner life; she was very active, full of imagination, and ready enthusiasm.
The young couple migrated to Dôle and settled down in the Rue des Tanneurs. Their first child only lived a few months; in 1818 a little daughter came. Four years later in a small room of their humble home, on Friday, December 27, 1822, at 2 a.m., Louis Pasteur was born.
Two daughters were born later—one at Dôle and the other at Marnoz, in the house of the Roqui. Jean Joseph Pasteur’s mother-in-law, now a widow, considering that her great age no longer allowed her to administer her fortune, had divided all she possessed between her son Jean Claude Roqui, a landed proprietor at Marnoz, and Jeanne Etiennette her daughter.
Thus called away from Dôle by family interests, Jean Joseph Pasteur came to live at Marnoz. The place was not very favourable to his trade, though a neighbouring brook rendered the establishment of a tannery possible. The house, though many times altered, still bears the name of “Maison Pasteur.” On one of the inner doors the veteran, who had a taste for painting, had depicted a soldier in an old uniform now become a peasant and tilling the soil. This figure stands against a background of grey sky and distant hills; leaning on his spade the man suspends his labours and dreams of past glories. It is easy to criticize the faults in the painting, but the sentimental allegory is full of feeling.