“This letter will not have much weight with a people whose principles differ so totally from those that inspire us,” said Pasteur, “but it will at least echo the indignation of French scientists.”
He made a collection of stories, of episodes, and letters, which fell in his way; amongst other things we find an open letter from General Chanzy to the commandant of the Prussian troops at Vendôme, denouncing the insults, outrages, and inexcusable violence of the Prussians towards the inhabitants of St. Calais, who had shown great kindness to the enemy’s sick and wounded.
“You respond by insolence, destruction and pillage to the generosity with which we treat your prisoners and wounded. I indignantly protest, in the name of humanity and of the rights of men, which you trample under foot.”
Pasteur also gathered up tales of bravery, of heroism, and of resignation—that form of heroism so often illustrated by women—during the terrible siege of Paris. And, from all those things, arose the psychology of war in its two aspects: in the invading army a spirit of conquest carried to oppression, and even apart 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. Those who have not seen war do not know what love of the 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 henceforth 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 Année Terrible, with its mingled devotion and despair.
The death of Henri Regnault was one of the sad episodes of the war. This brilliant young painter—he was only twenty-seven years of age—enlisted as a garde nationale, though exempt by law from any military service through being a laureate of the prix de Rome.[30] 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 Académie des Sciences, at its sitting of January 23, rendered 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.
Regnault’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 laboratory utensils in his rooms at the Sèvres porcelain manufactory, of which he was the manager. Everything was apparently left in the same place, not a window was broken, no locks forced; but a Prussian, evidently an expert, had been there. “Nothing seemed changed,” writes J. B. Dumas, “in that abode of science, and yet everything was destroyed; the glass tubes of barometers, thermometers, etc., were broken; scales and other similar instruments had been carefully knocked out of shape with a hammer.” In a corner was a heap of ashes; they were the registers, notes, manuscripts, all Regnault’s work of the last ten years. “Such cruelty,” exclaimed J. B. Dumas, “is unexampled in history. The Roman soldier who butchered Archimedes in the heat of the onslaught may be excused—he did not know him; but with what sacrilegious meanness could such a work of destruction as this be accomplished!!!”
On the very day when the Académie des Sciences was condoling with Henri Regnault’s sorrowing father, Pasteur, anxious at having had no news of his son, who had been fighting before Héricourt, determined to go and look for him in the ranks of the Eastern Army Corps. By Poligny and Lons-le-Saulnier, the roads were full of stragglers from the various regiments left several days behind, their route completely lost, who begged for bread as they marched, barely covered by the tattered remnants of their uniforms. The main body of the army was on the way to Besançon, a sad procession of French soldiers, hanging their heads under the cold grey sky and tramping painfully in the snow.
Bourbaki, the general-in-chief, a hero of African battlefields, was becoming more and more unnerved by the combinations of this war. Whilst the Minister, in a dispatch from Bordeaux, had ordered him to move back towards Dôle, to prevent the taking of Dijon, then to hurry to Nevers or Joigny, where 20,000 men would be ready to be incorporated, Bourbaki, overwhelmed by the lamentable spectacle under his eyes, could see no resource for his corps but a last line of retreat, Pontarlier.
It was among that stream of soldiers that Pasteur attempted to find his son. His old friend and neighbour, Jules Vercel, saw him start, accompanied by his wife and daughter, on Tuesday, January 24, in a half broken down old carriage, the last that was left in the town. After journeying for some hours in the snow, the sad travellers spent the night in a little wayside inn near Montrond; the old carriage with its freight of travelling boxes stood on the roadside like a gipsy’s caravan. The next morning they went on through a pine forest where the deep silence was unbroken save by the falling masses of snow from the spreading branches. They slept at Censeau, the next day at Chaffois, and it was only on the Friday that they reached Pontarlier, by roads made almost impracticable by the snow, the carriage now a mere wreck.