He returned to Paris for a reunion and dinner of the Physics Society. There he sat beside Henri Poincaré and had a long conversation with him on methods of teaching. As we were returning on foot to our house, he continued to develop his ideas on the culture that he dreamed of, happy in the consciousness that I shared his views. The following day, the 19th of April, 1906, he attended a reunion of the Association of Professors of the Faculties of the Sciences, where he talked with them very cordially about the aims which the Association might adopt. As he went out from this reunion and was crossing the rue Dauphine, he was struck by a truck coming from the Pont Neuf, and fell under its wheels. A concussion of the brain brought instantaneous death. So perished the hope founded on the wonderful being who thus ceased to he. In the study room to which he was never to return, the water buttercups he had brought from the country were still fresh. [Footnote 9: During my recent visit to America, where a gramme of radium was generously offered me by American women, the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences presented me, as a souvenir, with a publication reviewing the development of the radium industry in the United States. This included photographic reproductions of letters from Pierre Curie in which he replied in as complete a manner as possible to the questions asked by American engineers. (1902 and 1903.)] [Footnote 10: The price of a milligramme of the element of radium was then fixed at about 750 francs.] [Footnote 11: These physicians were aided by the manufacturer, Armet de Lisle, who placed at their disposition the radium needed for their first undertakings. He founded, besides, in 1906, a laboratory for clinical study, provided with a supply of radium. And he subventioned the first special publication devoted to radioactivity and its applications, as a journal under the name _Radium_, edited by J. Danne. This is an example of generous support of science by industry, in reality still very rare but which one wishes might become general, in the common interest of these two branches of human activity.] [Footnote 12: The hypothesis according to which radioactivity is bound up with the atomic transformation of elements was first envisaged by Pierre Curie and by me, along with other possible hypotheses, before it was utilized by E. Rutherford. (See _Revue Scientifique_, 1900, Mme. Curie, etc.)] [Footnote 13: By using the unusual energy of Alpha-rays E. Rutherford has obtained recently the rupture of certain light atoms, like those of nitrogen.] CHAPTER VII THE NATION'S SORROW. THE LABORATORIES: "SACRED PLACES"