After the thunderclap of Sadowa, the French Government, believing, in its infatuation, that it was entitled to a share of gratitude and security, asked for the land along the Rhine as far as Mayence; this territorial aggrandizement might have compensated for Prussia’s redoubtable conquests. The refusal was not long in coming. The Rhenish provinces immediately swarmed with Prussian troops. The Emperor, awaking from his dream, hesitating to make war, sent another proposition to Prussia: that the Rhenish provinces should become a buffer State. The same haughty answer was returned. France then hoped for the cession of Luxemburg, a hope all the more natural in that the populations of Luxemburg were willing to vote for annexation to France, and such a policy would have been in accordance with the rights of nations. But this request, apparently entertained at first by Prussia, was presently hampered by intrigues which caused its rejection. Duped, not even treated as an arbiter, but merely as a contemptible witness, France dazzled herself for a moment with the brilliant Exhibition of 1867. But it was a last and splendid flash; the word which is the bane of nations and of sovereigns, “to-morrow,” was on the lips of the ageing Emperor. The reform in the French army, which should have been bold and immediate, was postponed and afterwards begun jerkily and unmethodically. Prussia however affected to be alarmed. Then irritation at having been duped, the evidence of a growing peril, a lingering hope in the military fortune of France--everything conspired to give an incident, provoked by Prussia, the proportions of a _casus belli_. But, in spite of so many grievances, people did not yet believe in this sudden return to barbarism. The Imperial policy had indeed been blindly inconsistent; after opening a wide prospect of unity before the German people it had been thought possible to say “No further than the Main,” as if the impetuous force of a popular movement could be arrested after once being started. France suddenly opened her eyes to her danger and to the failure of her policy. But if a noble sentiment of generosity had been mingled with the desire to increase her territory without shedding a drop of blood, she had had the honour of being in the vanguard of progress. Were great ideas of peace and human brotherhood about to be engulfed in a war which would throw Europe into an era of violence and brutality? Pasteur, profoundly saddened, could not bear to realize that his ideal of the peaceful and beneficent destiny of France was about to vanish; he left Strasburg--never to return to it--a prey to the most sombre thoughts.