The thought that they had been armed in secret for the conquest of neighbouring lands, the memory of France’s optimism until that diplomatic incident, invented so that France might stumble over it, and the inaction of Europe, inspired Pasteur with reflections which he confided to his pupil Raulin. “What folly, what blindness,” he wrote (September 17), “there are in the inertia of Austria, Russia, England! What ignorance in our army leaders of the respective forces of the two nations! We _savants_ were indeed right when we deplored the poverty of the department of Public Instruction! The real cause of our misfortunes lies there. It is not with impunity--as it will one day be recognized, too late--that a great nation is allowed to lose its intellectual standard. But, as you say, if we rise again from those disasters, we shall again see our statesmen lose themselves in endless discussions on forms of government and abstract political questions instead of going to the root of the matter. We are paying the penalty of fifty years’ forgetfulness of science, of its conditions of development, of its immense influence on the destiny of a great people, and of all that might have assisted the diffusion of light.... I cannot go on, all this hurts me. I try to put away all such memories, and also the sight of our terrible distress, in which it seems that a desperate resistance is the only hope we have left. I wish that France may fight to her last man, to her last fortress. I wish that the war may be prolonged until the winter, when, the elements aiding us, all these Vandals may perish of cold and distress. Every one of my future works will bear on its title page the words: ‘Hatred to Prussia. Revenge! revenge!’” There is a passage in the Psalms where the captives of Israel, led to Babylonian rivers, weep at the memory of Jerusalem. After swearing never to forget their country, they wish their enemies every misfortune, and hurl this last imprecation at Babylon: “Blessed shall he be that taketh thy children and throweth them against the stones.”[29] One of the most Christlike souls of our time, Henri Perreyve, speaking of Poland, of vanquished and oppressed nations, quoted this Psalm and exclaimed: “O Anger, man’s Anger, how difficult it is to drive thee out of man’s heart! and how irresistible are the flames kindled by the insolence of injustice!” Those flames were kindled in the soul of Pasteur, full as it was of human tenderness, and they burst out in that sobbing cry of despair. On that 17th of September, the day before Paris was invested, Jules Favre made another attempt to obtain peace. He published an account of that interview which took place at the Château of Ferrières, near Meaux; this printed account reached every town in France, and was read with grief and anger.