Civil war had now come, showing, as Renan said, “a sore under the sore, an abyss below the abyss.” What were the hopes and projects of Pasteur and of Sainte Claire Deville now that the very existence of the divided country was jeopardized under the eyes of the Prussians? The world of letters and of science, helpless amidst such disorders, had dispersed; Saint Claire Deville was at Gex, Dumas at Geneva. Some were wondering whether lectures could not be organized in Switzerland and in Belgium as they had been under the Empire, thus spreading abroad the influence of French thought. Examples might be quoted of men who had served the glory of their country in other lands, such as Descartes, who took refuge in Holland in order to continue his philosophic meditations. Pasteur might have been tempted to do likewise. Already, before the end of the war, an Italian professor of chemistry, Signor Chiozza, who had applied Pasteur’s methods to silkworms in the neighbourhood of Villa Vicentina, got the Italian Government to offer him a laboratory and the direction of a silkworm establishment. Pasteur refused, and a deputy of Pisa, Signor Toscanelli, hearing of this, obtained for Pasteur the offer of what was better still--a professor’s chair of Chemistry applied to Agriculture at Pisa; this would give every facility for work and all laboratory resources. “Pisa,” Signor Chiozza said, “is a quiet town, a sort of Latin quarter in the middle of the country, where professors and students form the greater part of the population. I think you would be received with the greatest cordiality and quite exceptional consideration ... I fear that black days of prolonged agitation are in store for France.” Pasteur’s health and work were indeed valuable to the whole world, and Signor Chiozza’s proposition seemed simple and rational. Pasteur was much divided in his mind: his first impulse was to renew his refusal. He thought but of his vanquished country, and did not wish to forsake it. But was it to his country’s real interests that he should remain a helpless spectator of so many disasters? Was it not better to carry French teaching abroad, to try and provoke in young Italian students enthusiasm for French scientists, French achievements? He might still serve his beloved country in that quiet retreat, amidst all those facilities for continuous work. He thought of writing to Raulin, who had relations in Italy, and who might follow his master. Finally, he was offered very great personal advantages, a high salary--and this determined his refusal, for, as he wrote to Signor Chiozza, “I should feel that I deserved a deserter’s penalty if I sought, away from my country in distress, a material situation better than it can offer me.”