“Nevertheless allow me to tell you, Sir (he wrote to Signor Toscanelli, refusing his offer), in all sincerity, that the memory of your offer will remain in the annals of my family as a title of nobility, as a proof of Italy’s sympathy for France, as a token of the esteem accorded to my work. And as far as you, M. le Député, are concerned it will remain in my eyes a brilliant proof of the way in which public men in Italy regard science and its grandeur.” And now what was Pasteur to do--he who could not live away from a laboratory? In April, 1871, he could neither go back to Paris and the Commune nor to Arbois, now transformed into a Prussian dépôt. It seemed, indeed, from the letters he received that his fellow citizens were now destined but to feed and serve a victorious foe, whose exactions were all the more rigorous that the invasion of the town on January 25 had been preceded by an attempt at resistance on the part of the inhabitants. On that morning, a few French soldiers who were seeking their regiments and a handful of _franc tireurs_ had posted themselves among the vines. About ten o’clock a first shot sounded in the distance; in a turn of the sinuous Besançon road, when the Prussian vanguard had appeared, a Zouave--who the day before was begging from door to door, shaking with ague, and who had taken refuge in the village of Montigny, two kilometres from Arbois--had in despair fired his last cartridge. A squad of Prussians left the road and rushed towards the smoke of the gun. The soldier was seized, shot down on the spot, and mutilated with bayonets. Whilst the main column continued their advance towards the town, detachments explored the vines on either side of the road, shooting here and there. An old man who, with a courageous indifference, was working in his vineyard was shot down at his work. A little pastrycook’s boy, nicknamed Biscuit by the Arboisians, who, led by curiosity; had come down from the upper town to the big poplar trees at the entrance of Arbois, suddenly staggered, struck by a Prussian bullet. He was just able to creep back to the first house, his eyes already dimmed by death. Those were but the chances of war, but other crueller episodes thrilled Pasteur to the very depths of his soul. Such things are lost in history, just as a little blood spilt disappears in a river, but, for the witnesses and contemporaries of the facts, the trace of blood remains. An incident will help the reader to understand the lasting indignation the war excited in Pasteur. One of the Prussian sergeants, who, after the shot fired at Montigny, were leading small detachments of soldiers, thought that a house on the outskirts of Arbois, in the faubourg of Verreux, looked as if it might shelter _franc tireurs_. He directed his men towards it and the house was soon reached.