Marcellin Berthelot

“ The theories and discoveries of Berthelot are grouped round two great ideas—the synthesis of organic compounds, and the investigation of the laws of dynamical chemistry. Probably the most important syntheses of his are the production of acetylene from carbon and hydrogen, and methane or marsh gas, by means of the well-known Berthelot's reaction; and of dynamical chemistry, his most important discovery is "the law of maximum work." His scientific labours were immense, and he completely revolutionized chemistry in more departments than one. He transformed agriculture ”

“ With Berthelot science became a real creative power. He proved that organic and inorganic chemical laws are identical. He did not get so far, by the imperfect means at his disposal in his laboratory, as to create a leaf or a fruit, but he did produce certain essential parts of the whole. What a field did he open up to human activity! Chemistry at once created artificial substances akin to natural ones, and by leading the way in this immense field of discovery Berthelot placed himself in the foremost ranks of the benefactors of humanity. ”

“ Bergson's literary skill and amazing popularity seem to annoy him as they do other professors of philosophy in various lands. Whenever Berthelot presents Bergson with a bundle of compliments, we may detect a nettle hidden in the bouquet, as when he alludes to Bergson as "the Debussy of contemporary philosophy", and he says that with an increasing floridity of style the number of the bergsoniennes has come to surpass that of the bergsoniens. But that a philosophy should become fashionable seems to me rather creditable to the public than discreditable to the originator. ”

“ Berthelot was justified by accomplished facts in stating that applied science has done more for mankind in the last three-quarters of a century than all the progress in all ages that preceded it. And yet, applied science is only in the first early dawn of its power.
Berthelot was quite sure that physics and chemistry would soon solve the problem of aerial navigation, and he significantly remarked that when they do so "custom-houses will fall of themselves." ”

“ It is only within the past sixty years that synthetic chemistry has come to take its proper place in the scientific world: what a powerful instrument of research it has proved; and this is due to the original stimulus given to it by Berthelot. Berthelot's idea of the synthesis of substances that will take the place of wheat and meat is the most audacious flight of fancy that scientific imagination has ever yet taken, but it need not, because of that, be classed among the impossibilities. ”

“ Berthelot, Pierre Eugène, a French chemist, born at Paris; professor in the College of France; distinguished for his researches in organic chemistry, and his attempt to produce organic compounds; the dyeing trade owes much to his discoveries in the extraction of dyes from coal-tar; he laid the foundation of thermo-chemistry; b. 1827.
Berthier, Alexandre, prince of Wagram and marshal of France, born at Versailles; served with Lafayette in the American war, and rose to distinction in the Revolution; became head of Napoleon's staff, and his companion in all his expeditions ”

“ The fundamental conception that underlay all Berthelot’s chemical work was that all chemical phenomena depend on the action of physical forces which can be determined and measured. When he began his active career it was generally believed that, although some instances of the synthetical production of organic substances had been observed, on the whole organic chemistry must remain an analytical science and could not become a constructive one, because the formation of the substances with which it deals required the intervention of vital activity in some shape. ”

“ His contributions to chemical literature range over practically every department of the science: philosophical, historical, physical, pure, and applied.
In 1864 Berthelot began his great work on thermo-chemistry, and in 1879 he published his Essai de Mécanique Chimique fondée sur la Thermo-chimie. Although Favre, Silbermann, Andrews, Hess, and Thomsen had previously worked on problems bearing on heat and chemical changes, Berthelot is generally looked upon as the founder of thermo-chemistry. ”

“ Most of our data antedate him, or were contemporaneous with him, or were as accessible to him as to us. In his attempted positivism it is simply—and beautifully—disregarded that, according to Berthelot, Berzelius, Cloez, Wohler and others these masses are not merely coated with carbonaceous matter, but are carbonaceous throughout, or are permeated throughout. How any one could so resolutely and dogmatically and beautifully and blindly hold out, would puzzle us were it not for our acceptance that only to think is to exclude and include ”

“ Berthelot, adopting the doctrine that the duration of human life is proportioned to the time required for reaching maturity, cites as a well-known fact that the traveler Delahaye, who was born with a robust constitution and led a regular life, was not matured till long after the common time, married and became a father at seventy, and lived till he was a hundred and twenty years old. ”

“ Let us excuse in psychologists this petty and common whim for exaggerating the merit of the science they pursue. But here the limit is really passed, and no scholar will admit that the perception and representation of a body, as it may take place in the brain of a Berthelot, can present any inferiority as a cognition of the absolute, to the pain felt by the snail I crush under my foot. Nobody except metaphysicians will acknowledge that psychology is a more precise and certain science than physics or chemistry. ”

“ HENRI MOISSAN attention to problems of vegetable chemistry, discovering the methods by which free nitrogen can be fixed under the influence of electrical discharge and the part played by the microbes of the soil in the fixation of nitrogen. For these researches a laboratory was built for him at Meudon. At the same time Berthelot published a series of important works on the history of chemistry and of alchemy, showing wide scholarship and archeological research. He also published a series of works on the philosophy of science, of ethics and of education. ”

“ Not one will escape death.... Do you hear, my handsome prisoner?"
"All drowned!" murmured Berthoald, still under the dominion of a dull stupor; "all my companions drowned——"
"Oh, does not yet that new piece of confidential news wake you up?... Let us pass to another thing," and the abbess proceeded with a voice of ringing triumph: "Among the female slaves, taken from Languedoc, that your band brought in its train, there was a woman ... who will drown with the rest, and that woman," said Meroflede, emphasizing each word in the hope of each being a dagger in Berthoald's heart, "is—your—mother!" ”

“ Of all this by-play Bertrand had a distant view as he followed Tiphaïne through the green mystery of May. What were the golden meads to him, the winding woodways wonderful with spring, the dawn song of the birds, the scent of the wild flowers rising like incense out of the grass? To Bertrand that silent and unseen journey towards Morlaix seemed like a pilgrimage for the humbling of his heart. He followed, watched, planned, yet felt himself forgotten, reading into every incident that passed a woman’s tenderness for a man whom he himself could easily have loved. ”

“ The brown thickets swam by them as they cantered on through shadow and through sunlight. The sun sank low, hurling his slanting showers of gold over the bosom of Broceliande. Every forest monarch seemed afire, touched with a glory that was not of earth. The pungent scent of the rotting leaves rose up like invisible incense before the reddening altar of the west. Another league and they would be on the brink of the valley, and near the tower that Arletta hated.
Bertrand called a halt. He was a man who never racked his wits for strategy or battle craft. ”

“ Bertrand loitered behind his men, slouching in the saddle and looking straight before him into the forest. The emotions in him were complex for the moment, so much so that they might have taken their temper from Broceliande itself. The rustling of leaves, for falling memories; the shrill piping of the wind, all human in its infinite anxiousness and dread. Humiliation and gloom were heavy on Bertrand’s soul. He had been shown his own likeness in the mirror of Tiphaïne’s honor, and the ugliness thereof had made him consider what manner of man he was. ”

“ He saw her as she had stood but yesterday on the altar steps, brave, scornful, haloed round with a lustre of gold. All the deep pathos of the scene smote home to him—dead Brunet’s body, the pest-stricken home, old Jehanot shivering behind the hangings. Why, he had been no better then than this bully of Croquart’s, this Hanotin whom he was thirsting to slay! Great God, how a man might discover his true self in the likeness of another!
Bertrand awoke over the peril of the child he had loved of old. ”

“ Great God! it is the princess! it is the heavenly apparition which Berthold had seen but once. A superhuman strength exalted the courage of the exhausted artist; after a short struggle he overthrows the beggar and stabs him with his own poignard; then raising in his nervous arms, the beautiful Angiola, he traverses again all the rooms of the palace devoured by the fire, reaches the door, makes his way through the crowd, who gave way before his bloody dagger, and, after having walked a long time at the mercy of chance, he reaches a quarter of the city rendered desert by the affray ”

“ She loved Bertrand—loved him with the zeal of a wild thing for its mate. She loved him because he was stronger than other men, because his strength had made him her master. Many a night she had lain awake, smiling over some bold trick of his, the plunder he had taken, the devil-may-care courage dear to the heart of such a woman as Arletta. She had never thought that she was holding him back from nobler things, and that her hands were strangling the ambitions of his manhood. ”

“ I know not whether I am awake or dreaming on this strange night!" cried the young chief, and taking up his full cup, he rose and proceeded with an air of feverish defiance while turning towards the somber and savage portrait of the Frankish warrior: "To you, Neroweg!" Having emptied his cup, Berthoald felt seized with a vertigo and threw himself upon the lounge, saying to Meroflede: "Long live Love, abbess of the devil! Let us love each other to-night, and fight to-morrow!" ”

“ Yet of such stubborn stuff was Bertrand’s soul that the fight was fought and won in him before his black horse had carried him a furlong. Like some old pagan martyr, he would rather drink the poison than confess himself a fool and recant from a philosophy that the world might class as madness. ”

“ So Bertie tries to look bold, and marches up, like a soldier going to battle. "Left, left! right, right!" calls out the voice under the table. But this time it is loud and strong, like that of a captain of the drill.
Bertie is a brave little boy: so he marches straight up to the door,—which stands open,—and looks out. Then he claps his chubby hands, and shouts, "Oh! it was my uncle Frank under the table. I forgot he was such a funny man. Oh, uncle Frank! How can you get in the house and out of the house, and nobody see you?" ”

“ Bertrand stretched his arms and yawned.
“Food puts new courage into a man.”
She bent towards him with a sinuous gliding of the body, pouted out her lips, and put her face close to his.
“You are yourself again, lording.”
Bertrand kissed her, thinking of Tiphaïne, and swearing stoutly in his heart that he was beyond her scorn and pity. Arletta, red and happy, started up, and began to pile leaves and bracken into a bed beneath the tree. She made a pillow by rolling leaves up in an old tunic, and threw more wood upon the fire. ”

“ And so Sir Launcelot ran out at a postern, and there he met with the two knights that chased Sir Bliant, and there he pulled down Bertlot with his bare hands from his horse, and therewithal he writhed his sword out of his hands, and so he leaped unto Sir Breuse, and gave him such a buffet upon the head that he tumbled backward over his horse's crupper. And when Sir Bertlot saw his brother have such a fall, he gat a spear in his hand, and would have run Sir Launcelot through. ”

“ Guicheaux approached them again, carrying a slice of steaming pork on his poniard, a loaf of bread, and a stone flask of cider. Arletta took the food from him and nodded him back towards the fire, where the free companions were making a brave battle over their meal. She knelt down again beside Bertrand, and pressed him to eat, coaxing him half-playfully, half-wistfully, till she won her way. Food, drink, and the cheerfulness of the fire worked their spell on Bertrand’s spirits. He began to feel comforted in the inner man, warmer about the body, less befogged about the brain. ”

“ He was as hot to save her as though he were still her champion at Rennes. Tiphaïne in Hanotin’s ruffian hands! Bertrand set his teeth and raged at the thought of it. He must reach the Aspen Tower before the patched gate fell.
Arletta rode at Bertrand’s side that morning, biting her red lips, and tasting the bitterness of her own reflections. A woman is quick in the telling of a man’s moods, and his actions speak for him in lieu of words. With Arletta jealousy was an ever-smouldering passion. It lurked at all times behind her pale and sinful face, and in the restless deeps of her troubled eyes. ”

“ And now, will you drink to the Jew Mordecai?"
While Meroflede was uttering these words, Berthoald contemplated her with increased astonishment, now mixed with fear, and could find not one word in answer.
"Ah! Ah! Ah!" said the abbess laughing, "see how dumb he has become. Why grow alternately pale and red? What does it matter whether you are of Gallic or Frankish race? Does that render your eyes less blue, your hair less black, your shape less comely? Come, shame upon you, my warrior! Must I teach a soldier how cups are emptied, and how love is made?" ”