A career of a very sinister character ended with some
glory on Thursday. M. Paul Bert, the bitterest and most scornful of French atheists, and one of the cruellest of French vivisectors, died on that day at his post as French Resident in Tonquin, a post to which, at M. de Freycinet's request, he had stuck loyally, though attacked by dysentery, and perfectly aware that sticking to his post would probably mean death. M. Paul Bert was the favourite pupil of M. Claude Bernard, and had followed out that great physiologist's cruel methods of investigation with unflinching tenacity. He was also the author of the celebrated toast, at an agricultural dinner in the Yonne, to "the eradication of the two phylloxeras, the phylloxera of the vine, and the phylloxera of clericalism," and of as great a variety of sneers at Christian faith as a very bold and witty Frenchman could devise. We should find it difficult to specify a public career which has repelled us more profoundly. Nevertheless, it is obvious that M. Paul Bert died at his work with a grim sort of fidelity to which it is impossible to deny a certain feeling of respect. No phantoms of creatures dying in lonely torment only to gratify the curiosity of a physiologist, or of sensualists who had been made sensualists by his sneers at their early religious faith, para- lysed the cool businesslike punctuality of his official action on his death-bed. Perhaps the most cynical of all his sayings was his remark, on quitting France, that his anti-clericalism was not an article for "exportation." In Tonquin he was determined to show that he would protect Catholics in spite of their being Catholics, because they were under the protection of the French flag.
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