A young American named Olcott, who visited Chasles and occasionally
looked me up, brought with him a breath from the universities of the
great North American Republic. A young German, Dr. Goldschmidt, a
distinguished Sanscrit scholar, a man of more means than I, who had a
pretty flat with a view over the Place du Châtelet, and dined at good
restaurants, came, as it were, athwart the many impressions I had
received of Romance nature and Romance intellectual life, with his
violent German national feeling and his thorough knowledge. As early as
the Spring, he believed there would be war between Germany and France
and wished in that event to be a soldier, as all other German students,
so he declared, passionately wished. He was a powerfully built,
energetic, well-informed man of the world, with something of the rich
man's habit of command. He seemed destined to long life and quite able
to stand fatigue. Nevertheless, his life was short. He went through the
whole of the war in France without a scratch, after the conclusion of
peace was appointed professor of Sanscrit at the University of
conquered Strasburg, but died of illness shortly afterwards.
A striking contrast to his reticent nature was afforded by the young
Frenchmen of the same age whom I often met. A very rich and very
enthusiastic young man, Marc de Rossiény, was a kind of leader to them;
he had 200,000 francs a year, and with this money had founded a weekly
publication called "_L'Impartial_," as a common organ for the students
of Brussels and Paris. The paper's name, _L'Impartial_, must be
understood in the sense that it admitted the expression of every
opinion with the exception of defence of so-called revealed religion.
The editorial staff was positivist, Michelet and Chasles were patrons
of the paper, and behind the whole stood Victor Hugo as a kind of
honorary director. The weekly preached hatred of the Empire and of
theology, and seemed firmly established, yet was only one of the
hundred ephemeral papers that are born and die every day in the Latin
quarter. When it had been in existence a month, the war broke out and
swept it away, like so many other and greater things.