1865--1870
An epidemic was ruining in terrible proportions the industry of the
cultivation of silkworms. J. B. Dumas had been desired, as Senator, to
draw up a report on the wishes of over 3,500 proprietors in
sericicultural departments, all begging the public authorities to study
the question of the causes of the protracted epidemic. Dumas was all the
more preoccupied as to the fate of sericiculture that he himself came
from one of the stricken departments. He was born on July 14, 1800, in
one of the back streets of the town of Alais, to which he enjoyed
returning as a celebrated scientist and a dignitary of the Empire. He
gave much attention to all the problems which interested the national
prosperity and considered that the best judges in these matters were the
men of science. He well knew the conscientious tenacity--besides other
characteristics--which his pupil and friend brought into any
undertaking, and anxiously urged him to undertake this study. “Your
proposition,” wrote Pasteur in a few hurried lines, “throws me into a
great perplexity; it is indeed most flattering and the object is a high
one, but it troubles and embarrasses me! Remember, if you please, that I
have never even touched a silkworm. If I had some of your knowledge on
the subject I should not hesitate; it may even come within the range of
my present studies. However, the recollection of your many kindnesses to
me would leave me bitter regrets if I were to decline your pressing
invitation. Do as you like with me.” On May 17, 1865, Dumas wrote: “I
attach the greatest value to seeing your attention fixed on the question
which interests my poor country; the distress is beyond anything you can
imagine.”
Before his departure for Alais, Pasteur had read an essay on the history
of the silkworm, published by one of his colleagues, Quatrefages, born
like Dumas in the Gard. Quatrefages attributed to an Empress of China
the first knowledge of the art of utilizing silk, more than 4,000 years
ago. The Chinese, in possession of the precious insect, had jealously
preserved the monopoly of its culture, even to the point of making it a
capital offence to take beyond the frontiers of the Empire the eggs of
the silkworm. A young princess, 2,000 years later, had the courage to
infringe this law for love of her betrothed, whom she was going to join
in the centre of Asia, and also through the almost equally strong desire
to continue her fairy-like occupation after her marriage.
Pasteur appreciated the pretty legend, but was more interested in the
history of the acclimatizing of the mulberry tree. From Provence Louis
XI took it to Touraine: Catherine de Medici planted it in Orléanais.
Henry IV had some mulberry trees planted in the park at Fontainebleau
and in the Tuileries where they succeeded admirably. He also encouraged
a _Treatise on the Gathering of Silk_ by Olivier de Serres. This
earliest agricultural writer in France was much appreciated by the king,
in spite of the opposition of Sully, who did not believe in this new
fortune for France. Documentary evidence is lacking as to the
development of the silk industry.
From 1700 to 1788, wrote Quatrefages, France produced annually about
6,000,000 kilogrammes of cocoons. This was decreased by one-half under
the Republic; wool replaced silk perhaps from necessity, perhaps from
affectation.
Napoleon I restored that luxury. The sericicultural industry prospered
from the Imperial Epoch until the reign of Louis Philippe, to such an
extent as to reach in one year a total of 20,000,000 kilogrammes of
cocoons, representing 100,000,000 francs. The name of Tree of Gold given
to the mulberry, had never been better deserved.
Suddenly all these riches fell away. A mysterious disease was destroying
the nurseries. “Eggs, worms, chrysalides, moths, the disease may
manifest itself in all the organs,” wrote Dumas in his report to the
Senate. “Whence does it come? how is it contracted? No one knows. But
its invasion is recognized by little brown or black spots.” It was
therefore called “corpuscle disease”; it was also designated as
“_gattine_” from the Italian _gattino_, kitten; the sick worms held up
their heads and put out their hooked feet like cats about to scratch.
But of all those names, that of “pébrine” adopted by Quatrefages was the
most general. It came from the patois word _pébré_ (pepper). The spots
on the diseased worms were, in fact, rather like pepper grains.
The first symptoms had been noticed by some in 1845, by others in 1847.
But in 1849 it was a disaster. The South of France was invaded. In 1853,
seed had to be procured from Lombardy. After one successful year the
same disappointments recurred. Italy was attacked, also Spain and
Austria. Seed was procured from Greece, Turkey, the Caucasus, but the
evil was still on the increase; China itself was attacked, and, in 1864,
it was only in Japan that healthy seed could be found.
Every hypothesis was suggested, atmospheric conditions, degeneration of
the race of silkworms, disease of the mulberry tree, etc.--books and
treatises abounded, but in vain.
When Pasteur started for Alais (June 16, 1865), entrusted with this
scientific mission by the Minister of Agriculture, his mind saw but that
one point of interrogation, “What caused these fatal spots?” On his
arrival he sympathetically questioned the Alaisians. He received
confused and contradictory answers, indications of chimerical remedies;
some cultivators poured sulphur or charcoal powder on the worms, some
mustard meal or castor sugar; ashes and soot were used, quinine powders,
etc. Some cultivators preferred liquids, and syringed the mulberry
leaves with wine, rum or absinthe. Fumigations of chlorine, of coal tar,
were approved by some and violently objected to by others. Pasteur, more
desirous of seeking the origin of the evil than of making a census of
these remedies, unceasingly questioned the nursery owners, who
invariably answered that it was something like the plague or cholera.
Some worms languished on the frames in their earliest days, others in
the second stage only, some passed through the third and fourth
moultings, climbed the twig and spun their cocoon. The chrysalis became
a moth, but that diseased moth had deformed antennæ and withered legs,
the wings seemed singed. Eggs (technically called seed) from those moths
were inevitably unsuccessful the following year. Thus, in the same
nursery, in the course of the two months that a larva takes to become a
moth, the pébrine disease was alternately sudden or insidious: it burst
out or disappeared, it hid itself within the chrysalis and reappeared in
the moth or the eggs of a moth which had seemed sound. The discouraged
Alaisians thought that nothing could overcome pébrine.
Pasteur did not admit such resignation. But he began by one aspect only
of the problem. He resolved to submit those corpuscles of the silkworm
which had been observed since 1849 to microscopical study. He settled
down in a small _magnanerie_ near Alais; two series of worms were being
cultivated. The first set was full grown; it came from some Japanese
seed guaranteed as sound, and had produced very fine cocoons. The
cultivator intended to keep the seed of the moths to compensate himself
for the failure of the second set, also of Japanese origin, but not
officially guaranteed. The worms of this second series were sickly and
did not feed properly. And yet these worms, seen through the microscope,
only exceptionally presented corpuscles; whilst Pasteur was surprised to
find some in almost every moth or chrysalis from the prosperous nursery.
Was it then elsewhere than in the worms that the secret of the pébrine
was to be found?
Pasteur was interrupted in the midst of his experiments by a sudden
blow. Nine days after his arrival, a telegram called him to Arbois: his
father was very ill. He started, full of anguish, remembering the sudden
death of his mother before he had had time to reach her, and that of
Jeanne, his eldest daughter, who had also died far away from him in the
little house at Arbois. His sad presentiment oppressed him during the
whole of the long journey, and was fully justified; he arrived to find,
already in his coffin, the father he so dearly loved and whose name he
had made an illustrious one.
In the evening, in the empty room above the tannery, Pasteur wrote:
“Dear Marie, dear children, the dear grandfather is no more; we have
taken him this morning to his last resting place, close to little
Jeanne’s. In the midst of my grief I have felt thankful that our little
girl had been buried there.... Until the last moment I hoped I should
see him again, embrace him for the last time ... but when I arrived at
the station I saw some of our cousins all in black, coming from Salins;
it was only then that I understood that I could but accompany him to the
grave.
“He died on the day of your first communion, dear Cécile; those two
memories will remain in your heart, my poor child. I had a presentiment
of it when that very morning, at the hour when he was struck down, I was
asking you to pray for the grandfather at Arbois. Your prayers will
have been acceptable unto God, and perhaps the dear grandfather himself
knew of them and rejoiced with dear little Jeanne over Cécile’s piety.
“I have been thinking all day of the marks of affection I have had from
my father. For thirty years I have been his constant care, I owe
everything to him. When I was young he kept me from bad company and
instilled into me the habit of working and the example of the most loyal
and best-filled life. He was far above his position both in mind and in
character.... You did not know him, dearest Marie, at the time when he
and my mother were working so hard for the children they loved, for me
especially, whose books and schooling cost so much.... And the touching
part of his affection for me is that it never was mixed with ambition.
You remember that he would have been pleased to see me the headmaster of
Arbois College? He foresaw that advancement would mean hard work,
perhaps detrimental to my health. And yet I am sure that some of the
success in my scientific career must have filled him with joy and pride;
his son! his name! the child he had guided and cherished! My dear
father, how thankful I am that I could give him some satisfaction!
“Farewell, dearest Marie, dear children. We shall often talk of the dear
grandfather. How glad I am that he saw you all again a short time ago,
and that he lived to know little Camille. I long to see you all, but
must go back to Alais, for my studies would be retarded by a year if I
could not spend a few days there now.
“I have some ideas on this disease, which is indeed a scourge for all
those southern departments. The one _arrondissement_ of Alais has lost
an income of 120,000,000 francs during the last fifteen years. M. Dumas
is a million times right; it must be seen to, and I am going to continue
my experiments. I am writing to M. Nisard to have the admission
examinations in my absence, which can easily be done.”
Nisard wrote to him (June 19): “My dear friend, I heard of your loss,
and I sympathize most cordially with you.... Take all the time necessary
to you. You are away in the service of science, probably of humanity.
Everything will be done according to your precise indications. I foresee
no difficulty ... everything is going on well at the Ecole. In spite of
your reserve--which is a part of your talent--I see that you are on the
track, as M. Biot would have said, and that you will have your prey.
Your name will stand next to that of Olivier de Serres in the annals of
sericiculture.”
On his return to Alais Pasteur went back to his observations with his
scientific ardour and his customary generous eagerness to lighten the
burden of others. He wrote in the introduction to his _Studies on
Silkworm Disease_ the following heartfelt lines--
“A traveller coming back to the Cévennes mountains after an absence of
fifteen years would be saddened to see the change wrought in that
countryside within such a short time. Formerly he might have seen robust
men breaking up the rock to build terraces against the side and up to
the summit of each mountain; then planting mulberry trees on these
terraces. These men, in spite of their hard work, were then bright and
happy, for ease and contentment reigned in their homes.
“Now the mulberry plantations are abandoned, the ‘golden tree’ no longer
enriches the country, faces once beaming with health and good humour are
now sad and drawn. Distress and hunger have succeeded to comfort and
happiness.”
Pasteur thought with sorrow of the sufferings of the Cévenol
populations. The scientific problem was narrowing itself down. Faced by
the contradictory facts that one successful set of cocoons had produced
corpuscled moths, while an apparently unsuccessful set of worms showed
neither corpuscles nor spots, he had awaited the last period of these
worms with an impatient curiosity. He saw, amongst those which had
started spinning, some which as yet showed no spots and no corpuscles.
But corpuscles were abundant in the chrysalides, those especially which
were in full maturity, on the eve of becoming moths; and none of the
moths were free from them. Perhaps the fact that the disease appeared in
the chrysalis and moth only explained the failures of succeeding series.
“It was a mistake,” wrote Pasteur (June 26, 1865), “to look for the
symptom, the corpuscle, exclusively in the eggs or the worms; either
might carry in themselves the germ of the disease, without presenting
distinct and microscopically visible corpuscles.” The evil developed
itself chiefly in the chrysalides and the moths, it was there that it
should chiefly be sought. There should be an infallible means of
procuring healthy seed by having recourse to moths free from
corpuscles.
This idea was like a searchlight flashed into the darkness. Pasteur thus
formulated his hypothesis: “Every moth containing corpuscles must give
birth to diseased seed. If a moth only has a few corpuscles, its eggs
will provide worms without any, or which will only develop them towards
the end of their life. If the moth is much infected, the disease will
show itself in the earliest stages of the worm, either by corpuscles or
by other unhealthy symptoms.”
Pasteur studied hundreds of moths under the microscope. Nearly all, two
or three couples excepted, were corpuscled, but that restricted quantity
was increased by a precious gift. Two people, who had heard Pasteur
ventilate his theories, brought him five moths born of a local race of
silkworms and nurtured in the small neighbouring town of Anduze in the
Turkish fashion, i.e. without any of the usual precautions consisting in
keeping the worms in nurseries heated at an equal temperature.
Everything having been tried, this system had also had its turn, without
any appreciable success. By a fortunate circumstance, four out of those
five moths were healthy.
Pasteur looked forward to the study in comparisons that the following
spring would bring when worms were hatched both from the healthy and the
diseased seed. In the meanwhile, only a few of the Alaisians, including
M. Pagès, the Mayor, and M. de Lachadenède, really felt any confidence
in these results. Most of the other silkworm cultivators were disposed
to criticize everything, without having the patience to wait for
results. They expressed much regret that the Government should choose a
“mere chemist” for those investigations instead of some zoologist or
silkworm cultivator. Pasteur only said, “Have patience.”
He returned to Paris, where fresh sorrow awaited him: Camille, his
youngest child, only two years old, was seriously ill. He watched over
her night after night, spending his days at his task in the laboratory,
and returning in the evening to the bedside of his dying child. During
that same period he was asked for an article on Lavoisier by J. B.
Dumas, who had been requested by the Government to publish his works.
“No one,” wrote Dumas to Pasteur--“has read Lavoisier with more
attention than you have; no one can judge of him better.... The chance
which caused me to be born before you has placed me in communication
with surroundings and with men in whom I have found the ideas and
feelings which have guided me in this work. But, had it been yours, I
should have allowed no one else to be the first in drawing the world’s
attention to it. It is from this motive, also from a certain conformity
of tastes and of principles which has long made you dear to me, that I
now ask you to give up a few hours to Lavoisier.”
“My dear and illustrious master,” answered Pasteur (July 18, 1865), “in
the face of your letter and its expressions of affectionate confidence,
I cannot refuse to submit to you a paper which you must promise to throw
away if it should not be exactly what you want. I must also ask you to
grant me much time, partly on account of my inexperience, and partly on
account of the fatigue both mental and bodily imposed on me by the
illness of our dear child.”
Dumas replied: “Dear friend and colleague, I thank you for your kind
acquiescence in Lavoisier’s interests, which might well be your own, for
no one at this time represents better than you do his spirit and
method,--a method in which reasoning had more share than anything else.
“The art of observation and that of experimentation are very distinct.
In the first case, the fact may either proceed from logical reasons or
be mere good fortune; it is sufficient to have some penetration and the
sense of truth in order to profit by it. But the art of experimentation
leads from the first to the last link of the chain, without hesitation
and without a blank, making successive use of Reason, which suggests an
alternative, and of Experience, which decides on it, until, starting
from a faint glimmer, the full blaze of light is reached. Lavoisier made
this art into a method, and you possess it to a degree which always
gives me a pleasure for which I am grateful to you.
“Take your time. Lavoisier has waited seventy years! It is a century
since his first results were produced! What are weeks and months?
“I feel for you with all my heart! I know how heartrending are those
moments by the deathbed of a suffering child. I hope and trust this
great sorrow will be spared you, as indeed you deserve that it should
be.”
The promise made by Dumas to give to France an edition of Lavoisier’s
works dated very far back. It was in May, 1836, in one of his eloquent
lectures at the Collège de France, that Dumas had declared his intention
of raising a scientific monument to the memory of this, perhaps the
greatest of all French scientists. He had hoped that a Bill would be
passed by the Government of Louis Philippe decreeing that this edition
of Lavoisier’s works would be produced at the expense of the State. But
the usual obstacles and formalities came in the way. Governments
succeeded each other, and it was only in 1861 that Dumas obtained the
decree he wished for and that the book appeared.
Certainly Pasteur knew and admired as much as any one the discoveries of
Lavoisier. But, in the presence of the series of labours accomplished,
in spite of many other burdens, during that life cut off in its prime by
the Revolutionary Tribunal (1792), labours collated for the first time
by Dumas, Pasteur was filled with a new and vivid emotion. His logic in
reasoning and his patience in observing nature had in no wise diminished
the impetuous generosity of his feelings; a beautiful book, a great
discovery, a brilliant exploit or a humble act of kindness would move
him to tears. Concerning such a man as Lavoisier, Pasteur’s curiosity
became a sort of worship. He would have had the history of such a life
spread everywhere. “Though one discovery always surpasses another, and
though the chemical and physical knowledge accumulated since his time
has gone beyond all Lavoisier’s dreams,” wrote Pasteur, “his work, like
that of Newton and a few other rare spirits, will remain ever young.
Certain details will age, as do the fashions of another time, but the
foundation, the method, constitute one of those great aspects of the
human mind, the majesty of which is only increased by years....”
Pasteur’s article appeared in the _Moniteur_ and was much praised by the
celebrated critic Sainte Beuve, whose literary lectures were often
attended by Pasteur, between 1857 and 1861. The chronological order that
we are following in this history of Pasteur’s life allows us to follow
the ideas and feelings with which he lived his life of hard daily work
combined with daily devotion to others. Joys and sorrows can be
chronicled, thanks to the confidences of those who loved him. His fame
is indeed part of the future, but the tenderness which he inspired
revives the memories of the past.
In September, 1865, little Camille died. Pasteur took the tiny coffin to
Arbois and went back to his work. A letter written in November alludes
to the depth of his grief.
It was à propos of a candidature to the Académie des Sciences, Sainte
Beuve was asked to help that of a young friend of his, Charles Robin.
Robin occupied a professor’s chair specially created for him at the
_Faculté de Médecine_; he had made a deep microscopical study of the
tissues of living bodies, of cellular life, of all which constitutes
histology. He was convinced that outside his own studies, numerous
questions would fall more and more into the domain of experimentation,
and he believed that the faith in spiritual things could not “stand the
struggle against the spirit of the times, wholly turned to positive
things.” He did not, like Pasteur, understand the clear distinction
between the scientist on the one hand and the man of sentiment on the
other, each absolutely independent. Neither did he imitate the reserve
of Claude Bernard who did not allow himself to be pressed by any urgent
questioner into enrolment with either the believers or the unbelievers,
but answered: “When I am in my laboratory, I begin by shutting the door
on materialism and on spiritualism; I observe facts alone; I seek but
the scientific conditions under which life manifests itself.” Robin was
a disciple of Auguste Comte, and proclaimed himself a Positivist, a word
which for superficial people was the equivalent of materialist. The same
efforts which had succeeded in keeping Littré out of the Académie
Française in 1863 were now attempted in order to keep Robin out of the
Académie des Sciences in 1865.
Sainte Beuve, whilst studying medicine, had been a Positivist; his quick
and impressionable nature had then turned to a mysticism which had
inspired him to pen some fine verses. He had now returned to his former
philosophy, but kept an open mind, however, criticism being for him not
the art of dictating, but of understanding, and he was absolutely averse
to irrelevant considerations when a candidature was in question.
The best means with Pasteur, who was no diplomat, was to go straight to
the point. Sainte Beuve therefore wrote to him: “Dear Sir, will you
allow me to be indiscreet enough to solicit your influence in favour of
M. Robin, whose work I know you appreciate?
“M. Robin does not perhaps belong to the same philosophical school as
you do; but it seems to me--from an outsider’s point of view--that he
belongs to the same scientific school. If he should differ
essentially--whether in metaphysics or otherwise--would it not be worthy
of a great scientist to take none but positive work into account?
Nothing more, nothing less.
“Forgive me; I have much resented the injustice towards you of certain
newspapers, and I have sometimes asked myself if there were not some
simple means of showing up all that nonsense, and of disproving those
absurd and ill-intentioned statements. If M. Robin deserves to be of the
Académie why should he not attain to it through you?...
“My sense of gratitude towards you for those four years during which you
have done me the honour of including such a man as you are in my
audience, also a feeling of friendship, are carrying me too far. I
intended to mention this to you the other day at the Princess’s; she had
wished me to do so, but I feel bolder with a pen....”
The Princess in question was Princess Mathilde. Her salon, a rendezvous
of men of letters, men of science and artists, was a sort of second
Academy which consoled Théophile Gautier for not belonging to the other.
Sainte Beuve prided himself on being, so to speak, honorary secretary to
this accomplished and charming hostess.
Pasteur answered by return of post. “Sir and illustrious colleague, I
feel strongly inclined towards M. Robin, who would represent a new
scientific element at the Academy--the microscope applied to the study
of the human organism. I do not trouble about his philosophical school
save for the harm it may do to his work.... I confess frankly, however,
that I am not competent on the question of our philosophical schools. Of
M. Comte I have only read a few absurd passages; of M. Littré I only
know the beautiful pages you were inspired to write by his rare
knowledge and some of his domestic virtues. My philosophy is of the
heart and not of the mind, and I give myself up, for instance, to those
feelings about eternity which come naturally at the bedside of a
cherished child drawing its last breath. At those supreme moments, there
is something in the depths of our souls which tells us that the world
may be more than a mere combination of phenomena proper to a mechanical
equilibrium brought out of the chaos of the elements simply through the
gradual action of the forces of matter. I admire them all, our
philosophers! We have experiments to straighten and modify our ideas,
and we constantly find that nature is other than we had imagined. They,
who are always guessing, how can they know!...”
Sainte Beuve was probably not astonished at Pasteur’s somewhat hasty
epithet applied to Auguste Comte, whom he had himself defined as “an
obscure, abstruse, often diseased brain.” After Robin’s election he
wrote to his “dear and learned colleague”--
“I have not allowed myself to thank you for the letter, so beautiful, if
I may say so, so deep and so exalted in thought, which you did me the
honour of writing in answer to mine. Nothing now forbids me to tell you
how deeply I am struck with your way of thinking and with your action in
this scientific matter.”
That “something in the depths of our souls” of which Pasteur spoke in
his letter to Sainte Beuve, was often perceived in his conversation;
absorbed as he was in his daily task, he yet carried in himself a
constant aspiration towards the Ideal, a deep conviction of the reality
of the Infinite and a trustful acquiescence in the Mystery of the
universe.
During the last term of the year 1865, he turned from his work for a
time in order to study cholera. Coming from Egypt, the scourge had
lighted on Marseilles, then on Paris, where it made in October more than
two hundred victims per day; it was feared that the days of 1832 would
be repeated, when the deaths reached twenty-three per 1,000. Claude
Bernard, Pasteur, and Sainte Claire Deville went into the attics of the
Lariboisière hospital, above a cholera ward.
“We had opened,” said Pasteur, “one of the ventilators communicating
with the ward; we had adapted to the opening a glass tube surrounded by
a refrigerating mixture, and we drew the air of the ward into our tube,
so as to condense into it as many as we could of the products of the air
in the ward.”
Claude Bernard and Pasteur afterwards tried blood taken from patients,
and many other things; they were associated in those experiments, which
gave no result. Henri Sainte Claire Deville once said to Pasteur,
“Studies of that sort require much courage.” “What about duty?” said
Pasteur simply, in a tone, said Deville afterwards, worth many sermons.
The cholera did not last long; by the end of the autumn all danger had
disappeared.
Napeoleon the Third loved science, and found in it a sense of assured
stability which politics did not offer him. He desired Pasteur to come
and spend a week at the Palace of Compiègne.
The very first evening a grand reception took place. The diplomatic
world was represented by M. de Budberg, ambassador of Russia, and the
Prussian ambassador, M. de Goltz. Among the guests were: Dr. Longet,
celebrated for his researches and for his _Treatise on Physiology_, a
most original physician, whose one desire was to avoid patients and so
have more time for pure science; Jules Sandeau, the tender and delicate
novelist, with his somewhat heavy aspect of a captain in the Garde
Nationals; Paul Baudry, the painter, then in the flower of his youth and
radiant success; Paul Dubois, the conscientious artist of the _Chanteur
Florentin_ exhibited that very year; the architect, Viollet le Duc, an
habitué of the palace. The Emperor drew Pasteur aside towards the
fireplace, and the scientist soon found himself instructing his
Sovereign, talking about ferments and molecular dissymmetry.
Pasteur was congratulated by the courtiers on the favour shown by this
immediate confidential talk, and the Empress sent him word that she
wished him to talk with her also. Pasteur remembered this conversation,
an animated one, a little disconnected, chiefly about animalculæ,
infusories and ferments. When the guests returned to the immense
corridor into which the rooms opened, each with the name of the guests
on the door, Pasteur wrote to Paris for his microscope and for some
samples of diseased wines.
The next morning a stag hunt was organized; riders in handsome costumes,
open carriages drawn by six horses and containing guests, entered the
forest; a stag was soon brought to bay by the hounds. In the evening,
after dinner, there was a torchlight procession in the great courtyard.
Amid a burst of trumpets, the footmen in state livery, standing in a
circle, held aloft the flaming torches. In the centre, a huntsman held
part of the carcase of the stag and waved it to and fro before the
greedy eyes of the hounds, who, eager to hurl themselves upon it, and
now restrained by a word, then let loose, and again called back all
trembling at their discomfiture, were at length permitted to rush upon
and devour their prey.
The next day offered another item on the programme, a visit to the
castle of Pierrefonds, marvellously restored by Viollet le Duc at the
expense of the Imperial purse. Pasteur, who, like the philosopher, might
have said, “I am never bored but when I am being entertained,” made his
arrangements so that the day should not be entirely wasted. He made an
appointment for his return with the head butler, hoping to find a few
diseased wines in the Imperial cellar. That department, however, was so
well administered that he was only able to find seven or eight
suspicious-looking bottles. The tall flunkeys, who scarcely realized the
scientific interest offered by a basketful of wine bottles, watched
Pasteur more or less ironically as he returned to his room, where he had
the pleasure of finding his microscope and case of instruments sent from
the Rue d’Ulm. He remained upstairs, absorbed as he would have been in
his laboratory, in the contemplation of a drop of bitter wine revealing
the tiny mycoderma which caused the bitterness.
In the meanwhile some of the other guests were gathered in the smoking
room, smilingly awaiting the Empress’s five o’clock tea, whilst others
were busy with the preparations for the performance of Racine’s
_Plaideurs_, which Provost, Regnier, Got, Delaunay, Coquelin, and
Mademoiselle Jouassain were going to act that very evening in the
theatre of the palace.
On the Sunday, at 4 p.m., he was received privately by their Majesties,
for their instruction and edification. He wrote in a letter to a friend:
“I went to the Emperor with my microscope, my wine samples, and all my
paraphernalia. When I was announced, the Emperor came up to meet me and
asked me to come in. M. Conti, who was writing at a table, rose to leave
the room, but was invited to stay. Then he fetched the Empress, and I
began to show their Majesties various objects under the microscope and
to explain them; it lasted a whole hour.”
The Empress had been much interested, and wished that her five o’clock
friends--who were waiting in the room where tea was served--should also
acquire some notions of these studies. She merrily took up the
microscope, laughing at her new occupation of laboratory attendant, and
arrived thus laden in the drawing-room, much to the surprise of her
privileged guests. Pasteur came in behind her, and gave a short and
simple account of a few general ideas and precise discoveries.
In the same way, the preceding week, Le Verrier[25] had spoken of his
planet, and Dr. Longet had given a lecture on the circulation of the
blood. That butterfly world of the Court, taking a momentary interest in
scientific things, did not foresee that the smallest discovery made in
the poor laboratory of the Rue d’Ulm would leave a more lasting
impression than the fêtes of the Tuileries of Fontainebleau and of
Compiègne.
In the course of their private interview, Napoleon and Eugénie
manifested some surprise that Pasteur should not endeavour to turn his
discoveries and their applications to a source of legitimate profit. “In
France,” he replied, “scientists would consider that they lowered
themselves by doing so.”
He was convinced that a man of pure science would complicate his life,
the order of his thoughts, and risk paralysing his inventive faculties,
if he were to make money by his discoveries. For instance, if he had
followed up the industrial results of his studies on vinegar, his time
would have been too much and too regularly occupied, and he would not
have been free for new researches.
“My mind is free,” he said. “I am as full of ardour for the new question
of silkworm disease as I was in 1863, when I took up the wine question.”
What he most wished was to be able to watch the growth of the silkworms
from the very first day, and to pursue without interruption this serious
study in which the future of France was interested. That, and the desire
to have one day a laboratory adequate to the magnitude of his works were
his only ambitions. On his return to Pam he obtained leave to go back to
Alais.
“My dear Raulin,” wrote Pasteur to his former pupil in January, 1866. “I
am again entrusted by the Minister of Agriculture with a mission for the
study of silkworm disease, which will last at least five months, from
February 1 to the end of June. Would you care to join me?”
Raulin excused himself; he was then preparing, with his accustomed slow
conscientiousness, his doctor’s thesis, a work afterwards considered by
competent judges to be a masterpiece.
“I must console myself,” wrote Pasteur, expressing his regrets, “by
thinking that you will complete your excellent thesis.”
One of Raulin’s fellow students at the Ecole Normale, M. Gernez, was now
a professor at the Collège Louis le Grand. His mind was eminently
congenial to Pasteur’s. Duruy, then Minister of Public Instruction, was
ever anxious to smooth down all difficulties in the path of science: he
gave a long leave of absence to M. Gernez, in order that he might take
Raulin’s place. Another young _Normalien_, Maillot, prepared to join the
scientific party, much to his delight. The three men left Paris at the
beginning of February. They began by spending a few days in an hotel at
Alais, trying to find a suitable house where they would set up their
temporary laboratory. After a week or two in a house within the town,
too far, to be convenient, from the restaurant where they had their
meals, Maillot discovered a lonely house at the foot of the Mount of the
Hermitage, a mountain once covered with flourishing mulberry trees, but
now abandoned, and growing but a few olive trees.
This house, at Pont Gisquet, not quite a mile from Alais, was large
enough to hold Pasteur, his family and his pupils; a laboratory was soon
arranged in an empty orangery.
“Then began a period of intense work,” writes M. Gernez. “Pasteur
undertook a great number of trials, which he himself followed in their
minutest details; he only required our help over similar operations by
which he tested his own. The result was that above the fatigues of the
day, easily borne by us strong young men, he had to bear the additional
burden of special researches, importunate visitors, and an equally
importunate correspondence, chiefly dealing out criticisms....”
Madame Pasteur, who had been detained in Paris for her children’s
education, set out for Alais with her two daughters. Her mother being
then on a visit to the rector of the Chambéry Academy, M. Zevort, she
arranged to spend a day or two in that town. But hardly had she arrived
when her daughter Cécile, then twelve years old, became ill with typhoid
fever. Madame Pasteur had the courage not to ask her husband to leave
his work and come to her; but her letters alarmed him, and the anxious
father gave up his studies for a few days and arrived at Chambéry. The
danger at that time seemed averted, and he only remained three days at
Chambéry. Cécile, apparently convalescent, had recovered her smile, that
sweet, indefinable smile which gave so much charm to her serious, almost
melancholy face. She smiled thus for the last time at her little sister
Marie-Louise, about the middle of May, lying on a sofa by a sunny
window.
On May 21, her doctor, Dr. Flesschutt, wrote to Pasteur: “If the
interest I take in the child were not sufficient to stimulate my
efforts, the mother’s courage would keep up my hopes and double my
ardent desire for a happy issue.” Cécile died on May 23 after a sudden
relapse. Pasteur only arrived at Chambéry in time to take to Arbois the
remains of the little girl, which were buried near those of his mother,
of his two other daughters, Jeanne and Camille, and of his father,
Joseph Pasteur. The little cemetery indeed represented a cup of sorrows
for Pasteur.
“Your father has returned from his sad journey to Arbois,” wrote Madame
Pasteur from Chambéry to her son who was at school in Paris. “I did
think of going back to you, but I could not leave your poor father to go
back to Alais alone after this great sorrow.” Accompanied by her who was
his greatest comfort, and who gave him some of her own courage, Pasteur
came back to the Pont Gisquet and returned to his work. M. Duclaux in
his turn joined the hard-working little party.
At the beginning of June, Duruy, with the solicitude of a Minister who
found time to be also a friend, wrote affectionately to Pasteur--
“You are leaving me quite in the dark, yet you know the interest I take
in your work. Where are you? and what are you doing? Finding out
something I feel certain....”
Pasteur answered, “Monsieur le Ministre, I hasten to thank you for your
kind reminder. My studies have been associated with sorrow; perhaps your
charming little daughter, who used to play sometimes at M. Le Verrier’s,
will remember Cécile Pasteur among other little girls of her age that
she used to meet at the Observatoire. My dear child was coming with her
mother to spend the Easter holidays with me at Alais, when, during a
few days’ stay at Chambéry, she was seized with an attack of typhoid
fever, to which she succumbed after two months of painful suffering. I
was only able to be with her for a few days, being kept here by my work,
and full of deceiving hopes for a happy issue from that terrible
disease.
“I am now wholly wrapped up in my studies, which alone take my thoughts
from my deep sorrow.
“Thanks to the facilities which you have put in my way, I have been able
to collect a quantity of experimental observations, and I think I
understand on many points this disease which has been ruining the South
for fifteen or twenty years. I shall be able on my return to propose to
the Commission of Sericiculture a practical means of fighting the evil
and suppressing it in the course of a few years.
“I am arriving at this result that there is no silkworm disease. There
is but an exaggeration of a state of things which has always existed,
and it is not difficult, in my view, to return to the former situation,
even to improve on it. The evil was sought for in the worm and even in
the seed; that was something, but my observations prove that it develops
chiefly in the chrysalis, especially in the mature chrysalis, at the
moment of the moth’s formation, on the eve of the function of
reproduction. The microscope then detects its presence with certitude,
even when the seed and the worm seem very healthy. The practical result
is this: you have a nursery full; it has been successful or it has not;
you wish to know whether to smother the cocoons or whether to keep them
for reproduction. Nothing is simpler. You hasten the development of
about 100 moths through an elevation of temperature, and you examine
these moths through the microscope, which will tell you what to do.
“The sickly character is then so easy to detect that a woman or a child
can do it. If the cultivator should be a peasant, without the material
conditions required for this study, he can do this: instead of throwing
away the moths after they have laid their eggs, he can bottle a good
many of them in brandy and send them to a testing office or to some
experienced person who will determine the value of the seed for the
following year.”
The Japanese Government sent some cases of seed supposed to be healthy
to Napoleon III, who distributed them in the silkworm growing
departments. Pasteur, in the meanwhile, was stating the results he had
arrived at, and they were being much criticized. In order to avoid the
pébrine, which was indeed the disease caused by the corpuscles so
clearly visible through the microscope, he averred that no seed should
be used that came from infected moths. In order to demonstrate the
infectious character of the pébrine he would give to some worms meals of
leaves previously contaminated by means of a brush dipped in water
containing corpuscles. The worms absorbed the food, and the disease
immediately appeared and could be found in the chrysalides and moths
from those worms.
“I hope I am in the right road--close to the goal, perhaps, but I have
not yet reached it,” wrote Pasteur to his faithful Chappuis; “and as
long as the final proof is not acquired complications and errors are to
be feared. Next year, the growth of the numerous eggs I have prepared
will obviate my scruples, and I shall be sure of the value of the
preventive means I have indicated. It is tiresome to have to wait a year
before testing observations already made; but I have every hope of
success.”
While awaiting the renewal of the silkworm season, he was busy editing
his book on wine, full of joy at contributing to the national riches
through practical application of his observations. It was, in fact,
sufficient to heat the wines by the simple process already at that time
known in Austria as _pasteurisation_, to free them from all germs of
disease and make them suitable for keeping and for exportation. He did
not accord much attention to the talk of old gourmets who affirmed that
wines thus “mummified” could not mellow with age, being convinced on the
contrary that the most delicate wines could only be improved by heating.
“The ageing of wines,” he said, “is due, not to fermentation, but to a
slow oxidation which is favoured by heat.”
He alluded in his book to the interest taken by Napoleon III in those
researches which might be worth millions to France. He also related how
the Imperial solicitude had been awakened, and acknowledged gratitude
for this to General Favé, one of the Emperor’s aides de camp.
The General, on reading the proofs, declared that his name must
disappear. Pasteur regretfully gave in to his scruples, but wrote the
following words on the copy presented to General Favé: “General, this
book contains a serious omission--that of your name: it would be an
unpardonable one had it not been made at your own request, according to
your custom of keeping your good works secret. Without you, these
studies on wine would not exist; you have helped and encouraged them.
Leave me at least the satisfaction of writing that name on the first
page of this copy, of which I beg you to accept the homage, while
renewing the expression of my devoted gratitude.”
Another incident gives us an instance of Pasteur’s kindness of heart. In
the year 1866 Claude Bernard suffered from a gastric disease so serious
that his doctors, Rayer and Davaine, had to admit their impotence.
Bernard was obliged to leave his laboratory and retire to his little
house at St. Julien (near Villefranche), his birthplace. But the charm
of his recollections of childhood was embittered by present sadness. His
mind full of projects, his life threatened in its prime, he had the
courage, a difficult thing to unselfish people, of resolutely taking
care of himself. But preoccupied solely with his own diet, his own body
now a subject for experiments, he became a prey to a deep melancholia.
Pasteur, knowing to what extent moral influences react on the physique,
had the idea of writing a review of his friend’s works, and published it
in the _Moniteur Universel_ of November 7, 1866, under the following
title: _Claude Bernard: the Importance of his Works, Teaching and
Method_. He began thus: “Circumstances have recently caused me to
re-peruse the principal treatises which have founded the reputation of
our great physiologist, Claude Bernard.
“I have derived from them so great a satisfaction, and my admiration for
his talent has been confirmed and increased to such an extent that I
cannot resist the somewhat rash desire of communicating my
impressions....”
Amongst Claude Bernard’s discoveries, Pasteur chose that which seemed to
him most instructive, and which Claude Bernard himself appreciated most:
“When M. Bernard became in 1854 a candidate for the Académie des
Sciences, his discovery of the glycogenic functions of the liver was
neither the first nor the last among those which had already placed him
so high in the estimation of men of science; yet it was by that one that
he headed his list of the claims which could recommend him to the
suffrages of the illustrious body. That preference on the part of the
master decides me in mine.”
Claude Bernard had begun by meditating deeply on the disease known as
diabetes and which is characterized, as everybody knows, by a
superabundance of sugar in the whole of the organism, the urine often
being laden with it. But how is it, wondered Claude Bernard, that the
quantity of sugar expelled by a diabetic patient can so far surpass that
with which he is provided by the starchy or sugary substances which form
part of his food? How is it that the presence of sugary matter in the
blood and its expulsion through urine are never completely arrested,
even when all sugary or starchy alimentation is suppressed? Are there in
the human organism sugar-producing phenomena unknown to chemists and
physiologists? All the notions of science were contrary to that mode of
thinking; it was affirmed that the vegetable kingdom only could produce
sugar, and it seemed an insane hypothesis to suppose that the animal
organism could fabricate any. Claude Bernard dwelt upon it however, his
principle in experimentation being this: “When you meet with a fact
opposed to a prevailing theory, you should adhere to the fact and
abandon the theory, even when the latter is supported by great
authorities and generally adopted.”
This is what he imagined, summed up in a few words by Pasteur--
“Meat is an aliment which cannot develop sugar by the digestive process
known to us. Now M. Bernard having fed some carnivorous animals during a
certain time exclusively with meat, he assured himself, with his precise
knowledge of the most perfect means of investigation offered him by
chemistry, that the blood which enters the liver by the portal vein and
pours into it the nutritive substances prepared and rendered soluble by
digestion is absolutely devoid of sugar; whilst the blood which issues
from the liver by the hepatic veins is always abundantly provided with
it.... M. Claude Bernard has also thrown full light on the close
connection which exists between the secretion of sugar in the liver and
the influence of the nervous system. He has demonstrated, with a rare
sagacity, that by acting on some determined portion of that system it
was possible to suppress or exaggerate at will the production of sugar.
He has done more still; he has discovered within the liver the existence
of an absolutely new substance which is the natural source whence this
organ draws the sugar that it produces.”
Pasteur, starting from this discovery of Claude Bernard’s, spoke of the
growing close connection between medicine and physiology. Then, with his
constant anxiety to incite students to enthusiasm, he recommended them
to read the lectures delivered by Bernard at the Collège de France.
Speaking of the _Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine_,
Pasteur wrote: “A long commentary would be necessary to present this
splendid work to the reader; it is a monument raised to honour the
method which has constituted Physical and Chemical Science since Galileo
and Newton, and which M. Bernard is trying to introduce into physiology
and pathology. Nothing so complete, so profound, so luminous has ever
been written on the true principles of the difficult art of
experimentation.... This book will exert an immense influence on medical
science, its teaching, its progress, its language even.” Pasteur took
pleasure in adding to his own tribute praise from other sources. He
quoted, for instance, J. B. Dumas’ answer to Duruy, who asked him, “What
do you think of this great physiologist?” “He is not a great
physiologist; he is Physiology itself.” “I have spoken of the man of
science,” continued Pasteur. “I might have spoken of the man in everyday
life, the colleague who has inspired so many with a solid friendship,
for I should seek in vain for a weak point in M. Bernard; it is not to
be found. His personal distinction, the noble beauty of his physiognomy,
his gentle kindliness attract at first sight; he has no pedantry, none
of a scientist’s usual faults, but an antique simplicity, a perfectly
natural and unaffected manner, while his conversation is deep and full
of ideas....” Pasteur, after informing the public that the graver
symptoms of Bernard’s disease had now disappeared, ended thus: “May the
publicity now given to these thoughts and feelings cheer the illustrious
patient in his enforced idleness, and assure him of the joy with which
his return will be welcomed by his friends and colleagues.”
The very day after this article reached him (November 19, 1860) Bernard
wrote to Pasteur: “My dear friend,--I received yesterday the _Moniteur_
containing the superb article you have written about me. Your great
praise indeed makes me proud, though I feel I am yet very far from the
goal I would reach. If I return to health, as I now hope I may do, I
think I shall find it possible to pursue my work in a more methodical
order and with more complete means of demonstration, better indicating
the general idea towards which my various efforts converge. In the
meanwhile it is a very precious encouragement to me to be approved and
praised by a man such as you. Your works have given you a great name,
and have placed you in the first rank among experimentalists of our
time. The admiration which you profess for me is indeed reciprocated;
and we must have been born to understand each other, for true science
inspires us both with the same passion and the same sentiments.
“Forgive me for not having answered your first letter; but I was really
not equal to writing the notice you wanted. I have deeply felt for you
in your family sorrow; I have been through the same trial, and I can
well understand the sufferings of a tender and delicate soul such as
yours.”
Henri Sainte Claire Deville, who was as warm-hearted as he was witty,
had, on his side, the ingenious idea of editing an address of collective
wishes for Claude Bernard, who answered: “My dear friend,--You are
evidently as clever in inventing friendly surprises as in making great
scientific discoveries. It was indeed a most charming idea, and one for
which I am very grateful to you--that of sending me a collective letter
from my friends. I shall carefully preserve that letter: first, because
the feelings it expresses are very dear to me; and also because it is a
collection of illustrious autographs which should go down to posterity.
I beg you will transmit my thanks to our friends and colleagues, E.
Renan, A. Maury, F. Ravaisson and Bellaguet. Tell them how much I am
touched by their kind wishes and congratulations on my recovery. It is,
alas, not yet a cure, but I hope I am on a fair way to it.
“I have received the article Pasteur has written about me in the
_Moniteur_; that article paralysed the vasomotor nerves of my
sympathetic system, and caused me to blush to the roots of my hair. I
was so amazed that I don’t know what I wrote to Pasteur; but I did not
dare say to him that he had wrongly exaggerated my merits. I know he
believes all that he writes, and I am happy and proud of his opinion,
because it is that of a scientist and experimentalist of the very first
rank. Nevertheless, I cannot help thinking that he has seen me through
the prism of his kindly heart, and that I do not deserve such excessive
praise. I am more than thankful for all the marks of esteem and
friendship which are showered upon me. They make me cling closer to
life, and feel that I should be very foolish not to take care of myself
and continue to live amongst those who love me, and who deserve my love
for all the happiness they give me. I intend to return to Paris some
time this month, and, in spite of your kind advice, I should like to
take up my Collège de France classes again this winter. I hope to be
allowed not to begin before January. But we shall talk of all this in
Paris. I remain your devoted and affectionate friend.”
To end this academic episode, we will quote from Joseph Bertrand’s
letter of thanks to Pasteur, who had sent him the article: “...The
public will learn, among other things, that the eminent members of the
Academy admire and love each other sometimes with no jealousy. This was
rare in the last century, and, if all followed your example, we should
have over our predecessors one superiority worth many another.”
Thus Pasteur showed himself a man of sentiment as well as a man of
science; the circle of his affections was enlarging, as was the scope of
his researches, but without any detriment to the happy family life of
his own intimate circle. That little group of his family and close
friends identified itself absolutely with his work, his ideas and his
hopes, each member of it willingly subordinating his or her private
interests to the success of his investigations. He was at that time
violently attacked by his old adversaries as well as his new
contradictors. Pouchet announced everywhere that the question of
spontaneous generation was being taken up again in England, in Germany,
in Italy and in America. Joly, Pouchet’s inseparable friend, was about
to make some personal studies and to write some general considerations
on the new silkworm campaign. Pasteur, who had confidently said, “The
year 1867 must be the last to bear the complaints of silkworm
cultivators!” went back to Alais in January, 1867. But, before leaving
Paris, Pasteur wrote out for himself a list of various improvements and
reforms which he desired to effect in the administration of the Ecole
Normale, showing that his interest in the great school had by no means
abated, in spite of his necessary absence. He brought with him his wife
and daughter, and Messrs. Gernez and Maillot; M. Duclaux was to come
later. The worms hatched from the eggs of healthy moths and those from
diseased ones were growing more interesting every day; they were in
every instance exactly what Pasteur had prophesied they would be. But
besides studying his own silkworms, he liked to see what was going on
in neighbouring _magnaneries_. A neighbour in the Pont Gisquet, a
cultivator of the name of Cardinal, had raised with great success a
brood originating from the famous Japanese seed. He was disappointed,
however, in the eggs produced by the moths, and Pasteur’s microscope
revealed the fact that those moths were all corpuscled, in spite of
their healthy origin. Pasteur did not suspect that origin, for the worms
had shown health and vigour through all their stages of growth, and
seemed to have issued from healthy parents. But Cardinal had raised
another brood, the produce of unsound seed, immediately above these
healthy worms. The excreta from this second brood could fall on to the
frames of those below them, and the healthy worms had become
contaminated. Pasteur demonstrated that the pébrine contagion might take
place in one or two different ways: either from direct contact between
the worms on the same frame, or by the soiling of the food from the very
infectious excreta. The remedy for the pébrine seemed now found. “The
corpuscle disease,” said Pasteur, “is as easily avoided as it is easily
contracted.” But when he thought he had reached his goal a sudden
difficulty rose in his way. Out of sixteen broods of worms which he had
raised, and which presented an excellent appearance, the sixteenth
perished almost entirely immediately after the first moulting. “In a
brood of a hundred worms,” wrote Pasteur, “I picked up fifteen or twenty
dead ones every day, black and rotting with extraordinary rapidity....
They were soft and flaccid like an empty bladder. I looked in vain for
corpuscles; there was not a trace of them.”
Pasteur was temporarily troubled and discouraged. But he consulted the
writings of former students of silkworm diseases, and, when he
discovered vibriones in those dead worms, he did not doubt that he had
under his eyes a well characterized example of the flachery disease--a
disease independent and distinct from the pébrine. He wrote to Duruy,
and acquainted him with the results he had obtained and the obstacles he
encountered. Duruy wrote back on April 9, 1867--
“Thank you for your letter and the good news it contains.
“Not very far from you, at Avignon, a statue has been erected to the
Persian who imported into France the cultivation of madder; what then
will not be done for the rescuer of two of our greatest industries! Do
not forget to inform me when you have mastered the one or two lame
facts which still stand in the way. As a citizen, as head of the
Université, and, if I may say so, as your friend, I wish I could follow
your experiments day by day.
“You know that I should like to found a special college at Alais. Please
watch for any useful information on that subject. We will talk about it
on your return.
“I am obliged to M. Gernez for his assiduous and intelligent
collaboration with you.”
This letter from the great Minister is all the more interesting that it
is dated from the eve of the day when the law on the reorganization of
primary teaching was promulgated.
The introduction into the curriculum of historical and geographical
notions; the inauguration of 10,000 schools and 30,000 adult classes;
the transformation of certain flagging classical colleges into technical
training schools; a constant struggle to include the teaching of girls
in Université organization; reforms and improvements in general
teaching; the building of laboratories, etc., etc.--into the
accomplishment of all these projects Duruy carried his bold and
methodical activity. No one was more suited than he to the planning out
of a complete system of national education. He and Pasteur were indeed
fitted to understand each other, for each had in the same degree those
three forms of patriotism: love for the land, memories for the past, and
hero worship.
In May, 1867, Pasteur received at Alais the news that a grand prize
medal of the 1867 exhibition was conferred upon him for his works on
wines. He hastened to write to Dumas--
“My dear master, ... Nothing has surprised me more--or so
agreeably,--than the news of this Exhibition prize medal, which I was
far from expecting. It is a new proof of your kindness, for I feel sure
that I have to thank you for originating such a favour. I shall do all I
can to make myself worthy of it by my perseverance in putting all
difficulties aside from the subject I am now engaged in, and in which
the light is growing brighter every day. If that flachery disease had
not come to complicate matters, everything would be well by now. I
cannot tell you how absolutely sure I now feel of my conclusions
concerning the corpuscle disease. I could say a great deal about the
articles of Messrs. Béchamp, Estor and Balbiani, but I will follow your
advice and answer nothing....”
Dumas had been advising Pasteur not to waste his time by answering his
adversaries and contradictors. Pasteur’s system was making way; ten
microscopes were set up, here and there, in the town of Alais; most seed
merchants were taking up the examination of the dead moths, and the
Pont-Gisquet colony had samples brought in daily for inspection. “I have
already prevented many failures for next year,” he wrote to Dumas (June,
1867), “but I always beg as a favour that a little of the condemned seed
may be raised, so as to confirm the exactness of my judgment.”
His system was indeed quite simple; at the moment when the moths leave
their cocoons and mate with each other, the cultivator separates them
and places each female on a little square of linen where it lays its
eggs. The moth is afterwards pinned up in a corner of the same square of
linen, where it gradually dries up; later on, in autumn or even in
winter, the withered moth is moistened in a little water, pounded in a
mortar, and the paste examined with a microscope. If the least trace of
corpuscles appears the linen is burnt, together with the seed which
would have perpetuated the disease.
Pasteur came back to Paris to receive his medal; perhaps his presence
was not absolutely necesary, but he did not question the summons he
received. He always attached an absolute meaning to words and to things,
not being one of those who accept titles and homage with an inward and
ironical smile.
The pageant of that distribution of prizes was well worth seeing, and
July 1, 1867, is now remembered by many who were children at that time.
Paris afforded a beautiful spectacle; the central avenue of the
Tuileries garden, the Place de la Concorde, the Avenue des Champs
Elysées, were lined along their full length by regiments of infantry,
dragoons, Imperial Guards, etc., etc., standing motionless in the bright
sunshine, waiting for the Emperor to pass. The Imperial carriage, drawn
by eight horses, escorted by the Cent-Gardes in their pale blue uniform,
and by the Lancers of the Household, advanced in triumphant array.
Napoleon III sat next to the Empress, the Prince Imperial and Prince
Napoleon facing them. From the Palais de l’Elysée, amidst equally
magnificent ceremonial, the Sultan Abdul-Aziz and his son arrived; then
followed a procession of foreign princes: the Crown Prince of Prussia,
the Prince of Wales, Prince Humbert of Italy, the Duke and Duchess of
Aosta, the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, all of whom have since borne a
part in European politics. They entered the Palais de l’Industrie and
sat around the throne. From the ground to the first floor an immense
stand was raised, affording seats for 17,000 persons. The walls were
decorated with eagles bearing olive branches, symbolical of strength and
peace. The Emperor in his speech dwelt upon these hopes of peace, whilst
the Empress in white satin, wearing a diadem, and surrounded by
white-robed princesses, brightly smiled at these happy omens.
On their names being called out, the candidates who had won Grand
Prizes, and those about to be promoted in the Legion of Honour, went up
one by one to the throne. Marshal Vaillant handed each case to the
Emperor, who himself gave it to the recipient. This old Field-Marshal,
with his rough bronzed face, who had been a captain in the retreat from
Moscow and was now a Minister of Napoleon III, seemed a natural and
glorious link between the First and the Second Empires. He was born at
Dijon in humble circumstances, of which he was somewhat proud, a very
cultured soldier, interested in scientific things, a member of the
Institute. The names of certain members of the Legion of Honour promoted
to a higher rank, such as Gérôme and Meissonier, that of Ferdinand de
Lesseps, rewarded for the achievement of the Suez Canal, excited great
applause. Pasteur was called without provoking an equal curiosity: his
scientific discoveries, in spite of their industrial applications, being
as yet known but to a few. “I was struck,” writes an eye-witness, “with
his simplicity and gravity; the seriousness of his life was visible in
his stern, almost sad eyes.”
At the end of the ceremony, when the Imperial procession left the Palais
de l’Industrie, an immense chorus, accompanied by an orchestra, sang
_Domine salvum fac imperatorem_.
On his return to his study in the Rue d’Ulm, Pasteur again took up the
management of the scientific studies of the Ecole Normale. But an
incident put an end to his directorship, while bringing perturbation
into the whole of the school. Sainte Beuve was the indirect cause of
this small revolution. The Senate, of which he was a member, had had to
examine a protest from 102 inhabitants of St. Etienne against the
introduction into their popular libraries of the works of Voltaire, J.
J. Rousseau, Balzac, E. Renan, and others. The committee had approved
this petition in terms which identified the report with the petition
itself. Sainte Beuve, too exclusively literary in his tastes, and too
radical in his opinions to be popular in the Senate, rose violently
against this absolute and arbitrary judgment, forgetting everything but
the jeopardy of free opinions before the excessive and inquisitorial
zeal of the Senate. His speech was very unfavourably received, and one
of his colleagues, M. Lacaze, aged sixty-eight, challenged him to a
duel. Sainte Beuve, himself then sixty-three years old, refused to enter
into what he called “the summary jurisprudence which consists in
strangling a question and suppressing a man within forty-eight hours.”
The students of the Ecole Normale deputed one of their number to
congratulate Sainte Beuve on his speech, and wrote the following
letter--
“We have already thanked you for defending freedom of thought when
misjudged and attacked; now that you have again pleaded for it, we beg
you to receive our renewed thanks.
“We should be happy if the expression of our grateful sympathy could
console you for this injustice. Courage is indeed required to speak in
the Senate in favour of the independence and the rights of thought; but
the task is all the more glorious for being more difficult. Addresses
are now being sent from everywhere; you will forgive the students of the
Ecole Normale for having followed the general lead and having sent their
address to M. Sainte Beuve.”
This letter was published in a newspaper. Etienne Arago published it
without remembering the Université by-laws which forbade every sort of
political manifestation to the students. It had given pleasure to Sainte
Beuve, the pleasure that elderly men take in the applause of youth; but
he soon became uneasy at the results of this noisy publicity.
Nisard, the Director of the school, could not very well tolerate this
breach of discipline. In spite of the entreaties of Sainte Beuve, the
student who had signed the letter was provisionally sent back to his
family. His comrades revolted at this and imperiously demanded his
immediate restoration. Pasteur attempted to pacify them by speaking to
them, but failed utterly; his influence was very great over his own
pupils, the students on the scientific side, but the others, the
“_littéraires_,” were the most violent on this question, and he was not
diplomatic and conciliating enough to bring them round. They rose in a
body, marched to the door, and the whole school was soon parading the
streets. “Before such disorder,” concluded the _Moniteur_, relating the
incident (July 10), “the authorities were obliged to order an immediate
closure. The school will be reconstituted and the classes will reopen on
October 15.”
Both the literary and the political world were temporarily agitated; the
Minister was interviewed. M. Thiers wrote to Pasteur on July 10: “My
dear M. Pasteur,--I have been talking with some members of the Left, and
I am certain or almost certain, that the Ecole Normale affair will be
smoothed over in the interest of the students. M. Jules Simon intends to
work in that direction; keep this information for yourself, and do the
best you can on your side.”
At the idea that the Ecole was about to be reconstituted, that is, that
the three great chiefs, Nisard, Pasteur and Jacquinet, would be changed,
deep regret was manifested by Pasteur’s scientific students. One of
them, named Didon, expressed it in these terms: “If your departure from
the school is not definitely settled, if it is yet possible to prevent
it, all the students of the Ecole will be only too happy to do
everything in their power.... As for me, it is impossible to express my
gratitude towards you. No one has ever shown me so much interest, and
never in my life shall I forget what you have done for me.”
Pasteur’s interest in young men, his desire to excite in them scientific
curiosity and enthusiasm, were now so well known that Didon and several
others who had successfully passed the entrance examinations both for
the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Normale, had chosen to enter the
latter in order to be under him; by the _Normaliens_ of the scientific
section, he was not only understood and admired, but beloved, almost
worshipped.
Sainte Beuve, who continued to be much troubled at the consequences of
his speech, wrote to the Minister of Public Instruction in favour of the
rusticated student. Duruy thought so much of Sainte Beuve that the
student, instead of being exiled to some insignificant country school,
was made professor of _seconde_ in the college of Sens. But it was
specified that in the future no letter should be written, no public
responsibility taken in the name of the Ecole without the authorization
of the Director.
Nisard left; Dumas had just been made President of the Monetary
Commission, thus leaving vacant a place as Inspector-General of Higher
Education. Duruy, anxious to do Pasteur justice, thought this post most
suitable to him as it would allow him to continue his researches. The
decree was about to be signed, when Balard, professor of chemistry at
the Faculty of Sciences, applied for the post. Pasteur wrote
respectfully to the Minister of Public Instruction (July 31): “Your
Excellency must know that twenty years ago, when I left the Ecole
Normale, I was made a curator, thanks to M. Balard, who was then a
professor at the Ecole Normale. A grateful pupil cannot enter into
competition with a revered master, especially for a post where
considerations of age and experience should have great weight.”
When Pasteur spoke of his masters, dead or living, Biot or Senarmont,
Dumas or Balard, it might indeed have been thought that to them alone he
owed it that he was what he was. He was heard on this occasion, and
Balard obtained the appointment.