Inspector-General of Secondary Education devolved on M. Jacquinet. The
directorship of scientific studies was given to Pasteur’s old and
excellent friend, the faithful Bertin. After teaching in Alsace for
eighteen years, he had become _maître des conférences_ at the Ecole
Normale in 1866, and also assistant of Regnault at the Collège de
France. It had only been by dint of much persuasion that Pasteur had
enticed him to Paris. “What is the good?” said the unambitious Bertin;
“beer is not so good in Paris as in Strasburg.... Pasteur does not
understand life; he is a genius, that is all!” But, under this apparent
indolence, Bertin was possessed of the taste for and the art of
teaching; Pasteur knew this, and, when Bertin was appointed, Pasteur’s
fears for the scientific future of his beloved Ecole were abated. Duruy,
much regretting the break of Pasteur’s connection with the great school,
offered him the post of _maître des conférences_, besides the chair of
chemistry which Balard’s appointment had left vacant at the Sorbonne.
But Pasteur declined the tempting offer; he knew the care and trouble
that his public lectures cost him, and felt that the two posts would be
beyond his strength; if his time were taken up by that double task it
would be almost impossible for him to pursue his private researches,
which under no circumstances would he abandon.
He carried his scruples so far as to give up his chemistry professorship
at the School of Fine Arts, where he had been lecturing since 1863. He
had endeavoured in his lessons to draw the attention of his artist
pupils, who came from so many distant places, to the actual principles
of Science. “Let us always make application our object,” he said, “but
resting on the stern and solid basis of scientific principles. Without
those principles, application is nothing more than a series of recipes
and constitutes what is called routine. Progress with routine is
possible, but desperately slow.”
Another reason prevented him from accepting the post offered him at the
Ecole Normale; this was that the tiny pavilion which he had made his
laboratory was much too small and too inconvenient to accommodate the
pupils he would have to teach. The only suitable laboratory at the Ecole
was that of his friend, Henri Sainte Claire Deville, and Pasteur was
reluctant to invade it. He had a great affection for his brilliant
colleague, who was indeed a particularly charming man, still youthful in
spite of his forty-nine summers, active, energetic, witty. “I have no
wit,” Pasteur would say quite simply. Deville was a great contrast to
his two great friends, Pasteur and Claude Bernard, with their grave
meditative manner. He enjoyed boarding at the Ecole and having his meals
at the students’ table, where his gaiety brightened and amused
everybody, effacing the distance between masters and pupils and yet
never losing by this familiar attitude a particle of the respect he
inspired.
Sometimes, however, when preoccupied with the heavy expenses of his
laboratory, he would invite himself to lunch with Duruy, from whom--as
from the Emperor or any one else--he usually succeeded in coaxing what
he wanted. The general state of things connected with higher education
was at that time most deplorable. The Sorbonne was as Richelieu had left
it--the Museum was sadly inadequate. At the Collège de France, it was
indeed impossible to call by the name of laboratory the narrow, damp and
unhealthy cellars, which Claude Bernard called “scientists’ graves,” and
where he had contracted the long illness from which he was only just
recovering.
Duruy understood and deplored this penury, but his voice was scarcely
heard in cabinet councils, the other Ministers being absorbed in
politics. Pasteur, whose self-effacing modesty disappeared when the
interests of science were in question, presented to Napoleon, through
the medium of his enlightened aide de camp, General Favé, the following
letter, a most interesting one, for, in it, possibilities of future
discoveries are hinted at, which later became accomplished facts.
“Sire,--My researches on fermentations and on microscopic organisms have
opened to physiological chemistry new roads, the benefit of which is
beginning to be felt both by agricultural industries and by medical
studies. But the field still to be explored is immense. My great desire
would be to explore it with a new ardour, unrestrained by the
insufficiency of material means.
“I should wish to have a spacious laboratory, with one or two outhouses
attached to it, which I could make use of when making experiments
possibly injurious to health, such as might be the scientific study of
putrid and infectious diseases.
“How can researches be attempted on gangrene, virus or inoculations,
without a building suitable for the housing of animals, either dead or
alive? Butchers’ meat in Europe reaches an exorbitant price, in Buenos
Ayres it is given away. How, in a small and incomplete laboratory, can
experiments be made, and various processes tested, which would
facilitate its transport and preservation? The so-called ‘splenic fever’
costs the Beauce[26] about 4,000,000 francs annually; it would be
indispensable to go and spend some weeks in the neighbourhood of
Chartres during several consecutive summers, and make minute
observations.
“These researches and a thousand others which correspond in my mind to
the great act of transformation after death of organic matter, and the
compulsory return to the ground and atmosphere of all which has once
been living, are only compatible with the installation of a great
laboratory. The time has now come when experimental science should be
freed from its bonds....”
The Emperor wrote to Duruy the very next day, desiring that Pasteur’s
wish should be acceded to. Duruy gladly acquiesced and plans began to be
drawn out. Pasteur, who scarcely dared believe in these bright hopes,
was consulted about the situation, size, etc., of the future building,
and looked forward to obtaining the help of Raulin, his former pupil,
when he had room enough to experiment on a larger scale. The proposed
site was part of the garden of the Ecole Normale, where the pavilion
already existing could be greatly added to.
In the meanwhile Pasteur was interviewed by the Mayor and the President
of the Chamber of Commerce of Orleans, who begged him to come to Orleans
and give a public lecture on the results of his studies on vinegar. He
consented with pleasure, ever willing to attempt awakening the interest
of the public in his beloved Science--“Science, which brings man nearer
to God.”
It was on the Monday, November 11, at 7.30 p.m., that Pasteur entered
the lecture room at Orleans. A great many vinegar manufacturers, some
doctors, apothecaries, professors, students, even ladies, had come to
hear him. An account in a contemporary local paper gives us a
description of the youngest member of the Académie des Sciences as he
appeared before the Orleans public. He is described as of a medium
height, his face pale, his eyes very bright through his glasses,
scrupulously neat in his dress, with a tiny Legion of Honour rosette in
his button hole.
He began his lecture with the following simple words: “The Mayor and the
President of the Chamber of Commerce having heard that I had studied the
fermentation which produces vinegar, have asked me to lay before the
vinegar makers of this town the results of my work. I have hastened to
comply with their request, fully sharing in the desire which instigated
it, that of being useful to an industry which is one of the sources of
the fortune of your city and of your department.”
He tried to make them understand scientifically the well known fact of
the transformation of wine into vinegar. He showed that all the work
came from a little plant, a microscopic fungus, the _mycoderma aceti_.
After exhibiting an enlarged picture of that mycoderma, Pasteur
explained that the least trace of that little vinegar-making plant, sown
on the surface of any alcoholic and slightly acid liquid, was sufficient
to produce a prodigious extension of it; in summer or artificial heat,
said Pasteur, a surface of liquid of the same area as the Orleans
Lecture room could be covered in forty-eight hours. The mycodermic veil
is sometimes smooth and hardly visible, sometimes wrinkled and a little
greasy to the touch. The fatty matter which accompanies the development
of the plant keeps it on the surface, air being necessary to the plant;
it would otherwise perish and the acetification would be arrested. Thus
floating, the mycoderma absorbs oxygen from the air and fixes it on the
alcohol, which becomes transformed into acetic acid.
Pasteur explained all the details in his clear powerful voice. Why, in
an open bottle, does wine left to itself become vinegar? Because, thanks
to the air, and to the mycoderma aceti (which need never be sown, being
ever mixed with the invisible dusts in the air), the chemical
transformation of wine into vinegar can take place. Why does not a full,
closed bottle become acetified? Because the mycoderma cannot multiply in
the absence of air. Wine and air heated in the same vessel will not
become sour, the high temperature having killed the germs of mycoderma
aceti both in the wine itself and in the dusts suspended in the air.
But, if a vessel containing wine previously heated is exposed to the
free contact of ordinary air, the wine may become sour, for, though the
germs in the wine have been killed, other germs may fall into it from
the air and develop.
Finally, if pure alcoholized water does not become acetified, though
germs can drop into it from the air, it is because it does not offer to
those germs the food necessary to the plant--food which is present in
wine but not in alcoholized water. But if a suitable aliment for the
little plant is added to the water, acetification takes place.
When the acetification is complete, the mycoderma, if not submerged,
continues to act, and, when not arrested in time, its oxidating power
becomes dangerous; having no more alcohol to act upon, it ends by
transforming acetic acid itself into water and carbonic acid gas, and
the work of death and destruction is thus achieved.
Speaking of that last phase of the mycoderma aceti, he went on to
general laws--laws of the universe by which all that has lived must
disappear. “It is an absolute necessity that the matter of which living
beings are formed should return after their death to the ground and to
the atmosphere in the shape of mineral or gaseous substances, such as
steam, carbonic acid gas, ammoniac gas or nitrogen--simple principles
easily displaced by movements of the atmosphere and in which life is
again enabled to seek the elements of its indefinite perpetuity. It is
chiefly through acts of fermentation and slow combustion that this law
of dissolution and return to a gaseous state is accomplished.”
Coming back to his special subject, he pointed out to vinegar
manufacturers the cause of certain failures and the danger of certain
errors.
It was imagined for instance that some microscopic beings, anguillulæ,
of which Pasteur projected an enlarged wriggling image on the screen,
and which were to be found in the tubs of some Orleans vinegar works,
were of some practical utility. Pasteur explained their injurious
character: as they require air to live, and as the mycoderma, in order
to accomplish its work, is equally dependent on oxygen, a struggle takes
place between the anguillulæ and the mycoderma. If acetification is
successful, if the mycoderma spreads and invades everything, the
vanquished anguillulæ are obliged to take refuge against the sides of
the barrel, from which their little living army watches the least
accidental break of the veil. Pasteur, armed with a magnifying glass,
had many times witnessed the struggle for life which takes place between
the little fungi and the tiny animals, each fighting for the surface of
the liquid. Sometimes, gathering themselves into masses, the anguillulæ
succeed in sinking a fragment of the mycodermic veil and victoriously
destroying the action of the drowned plants.
Pasteur related all this in a vivid manner, evidently happy that his
long and delicate laboratory researches should now pass into the domain
of industry. He had been pleased to find that some Orleans wine
merchants heated wine according to his advice in order to preserve it;
and he now informed them that the temperature of 55° C. which killed
germs and vegetations in wine could be applied with equal success to
vinegar after it was produced. The active germs of the mycoderma aceti
were thus arrested at the right moment, the anguillulæ were killed and
the vinegar remained pure and unaltered. “Nothing,” concluded Pasteur,
“is more agreeable to a man who has made science his career than to
increase the number of discoveries, but his cup of joy is full when the
result of his observations is put to immediate practical use.”
This year 1867 marks a specially interesting period in Pasteur’s life.
At Alais he had shown himself an incomparable observer, solely
preoccupied with the silkworm disease, thinking, speaking of nothing
else. He would rise long before anyone else so as to begin earlier the
study of the experiments he had started, and would give his thought and
attention to some detail for hours at a time. After this minute
observation he would suddenly display a marvellous ingenuity in varying
tests, foreseeing and avoiding causes of error, and at last, after so
many efforts, a clear and decisive experiment would come, as it had done
in the cases of spontaneous generation and of ferments.
The contrasts in his mind had their parallel in his character: this
usually thoughtful, almost dreamy man, absorbed in one idea, suddenly
revealed himself a man of action if provoked by some erroneous newspaper
report or some illogical statement, and especially when he heard of some
unscrupulous silkworm seed merchant sowing ruin in poor _magnaneries_
for the sake of a paltry gain. When, on his return to Paris, he found
himself mixed up with the small revolution in the Ecole Normale, he was
seen to efface himself modestly before his masters when honours and
titles came in question. Now he had interrupted his researches in order
to do a kindness to the people of Orleans, who, practical as they were,
and perhaps a little disdainful of laboratory theories, had been
surprised to find him as careful of the smallest detail as they
themselves were.
He was then in the full maturity of his forty-five years. His great
intuition, his imagination, which equalled any poet’s, often carried him
to a summit whence an immense horizon lay before him; he would then
suddenly doubt this imagination, resolutely, with a violent effort,
force his mind to start again along the path of experimental method,
and, surely and slowly, gathering proofs as he went, he would once more
reach his exalted and general ideas. This constant struggle within
himself was almost dramatic; the words “Perseverance in Effort,” which
he often used in the form of advice to others, or as a programme for his
own work, seemed to bring something far away, something infinite before
his dreamy eyes.
At the end of the year, an obstacle almost arrested the great
experiments he contemplated. He heard that the promises made to him were
vanishing away, the necessary credit having been refused for the
building of the new laboratory. And this, Pasteur sadly reflected, when
millions and millions of francs were being spent on the Opera house!
Wounded in his feelings, both as a scientist and a patriot, he prepared
for the _Moniteur_, then the official paper, an article destined to
shake the culpable indifference of public authorities.
“...The boldest conceptions,” he wrote, “the most legitimate
speculations can be embodied but from the day when they are consecrated
by observation and experiment. Laboratories and discoveries are
correlative terms; if you suppress laboratories, Physical Science will
become stricken with barrenness and death; it will become mere powerless
information instead of a science of progress and futurity; give it back
its laboratories, and life, fecundity and power will reappear. Away from
their laboratories, physicists and chemists are but disarmed soldiers on
a battlefield.
“The deduction from these principles is evident: if the conquests useful
to humanity touch your heart--if you remain confounded before the
marvels of electric telegraphy, of anæsthesia, of the daguerreotype and
many other admirable discoveries--if you are jealous of the share your
country may boast in these wonders--then, I implore you, take some
interest in those sacred dwellings meaningly described as
_laboratories_. Ask that they may be multiplied and completed. They are
the temples of the future, of riches and of comfort. There humanity
grows greater, better, stronger; there she can learn to read the works
of Nature, works of progress and universal harmony, while humanity’s own
works are too often those of barbarism, of fanaticism and of
destruction.
“Some nations have felt the wholesome breath of truth. Rich and large
laboratories have been growing in Germany for the last thirty years, and
many more are still being built; at Berlin and at Bonn two palaces,
worth four million francs each, are being erected for chemical studies.
St. Petersburg has spent three and a half million francs on a
Physiological Institute; England, America, Austria, Bavaria have made
most generous sacrifices. Italy too has made a start.
“And France?
“France has not yet begun....” He mentioned the sepulchre-like cellar
where the great physiologist, Claude Bernard, was obliged to live; “and
where?” wrote Pasteur. “In the very establishment which bears the name
of the mother country, the Collège de France!” The laboratory of the
Sorbonne was no better--a damp, dark room, one metre below the level of
the street. He went on, demonstrating that the provincial Faculties were
as destitute as those of Paris. “Who will believe me when I affirm that
the budget of Public Instruction provides not a penny towards the
progress of physical science in laboratories, that it is through a
tolerated administrative fiction that some scientists, considered as
professors, are permitted to draw from the public treasury towards the
expenses of their own work, some of the allowance made to them for
teaching purposes.”
The manuscript was sent to the _Moniteur_ at the beginning of January,
1868. It had lately been publishing mild articles on Mussulman
architecture, then on herring fishing in Norway. The official whose
business it was to read over the articles sent to the paper literally
jumped in his chair when he read this fiery denunciation; he declared
those pages must be modified, cut down; the Administration could not be
attacked in that way, especially by one of its own functionaries! M.
Dalloz, the editor of the paper, knew that Pasteur would never consent
to any alterations; he advised him to show the proofs to M. Conti,
Napoleon III’s secretary.
“The article cannot appear in the _Moniteur_, but why not publish it in
booklet form?” wrote M. Conti to Pasteur after having shown these
revelations to the Emperor. Napoleon, talking to Duruy the next day,
January 9, showed great concern at such a state of things. “Pasteur is
right,” said Duruy, “to expose such deficiencies; it is the best way to
have them remedied. Is it not deplorable, almost scandalous, that the
official world should be so indifferent on questions of science?”
Duruy felt his combative instincts awakening. How many times, in spite
of his good humour and almost Roman intrepidity, he had asked himself
whether he would ever succeed in causing his ideas on higher education
to prevail with his colleagues, the other Ministers, who, carried away
by their daily discussions, hardly seemed to realize that the true
supremacy of a nation does not reside in speeches, but in the silent and
tenacious work of a few men of science and of letters. Pasteur’s article
entitled _Science’s Budget_ appeared first in the _Revue des cours
scientifiques_, then as a pamphlet. Pasteur, not content with this,
continued his campaign by impetuous speeches whenever the opportunity
offered. On March 10, he saw himself nearing his goal, and wrote to
Raulin: “There is now a marked movement in favour of Science; I think I
shall succeed.”
Six days later, on March 16, whilst the Court was celebrating the
birthday of the Prince Imperial, Napoleon III, who, on reading Pasteur’s
article, had expressed his intention of consulting not only Pasteur,
but also Milne-Edwards, Claude Bernard, and Henri Sainte Claire Deville,
asked the four scientists to his study to meet Rouher, Marshal Vaillant
and Duruy, perhaps the three men of the Empire who were best qualified
to hear them. The Emperor in his slow, detached manner, invited each of
his guests to express his opinion on the course to follow. All agreed in
regretting that pure science should be given up. When Rouher said that
it was not to be wondered at that the reign of applied science should
follow that of pure science, “But if the sources of applications are
dried up!” interposed the Emperor hastily. Pasteur, asked to express his
opinion (he had brought with him notes of what he wished to say),
recalled the fact that the Natural History Museum and the Ecole
Polytechnique, which had had so great a share in the scientific movement
of the early part of the century, were no longer in that heroic period.
For the last twenty years the industrial prosperity of France had
induced the cleverest Polytechnicians to desert higher studies and
theoretical science, though the source of all applications was to be
found in theory. The Ecole Polytechnique was obliged now to recruit its
teaching staff outside, chiefly among Normaliens. What was to be done to
train future scientists? This: to maintain in Paris, during two or three
years, five or six graduates chosen from the best students of the large
schools as curators or preparation masters, doing at the Ecole
Polytechnique and other establishments what was done at the Ecole
Normale. Thanks to that special institution, science and higher teaching
would have a reserve of men who would become an honour to their country.
Next, and this was the second point, no less important than the first,
scientists should be given resources better appropriated to the pursuit
of their work; as in Germany, for instance, where a scientist would
leave one university for another on the express condition that a
laboratory should be built for him, “a laboratory,” said Pasteur,
“usually magnificent, not in its architecture (though sometimes that is
the case, a proof of the national pride in scientific glory), but in the
number and perfection of its appliances. Besides,” he added, “foreign
scientists have their private homes adjoining their laboratories and
collections,” indeed a most pressing inducement to work.
Pasteur did not suggest that a scientist should give up teaching; he
recognized, on the contrary, that public teaching forces him to embrace
in succession every branch of the science he teaches. “But let him not
give too frequent or too varied lectures! they paralyze the faculties,”
he said, being well aware of the cost of preparing classes. He wished
that towns should be interested in the working and success of their
scientific establishments. The Universities of Paris, of Lyons, of
Strasburg, of Montpellier, of Lille, of Bordeaux, and of Toulouse,
forming as a whole the University of France, should be connected to the
neighbourhood which they honour in the same way that German universities
are connected with their surroundings.
Pasteur had the greatest admiration for the German system: popular
instruction liberally provided, and, above it, an intellectually
independent higher teaching. Therefore, when the University of Bonn
resolved in that year, 1868, to offer him as a great homage the degree
of M.D. on account of his works on micro-organisms, he was proud to see
his researches rated at their proper value by a neighbouring nation. He
did not then suspect the other side of German nature, the military side,
then very differently preoccupied. Those preoccupations were pointed out
to the French Government in a spirit of prophecy, and with some
patriotic anguish, by two French officers, General Ducrot, commanding
since 1865 the 6th Military Division, whose headquarters were at
Strasburg, and Colonel Baron Stoffel, military attaché in Prussia since
1866. Their warnings were so little heeded that some Court intrigues
were even then on foot to transfer General Ducrot from Strasburg to
Bourges, so that he might no longer worry people with his monomania of
Prussian ambition.
On March 10, the evening of the day when the Emperor decided upon making
improvements, and when Duruy felt assured, thanks to the promised
allowances, that he could soon offer to French professors “the necessary
appliances with which to compete with their rivals beyond the Rhine,”
Pasteur started for Alais, where his arrival was impatiently awaited,
both by partisans and adversaries of his experiments on silkworm
disease. He would much have liked to give the results of his work in his
inaugural lecture at the Sorbonne. “But,” he wrote to Duruy, “these are
but selfishly sentimental reasons, which must be outweighed by the
interest of my researches.”
On his arrival he found to his joy that those who had practised seeding
according to his rigorous prescriptions had met with complete success.
Other silkworm cultivators, less well advised, duped by the decoying
appearances of certain broods, had not taken the trouble to examine
whether the moths were corpuscled; they were witnesses and victims of
the failure Pasteur had prophesied. He now looked upon pébrine as
conquered; but flachery remained, more difficult to prevent, being
greatly dependent upon the accidents which traverse the life of a
silkworm. Some of those accidents happen in spite of all precautions,
such as a sudden change of temperature or a stormy day; but at least the
leaves of the mulberry tree could be carefully kept from fermentation,
or from contamination by dusts in the nurseries. Either of those two
causes was sufficient to provoke a fatal disorder in silkworms, the
feeding of which is so important that they increase to fifteen thousand
times their own weight during the first month of their life. Accidental
flachery could therefore be avoided by hygienic precautions. In order to
prevent it from becoming hereditary, Pasteur--who had pointed out that
the micro-organism which causes it develops at first in the intestinal
canal of the worm and then becomes localized in the digestive cavity of
the chrysalis--advised the following means of producing a healthy strain
of silkworms: “This means,” writes M. Gernez, Pasteur’s assiduous
collaborator in these studies, “does not greatly complicate operations,
and infallibly ensures healthy seed. It consists in abstracting with the
point of a scalpel a small portion of the digestive cavity of a moth,
then mixing it with a little water and examining it with a microscope.
If the moths do not contain the characteristic micro-organism, the
strain they come from may unhesitatingly be considered as suitable for
seeding. The flachery micro-organism is as easily recognized as the
pébrine corpuscle.”
The seed merchants, made uneasy by these discoveries which so gravely
jeopardized their industry, spread the most slanderous reports about
them and made themselves the willing echo of every imposture, however
incredible. M. Laurent wrote to his daughter, Madame Pasteur, in a
letter dated from Lyons (June 6): “It is being reported here that the
failure of Pasteur’s process has excited the population of your
neighbourhood so much that he has had to flee from Alais, pursued by
infuriated inhabitants throwing stones after him.” Some of these legends
lingered in the minds of ignorant people.
Important news came from Paris to Pasteur in July, and on the 27th he
was able to write to Raulin: “The building of my laboratory is going to
be begun! the orders are given, and the money found. I heard this two
days ago from the Minister.” 30,000 francs had been allowed for the work
by the Minister of Public Instruction, and an equal sum was promised by
the Minister of the Emperor’s household. Duruy was preparing at the same
time a report on two projected decrees concerning laboratories for
teaching purposes and for research. “The laboratory for research,” wrote
Duruy, “will not be useful to the master alone, but more so even to the
students, thus ensuring the future progress of science. Students already
provided with extensive theoretical knowledge will be initiated in the
_teaching laboratories_ into the handling of instruments, elementary
manipulations, and what I may call classical practice; this will gather
them around eminent masters, from whom they will learn the art of
observation and methods of experiment.... It is with similar
institutions that Germany has succeeded in obtaining the great
development of experimental science which we are now watching with an
anxious sympathy.”
Pasteur returned to Paris with his enthusiastic mind overflowing with
plans of all kinds of research. He wanted to be there when the builders
began their work on the narrow space in the Rue d’Ulm. He wrote to
Raulin on August 10, asking his opinion as he would that of an
architect; then went on to say, planning out his busy holidays: “I shall
leave Paris on the 16th with my wife and children to spend three weeks
at the seaside, at St. George’s, near Bordeaux. If you were free at the
end of the month, or at the beginning of September, I wish you could
accompany me to Toulon, where experiments on the heating of wines will
be made by the Minister of the Navy. Great quantities of heated and of
non-heated wine are to be sent to Gabon so as to test the process; at
present our colonial crews have to drink mere vinegar. A commission of
very enlightened men is formed and has begun studies with which it seems
satisfied.... See if you can join me at Bordeaux, where I shall await a
notice from the chairman of the Commission, M. de Lapparent, director of
naval construction at the Ministry of Marine.”
The Commission mentioned by Pasteur had been considering for the last
two years the expediency of applying the heating process to wines
destined for the fleet and to the colonies. A first trial was made at
Brest on the contents of a barrel of 500 litres, half of which was
heated. Then the two wines were sealed in different barrels and placed
in the ship _Jean Bart_, which remained away from the harbour for ten
months. When the vessel returned, the Commission noted the limpidity and
mellowness of the heated wine, adding in the official report that the
wine had acquired the attractive colour peculiar to mature wines. The
non-heated wine was equally limpid, but it had an astringent, almost
acid flavour. It was still fit to drink, said the report, but it were
better to consume it rapidly, as it would soon be entirely spoilt.
Identical results were observed in some bottles of heated and non-heated
wines at Rochefort and Orleans.
M. de Lapparent now organized a decisive experiment, to take place under
Pasteur’s superintendence. The frigate _la Sibylle_ started for a tour
round the world with a complete cargo of heated wine. Pasteur, who
returned to Arbois for a short rest before going back to Paris, wrote
from there to his early confidant, Chappuis (September 21, 1868): “I am
quite satisfied with my experiments at Toulon and with the success of
the Navy tests. We heated 650 hectolitres in two days; the rapidity of
this operation lends itself to quick and considerable commissariat
arrangements. Those 650 hectolitres will be taken to the West Coast of
Africa, together with 50 hectolitres of the same wine non-heated. If the
trial succeeds, that is to say if the 650 hectolitres arrive and can be
kept without alteration, and if the 50 hectolitres become spoilt (I feel
confident after the experiments I have made that such will be the
result), the question will be settled, and, in the future, all the wine
for the Navy will be ensured against disease by a preliminary heating.
The expense will not be more than five centimes per hectolitre. The
result of these experiments will have a great influence on the trade,
ever cautious and afraid of innovations. Yet we have seen, at Narbonne
in particular, some heating practised on a large scale by several
merchants who have spoken to me very favourably about it. The
exportation of our French wines will increase enormously, for at present
our ordinary table wines lend themselves to trade with England and other
countries beyond seas, but only by means of a strong addition of
alcohol, which raises their price and tampers with their hygienic
qualities.”
The experiments were successful. Pasteur’s life was now over full. He
returned to Paris at the beginning of October, and threw himself into
his work, his classes at the Sorbonne, the organization of his
laboratory, some further polemics on the subject of silkworm disease,
and projected experiments for the following year. This accumulation of
mental work brought about extreme cerebral tension.
As soon as he saw M. Gernez, he spoke to him of the coming campaign of
sericiculture, of his desire to reduce his adversaries to silence by
heaping proof upon proof. Nothing could relieve him from that absorbing
preoccupation, not even the gaiety of Bertin, who, living on the same
floor at the Ecole Normale, often used to come in after dinner and try
to amuse him.
On Monday, October 19, Pasteur, though suffering from a strange tingling
sensation of the left side, had a great desire to go and read to the
Academié des Sciences a treatise by Salimbeni, an Italian, who, having
studied and verified Pasteur’s results, declared that the best means of
regenerating the culture of silkworms was due to the French scientist.
This treatise, the diploma of the Bonn University, the Rumford medal
offered by the English, all those testimonials from neighbouring nations
were infinitely agreeable to Pasteur, who was proud to lay such homage
before the shrine of France. On that day, October 19, 1868, a date which
became a bitter memory to his family and friends--in spite of an
alarming shivering fit which had caused him to lie down immediately
after lunch instead of working as usual--he insisted on going to the
Academy sitting at half past two.
Mme. Pasteur, vaguely uneasy, made a pretext of some shopping beyond the
Quai Conti and accompanied him as far as the vestibule of the Institute.
As she was turning back, she met Balard, who was coming up with the
quick step of a young man, stopped him and asked him to walk back with
Pasteur, and not to leave him before reaching his own door, though
indeed it seemed a curious exchange of parts to ask Balard at sixty
years of age to watch over Pasteur still so young. Pasteur read
Salimbeni’s paper in his usual steady voice, remained until the end of
the sitting and walked back with Balard and Sainte Claire Deville. He
dined very lightly and went to bed at nine o’clock; he had hardly got
into bed when he felt himself attacked by the strange symptoms of the
afternoon. He tried to speak, but in vain; after a few moments he was
able to call for assistance. Mme. Pasteur sent at once for Dr. Godélier,
an intimate friend of the family, an army surgeon, Clinical Professor at
the Ecole du Val-de-Grâce[27]; and Pasteur, paralysed one moment and
free again the next, explained his own symptoms during the intervals of
the dark struggle which endangered his life.
The cerebral hæmorrhage gradually brought about absence of movement
along the entire left side. When the next morning Dr. Noël Gueneau de
Mussy, going his regulation round of the Ecole Normale students, came
into his room and said, so as not to alarm him, “I heard you were
unwell, and thought I would come to see you,” Pasteur smiled the sad
smile of a patient with no illusions. Drs. Godélier and Gueneau de Mussy
decided to call Dr. Andral in consultation, and went to fetch him at
three o’clock at the Académie de Médecine. Somewhat disconcerted by the
singular character of this attack of hemiplegia, Andral prescribed the
application of sixteen leeches behind the ears; blood flowed abundantly,
and Dr. Godélier wrote in the evening bulletin (Tuesday): “Speech
clearer, some movements of the paralysed limbs; intelligence perfect.”
Later, at ten o’clock: “Complains of his paralysed arm.” “It is like
lead; if it could only be cut off!” groaned Pasteur. About 2 a.m. Mme
Pasteur thought all hope was gone. The hastily written bulletin reads
thus: “Intense cold, anxious agitation, features depressed, eyes
languid.” The sleep which followed was as the sleep of death.
At dawn Pasteur awoke from this drowsiness. “Mental faculties still
absolutely intact,” wrote M. Godélier at 12.30 on Wednesday, October 21.
“The cerebral lesion, whatever it may be, is not worse; there is an
evident pause.” Two hours later the words, “Mind active,” were followed
by the startling statement, “Would willingly talk science.”
While these periods of calm, agitation, renewed hopes, and despair were
succeeding each other in the course of those thirty-six hours, Pasteur’s
friends hastened to his bedside. He said to Henri Sainte Claire Deville,
one of the first to come: “I am sorry to die; I wanted to do much more
for my country.” Sainte Claire Deville, trying to hide his grief under
apparent confidence, answered, “Never fear; you will recover, you will
make many more marvellous discoveries, you will live happy days; I am
your senior, you will survive me. Promise me that you will pronounce my
funeral oration.... I wish you would; you would say nice things of me,”
he added between tears and smiles.
Bertin, Gernez, Duclaux, Baulin, Didon, then a curator at the Ecole
Normale, Professor Auguste Lamy, the geologist Marcou (the two latter
being Franche-comté friends), all claimed the privilege of helping Mme.
Pasteur and M. Godélier in nursing one who inspired them all, not merely
with an admiring and devoted affection, but with a feeling of tenderness
amounting almost to a cult.
A private letter from a cousin, Mme. Cribier, gives an idea of those
dark days (October 26, 1868): “The news is rather good this morning; the
patient was able to sleep for a few hours last night, which he had not
yet done. He had been so restless all day that M. Godélier felt uneasy
about him and ordered complete silence in the whole flat; it was only in
the study which is farthest away from the bedroom, and which has padded
doors, that one was allowed to talk. That room is full from morning till
night. All scientific Paris comes to inquire anxiously after the
patient; intimate friends take it in turns to watch by him. Dumas, the
great chemist, was affectionately insisting on taking his turn
yesterday. Every morning the Emperor and Empress send a footman for
news, which M. Godélier gives him in a sealed envelope. In fact, every
mark of sympathy is given to poor Marie, and I hope that the worst may
be spared her in spite of the alarming beginning. His mind seems so
absolutely untouched, and he is still so young, that with rest and care
he might yet be able to do some work. His stroke is accompanied by
symptoms which are now occupying the attention of the whole Academy of
Medicine. Paralysis always comes abruptly, whilst for M. Pasteur, it
came in little successive fits, twenty or thirty perhaps, and was only
complete at the end of twenty-four hours, which completely disconcerted
the doctors who watched him, and delayed their having recourse to an
active treatment. It seems that this fact is observed for the first
time, and is puzzling the whole Faculty.”
M. Pasteur’s mind remained clear, luminous, dominating his prostrate
body; he was evidently afraid that he should die before having
thoroughly settled the question of silkworm diseases. “One night that I
was alone with him,” relates M. Gernez, who hardly left his bedside
during that terrible week, “after endeavouring in vain to distract his
thoughts, I despairingly gave up the attempt and allowed him to express
the ideas which were on his mind; finding, to my surprise, that they had
his accustomed clearness and conciseness, I wrote what he dictated
without altering a word, and the next day I brought to his illustrious
colleague, Dumas--who hardly credited his senses--the memorandum which
appeared in the report of the Académie on October 26, 1868, a week after
the stroke which nearly killed him! It was a note on a very ingenious
process for discovering in the earlier tests those eggs which are
predisposed to flachery.”
The members of the Academy were much cheered by the reading of this
note, which seemed to bring Pasteur back into their midst.
The building of the laboratory had been begun, and hoardings erected
around the site. Pasteur, from his bed, asked day by day, “How are they
getting on?” But his wife and daughter, going to the window of the
dining-room which overlooked the Ecole Normale garden, only brought him
back vague answers, for, as a matter of fact, the workmen had
disappeared from the very first day of Pasteur’s illness. All that could
be seen was a solitary labourer wheeling a barrow aimlessly about,
probably under the orders of some official who feared to alarm the
patient.
As Pasteur was not expected to recover, the trouble and expense were
deemed unnecessary. Pasteur soon became aware of this, and one day that
General Favé had come to see him he gave vent to some bitter feelings as
to this cautious interruption of the building works, saying that it
would have been simpler and more straightforward to state from the
beginning that the work was suspended in the expectation of a probable
demise.
Napoleon was informed of this excess of zeal, not only by General Favé,
but by Sainte Claire Deville, who was a guest at Compiègne at the
beginning of November, 1868. He wrote to the Minister of Public
Instruction--
“My dear M. Duruy,--I have heard that--unknown to you probably--the men
who were working at M. Pasteur’s laboratory were kept away from the very
day he became ill; he has been much affected by this circumstance,
which seemed to point to his non-recovery. I beg you will issue orders
that the work begun should be continued. Believe in my sincere
friendship.--Napoleon.”
Duruy immediately sent on this note to M. du Mesnil, whose somewhat long
title was that of “Chief of the Division of Academic Administration of
Scientific Establishments and of Higher Education.” M. du Mesnil
evidently repudiated the charge for himself or for his Minister, for he
wrote in a large hand, on the very margin of the Imperial autograph--
“M. Duruy gave no orders and had to give none. It is at his solicitation
that the works were undertaken, but it is the _Direction of Civic
Buildings_ alone which _can_ have interrupted them; the fact should be
verified.”
M. de Cardaillac, head of the Direction of Civic Buildings, made an
inquiry and the building was resumed.
It was only on November 30 that Pasteur left his bed for the first time
and spent an hour in his armchair. He clearly analyzed to himself his
melancholy condition, stricken down as he was by hemiplegia in his
forty-sixth year; but having noticed that his remarks saddened his wife
and daughter, he spoke no more about his illness, and only expressed his
anxiety not to be a trouble, a burden, he said, to his wife, his son and
daughter, and the devoted friends who helped to watch him at night.
In the daytime each offered to read to him. General Favé, whose active
and inquiring mind was ever on the alert, brought him on one of his
almost daily visits an ideal sick man’s book, easy to read and offering
food for meditation. It was the translation of an English book called
_Self-Help_,[28] and it consisted in a series of biographies, histories
of lives illustrating the power of courage, devotion or intelligence.
The author, glad to expound a discovery, to describe a masterpiece, to
relate noble enterprises, to dwell upon the prodigies which energy can
achieve, had succeeded in making a homogeneous whole of these
unconnected narratives, a sort of homage to Willpower.
Pasteur agreed with the English writer in thinking that the supremacy of
a nation resides in “the sum total of private virtues, activities and
energy.” His thoughts rose higher still; men of science could wish for a
greater glory than that of contributing to the fame and fortune of
their country, they might aspire to originating vast benefits to the
whole of humanity.
It was indeed a sad and a sublime spectacle, that of the contrast
between that ardent, soaring soul and that patient helpless body. It was
probably when thinking of those biographies--some of them too succinct,
to his mind, Jenner’s for instance--that Pasteur wrote: “From the life
of men whose passage is marked by a trace of durable light, let us
piously gather up every word, every incident likely to make known the
incentives of their great soul, for the education of posterity.” He
looked upon the cult of great men as a great principle of national
education, and believed that children, as soon as they could read,
should be made acquainted with the heroic or benevolent souls of great
men. In his pious patriotism he saw a secret of strength and of hope for
a nation in its reverence for the memories of the great, a sacred and
intimate bond between the visible and the invisible worlds. His soul was
deeply religious. During his illness--a time when the things of this
world assume their real proportions--his mind rose far beyond this
earth. The Infinite appeared to him as it did to Pascal, and with the
same rapture; he was less attracted by Pascal, when, proud and
disdainful, he exposes man’s weakness for humiliation’s sake, than when
he declares that “Man is produced but for Infinity,” and “he finds
constant instruction in progress.” Pasteur believed in material progress
as well as in moral improvement; he invariably marked in the books he
was reading--Pascal, Nicole and others--those passages which were both
consoling and exalting.
In one of his favourite books, _Of the Knowledge of God and of Self_, he
much appreciated the passage where Bossuet ascribes to human nature “the
idea of an infinite wisdom, of an absolute power, of an infallible
rectitude, in one word, the idea of perfection.” Another phrase in the
same book seemed to him applicable to experimental method as well as to
the conduct of life: “The greatest aberration of the mind consists in
believing a thing because it is desirable.”
With December, joy began to return to the Ecole Normale: the laboratory
was progressing and seemed an embodiment of renewed hopes of further
work. M. Godélier’s little bulletins now ran: “General condition most
satisfactory. Excellent morale; the progress evidenced daily by the
return of action in the paralysed muscles inspires the patient with
great confidence. He is planning out his future sericiculture campaign,
receives many callers without too much fatigue, converses brightly and
often dictates letters.”
One visit was a great pleasure to Pasteur--that of the Minister, his
cordial friend, Duruy, who brought him good news of the future of Higher
Education. The augmented credit which was granted in the 1869 budget
would make it possible to rebuild other laboratories besides that of the
Ecole Normale, and also to create in other places new centres of study
and research. After so many efforts and struggles, it was at last
possible to foresee the day when chemistry, physics, physiology, natural
history and mathematics would each have an independent department in a
great province, which should be called the Practical School of Higher
Studies. There would be no constraint, no hard and fast rules, no
curriculum but that of free study: young men who were attracted to pure
science, and others who preferred practical application, would find a
congenial career before them as well as those who desired to give
themselves up to teaching. It can well be imagined with what delight
Pasteur heard these good tidings.
The bulletins continued to be favourable: “(December 15): Progress slow
but sure: he has walked from his bed to his armchair with some
assistance. (December 22): he has gone into the dining-room for dinner,
leaning on a chair. (29th): he has walked a few steps without support.”
Pasteur saw in his convalescence but the returning means of working, and
declared himself ready to start again for the neighbourhood of Alais at
once, instead of taking the few months’ rest he was advised to have.
He urged that, after certain moths and chrysalides, had been examined
through a microscope, complete certainty would be acquired as to the
condition of their seed, and that perfect seed would therefore become
accessible to all tradesmen both great and small; would it not be absurd
and culpable to let reasons of personal health interfere with saving so
many poor people from ruin?
His family had to give way, and on January 18, exactly three months
after his paralytic stroke, he was taken to the _Gare de Lyon_ by his
wife and daughter and M. Gernez. He then travelled, lying on the
cushions of a _coupé_ carriage, as far as Alais, and drove from Alais to
St. Hippolyte le Fort, where tests were being made on forced silkworms
by the agricultural society of Le Vigan.
The house he came into was cold and badly arranged. M. Gernez improvised
a laboratory, with the assistance of Maillot and Raulin, who had
followed their master down. From his sofa or from his bed, Pasteur
directed certain experiments on the forced specimens. M. Gernez writes:
“The operations, of which we watched the phases through the microscope,
fully justified his anticipations; and he rejoiced that he had not given
up the game.” In the world of the Institute his departure was blamed by
some and praised by others; but Pasteur merely considered that one man’s
life is worthless if not useful to others.
Dumas wrote to him early in February: “My dear friend and colleague,--I
have been thinking of you so much! I dread fatigue for you, and wish I
could spare it you, whilst hoping that you may successfully achieve your
great and patriotic undertaking. I have hesitated to write to you for
fear you should feel obliged to answer. However, I should like to have
direct news of you, as detailed as possible, and, besides that, I should
be much obliged if you could send me a line to enlighten me on the two
following points--
“1. When are you going back to Alais? And when will your Alais broods be
near enough to their time to be most interesting to visit?
“2. What should I say to people who beg for healthy seed as if my
pockets were full of it? I tell them it is too late; but if you could
tell me a means of satisfying them, I should be pleased, particularly in
the case of General Randon and M. Husson. The Marshal (Vaillant) is full
of solicitude for you, and we never meet but our whole conversation
turns upon you. With me, it is natural. With him less so, perhaps, but
anyhow, he thinks of you as much as is possible, and this gives me a
great deal of pleasure.... Please present to Madame Pasteur our united
compliments and wishes. We wish the South could have the virtues of
Achilles’ lance--of healing the wounds it has caused.--Yours
affectionately.”
Pasteur was reduced to complete helplessness through having slipped and
fallen on the stone floor of his uncomfortable house, and was obliged to
dictate the following letter--
“My dear master,--I thank you for thinking of the poor invalid. I am
very much in the same condition as when I left Paris, my progress
having been retarded by a fall on my left side. Fortunately, I sustained
no fracture, but only bruises, which were naturally painful and very
slow to disappear.
“There are now no remaining traces of that accident, and I am as I was
three weeks ago. The improvement in the movements of the leg and arm
appears to have begun again, but with excessive slowness. I am about to
have recourse to electricity, under the advice and instructions of Dr.
Godélier, by means of a small Ruhmkorff apparatus which he has kindly
sent me. My brain is still very weak.
“This is how my days are spent: in the morning my three young friends
come to see me, and I arrange the day’s work. I get up at twelve, after
having my breakfast in bed, and having had the newspaper read to me. If
fine, I then spend an hour or two in the little garden of this house.
Usually, if I am feeling pretty well, I dictate to my dear wife a page,
or more frequently half a page, of a little book I am preparing, and in
which I intend to give a short account of the whole of my observations.
Before dinner, which I have alone with my wife and my little girl in
order to avoid the fatigue of conversation, my young collaborators bring
me a report of their work. About seven or half past, I always feel
terribly tired and inclined to sleep twelve consecutive hours; but I
invariably wake at midnight, not to sleep again until towards morning,
when I doze again for an hour or two. What makes me hope for an ultimate
cure is the fact that my appetite keeps good, and that those short hours
of sleep appear to be sufficient. You see that on the whole I am doing
nothing rash, being moreover rigorously watched by my wife and little
daughter. The latter pitilessly takes books, pens, papers and pencils
away from me with a perseverance which causes me joy and despair.
“It is because I know your affection for your pupils that I venture to
give you so many details. I will now answer the other questions in your
letter.
“I shall be at Alais from April 1; that will be the time when they will
begin hatching seed for the industrial campaign, which will consequently
be concluded about May 20 at the latest. Seeding will take place during
June, more or less early according to departments. It is indeed very
late to obtain seed, especially indigenous seed prepared according to my
process. I had foreseen that I should receive demands at the last
moment, and that I should do well to put by a few ounces; but, about
three weeks ago, our energetic Minister wrote to ask me for some seed to
distribute to schoolmasters, and I promised him what I had. However I
will take some from his share and send you several lots of five grammes.
The director of a most interesting Austrian establishment has also
ordered two ounces, saying he is convinced of the excellence of my
method. His establishment is a most interesting experimental
_magnanerie_, founded in a handsome Illyrian property. Lastly, I have
also promised two ounces to M. le Comte de Casabianca. One of my young
men is going out to his place in Corsica to do the seeding.
“I was much touched by what you tell me of Marshal Vaillant’s kind
interest in my health, and also by his kind thought in informing me of
the encouragement given to my studies by the Society of Agriculture. I
wish the cultivators of your South had a little of his scientific and
methodical spirit.
“Madame Pasteur joins with me in sending you and your family, dear
master, the expression of my gratitude and affectionate devotion.”
The normal season for the culture of silkworms was now aproaching, and
Pasteur was impatient to accumulate the proofs which would vouch for the
safety of his method; this had been somewhat doubted by the members of
the Lyons Silks Commission, who possessed an experimental nursery. Most
of those gentlemen averred that too much confidence should not be placed
in the micrographs. “Our Commission,” thus ran their report of the
preceding year, “considers the examination of corpuscles as a useful
indication which should be consulted, but of which the results cannot be
presented as a fact from which absolute consequences can be deducted.”
“They _are_ absolute,” answered Pasteur, who did not admit reservations
on a point which he considered as invulnerable.
On March 22, 1869, the Commission asked Pasteur for a little guaranteed
healthy seed. Pasteur not only sent them this, but also sample lots, of
which he thus predicted the future fate:--
1. One lot of healthy seed, which would succeed;
2. One lot of seed, which would perish exclusively from the corpuscle
disease known as pébrine or gattine; 3. One lot of seed, which would
perish exclusively from the flachery disease;
4. One lot of seeds, which would perish partly from corpuscle disease
and partly from flachery.
“It seems to me,” added Pasteur, “that the comparison between the
results of those different lots will do more to enlighten the Commission
on the certainty of the principles I have established than could a mere
sample of healthy seed.
“I desire that this letter should be sent to the Commission at its next
meeting, and put down in the minutes.”
The Commission accepted with pleasure these unexpected surprise boxes.
About the same time one of his assistants, Maillot, started for Corsica
at M. de Casabianca’s request. He took with him six lots of healthy seed
to Vescovato, a few miles from Bastia.
The rest of the colony returned to the Pont Gisquet, near Alais, that
mulberry-planted retreat, where, according to Pasteur, everything was
conducive to work. Pasteur now looked forward to his definitive victory,
and, full of confidence, organized his pupils’ missions. M. Duclaux, who
was coming to the Pont Gisquet to watch the normal broods, would
afterwards go into the Cévennes to verify the seedings made on the
selection system. M. Gernez was to note the results of some seedings
made by Pasteur himself the preceding year at M. Raibaud-Lange’s, at
Paillerols, near Digne (Basses Alpes). Raulin alone would remain at the
Pont Gisquet to study some points of detail concerning the flachery
disease. So many results ought surely to reduce contradictors to
silence!
“My dear friend and colleague,” wrote Dumas to Pasteur, “I need not tell
you with what anxiety we are watching the progress of your precious
health and of your silkworm campaign. I shall certainly be at Alais at
the end of the week, and I shall see, under your kind direction, all
that may furnish me with the means of guiding public opinion. You have
quacks to fight and envy to conquer, probably a hopeless task; the best
is to march right through them, Truth leading the way. It is not likely
that they will be converted or reduced to silence.”
Whilst these expeditions were being planned, a letter from M. Gressier,
the Minister of Agriculture, arrived very inopportunely. M. Gressier was
better versed in _sub rosâ_ ministerial combinations than in seeding
processes, and he asked Pasteur to examine three lots of seeds sent to
him by a Mademoiselle Amat, of Brives-la-Gaillarde, who was celebrated
in the department of the Corrèze for her good management of silkworms.
This _magnanarelle_, having had some successful results, was begging his
Excellency to accord to those humble seeds his particular consideration,
and to have them developed with every possible care.
At the same time she was sending samples of the same seeds to various
places in the Gard, the Bouches du Rhône, etc., etc.
M. Gressier (April 20) asked Pasteur to examine them and to give him a
detailed report. Pasteur answered four days afterwards in terms which
were certainly not softened by the usual administrative precautions--
“Monsieur le Ministre, ... these three sorts of seed are worthless. If
they are developed, even in very small nurseries, they will in every
instance succumb to corpuscle disease. If my seeding process had been
employed, it would not have required ten minutes to discover that
Mademoiselle Amat’s cocoons, though excellent for spinning purposes,
were absolutely unfit for reproduction. My seeding process gives the
means of recognizing those broods which are suitable for seed, whilst
opposing the production of the infected eggs which year by year flood
the silkworm cultivating departments.
“I shall be much obliged, Monsieur le Ministre, if you will kindly
inform the Prefect of the Corrèze of the forecasts which I now impart to
you, and if you will ask _him_ to report to you the results of
Mademoiselle Amat’s three lots.
“For my part, I feel so sure of what I now affirm, that I shall not even
trouble to test, by hatching them, the samples which you have sent me. I
have thrown them into the river....”
J. B. Dumas had come to Alais, Messrs. Gernez and Duclaux now returned
from their expeditions. In two hundred broods, each of one or two ounces
of seed, coming from three different sources and hatched in various
localities, not one failure was recorded. The Lyons Commission, which
had made a note of Pasteur’s bold prognosis, found it absolutely
correct; the excellence of the method was acknowledged by all who had
conscientiously tried it. Now that the scourge was really conquered,
Pasteur imagined that all he had to do was to set up a table of the
results sent to him. But, from the south of France and from Corsica,
jealousies were beginning their work of undermining; pseudo-scientists
in their vanity proclaimed that everything was illusory that was outside
their own affirmations, and the seed merchants, willing to ruin
everybody rather than jeopardize their miserable interests, “did not
hesitate (we are quoting M. Gernez) to perpetrate the most odious
falsehoods.”
Instead of being annoyed, saddened, often indignant as he was, Pasteur
would have done more wisely to look back upon the history of most great
discoveries and of the initial difficulties which beset them. But he
could not look upon such things philosophically; stupidity astonished
him and he could not easily bring himself to believe in bad faith. His
friends in Alais society, M. de Lachadenède, M. Despeyroux, professor of
chemistry, might have reminded him, in their evening conversations, of
the difficulties ever encountered in the service of mankind. The
prejudice against potatoes, for instance, had lasted three hundred
years. When they were brought over from Peru in the fifteenth century,
it was asserted that they caused leprosy; in the seventeenth century,
that accusation was recognized to be absurd, but it was said that they
caused fever. One century later, in 1771, the Besançon Academy of
Medicine having opened a competition for the answer to the following
question of general interest: “What plants can be used to supplement
other foods in times of famine?” a military apothecary, named
Parmentier, competed and proved victoriously that the potato was quite
harmless. After that, he began a propagandist campaign in favour of
potatoes. But prejudice still subsisted in spite of his experimental
fields and of the dinners in the menu of which potatoes held a large
place. Louis XVI had then an inspiration worthy of Henry IV; he appeared
in public, wearing in his buttonhole Parmentier’s little mauve flower,
and thus glorified it in the eyes of the Court and of the crowd.
But such comparisons had no weight with Pasteur; he was henceforth sure
of his method and longed to see it adopted, unable to understand why
there should be further discussions now that the silkworm industry was
saved and the bread of so many poor families assured. He was learning to
know all the bitterness of sterile polemics, and the obstacles placed
one by one in the way of those who attempt to give humanity anything new
and useful. Fortunately he had what so many men of research have lacked,
the active and zealous collaboration of pupils imbued with his
principles, and the rarer and priceless blessing of a home life mingling
with his laboratory life. His wife and his daughter, a mere child,
shared his sericiculture labours; they had become _magnanarelles_ equal
to the most capable in Alais. Another privilege was the advocacy of some
champions quite unknown to him. Those who loved science and who
understood that it would now become, thanks to Pasteur, an important
factor in agricultural and sericicultural matters hailed his
achievements with joy. For instance, a letter was published on July 8,
1869, in the _Journal of Practical Agriculture_ by a cultivator who had
obtained excellent results by applying Pasteur’s method; the letter
concluded as follows: “We should be obliged, if, through the columns of
your paper, you would express to M. Pasteur our feelings of gratitude
for his laborious and valuable researches. We firmly hope that he will
one day reap the fruit of his arduous labours, and be amply compensated
for the passionate attacks of which he is now the object.”
“Monsieur Pasteur,” once said the Mayor of Alais, Dr. Pagès, “if what
you are showing me becomes verified in current practice, nothing can
repay you for your work, but the town of Alais will raise a golden
statue to you.”
Marshal Vaillant began to take more and more interest in this question,
which was not darkened, in his eyes at least, by the dust of polemics.
The old soldier, always scrupulously punctual at the meetings of the
Institute and of the Imperial and Central Society of Agriculture, had
amused himself by organizing a little silkworm nursery on the Pasteur
system, in his own study, in the very centre of Paris. These
experiments, in the Imperial palace might have reminded an erudite
reader of Olivier de Serres’ _Théâtre d’Agriculture_ of the time when
the said Olivier de Serres planted mulberry trees in the Tuileries
gardens at Henry IV’s request, and when, according to the old
agricultural writer, a house was arranged at the end of the gardens
“accommodated with all things necessary as well for the feeding of the
worms as for the preparation of silk.”
The Marshal, though calling himself the most modest of sericicultors,
had been able to appreciate the safety of a method which produced the
same results in Paris as at the Pont Gisquet; the octogenarian veteran
dwelt with complacency on the splendid condition of his silkworms in all
their phases from the minute worm hatched from the seed-like egg to the
splendid cocoon of white or yellow silk.
It occurred to Vaillant to suggest a decisive experiment in favour of
Pasteur and of the silkworm industry. The Prince Imperial owned in
Illyria, about six leagues from Trieste, a property called Villa
Vicentina. One of Napoleon’s sisters, Elisa Bonaparte, had lived
peacefully there after the fall of the first Empire, and had left it to
her daughter, Princess Baciocchi, who bequeathed it to the Prince
Imperial, with the rest of her fortune. Vines and mulberry trees grew
plentifully on that vast domain, but the produce of cocoons was nil,
pébrine and flachery having devastated the place. Marshal Vaillant,
Minister of the Emperor’s Household, desired to render the princely
property once again productive and, at the same time, to give his
colleague of the Institute an opportunity of “definitely silencing the
opposition created by ignorance and jealousy.” In a letter dated October
9, he requested Pasteur to send out 900 ounces of seed to Villa
Vicentina, a large quantity, for one ounce produced, on an average,
thirty kilogrammes of cocoons. Six days later the Marshal wrote to M.
Tisserand, the director of the Crown agricultural establishments, who
knew Villa Vicentina: “I have suggested to the Emperor that M. Pasteur
should be offered a lodging at Villa Vicentina; the Emperor acquiesces
in the most gracious manner. Tell me whether that is possible.”
M. Tisserand, heartily applauding the Marshal’s excellent idea,
described the domain and the dwelling house, Villa Elisa, a white
Italian two-storied house, situated amongst lawns and trees in a park of
sixty hectares. “It would indeed be well,” continued M. Tisserand, “that
M. Pasteur should find peace, rest, and a return of the health he has so
valiantly compromised in his devotion to his country, in the midst of
the lands which will be the first to profit by the fruit of his splendid
discoveries and where his name will be blessed before long.”
Pasteur started three weeks later with his family; the long journey had
to be taken in short stages, the state of his health still being very
precarious. He stopped at Alais on the way, in order to fetch the
selected seed, and on November 25, at 9 p.m., he reached Villa
Vicentina. The fifty tenants of the domain did not suspect that the new
arrival would bring back with him the prosperity of former years.
Raulin, the “temporizer,” joined his master a few weeks later.
This was a period not of rest, but of a great calm, with regular work
under a pure sky. Whilst waiting for hatching time, Pasteur continued to
dictate to his wife the book he had mentioned to J. B. Dumas in a letter
from St. Hippolyte le Fort. But the projected little book was changing
its shape and growing into a two-volume work full of facts and
documents. It was ready to publish by April, 1870.
When the moment for hatching the seed had arrived, Pasteur distributed
twenty-five ounces among the tenants and kept twenty-five ounces for
himself. An incident disturbed these days of work: a steward, who had by
him an old box of Japanese seed, sold this suspicious seed with the
rest. The idea that confiding peasants had thus been swindled sent
Pasteur beside himself; in his violent anger he sent for this steward,
overwhelmed him with reproaches and forbade him ever to show his face
before him again.
“The Marshal,” wrote Dumas to Pasteur, “has told me of the swindles you
have come across and which have upset you so much. Do not worry
unreasonably; if I were you I would merely insert a line in a local
paper: ‘M. Pasteur is only answerable for the seeds he himself sells to
cultivators.’” Those cultivators soon were duly edified. The results of
the seeding process were represented by a harvest of cocoons which
brought in, after all expenses were paid, a profit of 22,000 francs, the
first profit earned by the property for ten years. This was indeed an
Imperial present from Pasteur; the Emperor was amazed and delighted.
The Government then desired to do for Pasteur what had been done for
Dumas and Claude Bernard, that is, give him a seat in the Senate. His
most decided partisan was the competitor that several political
personages suggested against him: Henri Sainte Claire Deville. Deville
wrote to Mme. Pasteur in June: “You must know that if Pasteur becomes a
Senator, and Pasteur alone, you understand--for they cannot elect two
chemists at once!--it will be a triumph for your friend--a triumph and
an unmixed pleasure.”
The projected decree was one of eighteen then in preparation. The final
list--the last under the Empire--where Emile Augier was to represent
French literature was postponed from day to day.
Pasteur left Villa Vicentina on July 6, taking with him the gratitude of
the people whose good genius he had been for nearly eight months. In
northern Italy, as well as in Austria, his process of cellular seeding
was now applied with success.
Before returning to France he went to Vienna and then to Munich: he
desired to talk with the German chemist, Liebig, the most determined of
his adversaries. He thought it impossible that Liebig’s ideas on
fermentation should not have been shaken and altered in the last
thirteen years. Liebig could not still be affirming that the presence of
decomposing animal or vegetable matter should be necessary to
fermentation! That theory had been destroyed by a simple and decisive
experiment of Pasteur’s: he had sown a trace of yeast in water
containing but sugar and mineral crystallized salts, and had seen this
yeast multiply itself and produce a regular alcoholic fermentation.
Since all nitrogenized organic matter (constituting the ferment,
according to Liebig) was absent, Pasteur considered that he thus proved
the life of the ferment and the absence of any action from albuminoid
matter in a stage of decomposition. The death phenomenon now appeared as
a life phenomenon. How could Liebig deny the independent existence of
ferments in their infinite littleness and their power of destroying and
transforming everything? What did he think of all these new ideas? would
he still write, as in 1845: “As to the opinion which explains
putrefaction of animal substances by the presence of microscopic
animalculæ, it may be compared to that of a child who would explain the
rapidity of the Rhine current by attributing it to the violent movement
of the numerous mill wheels of Mayence?”
Since that ingeniously fallacious paragraph, many results had come to
light. Perhaps Liebig, who in 1851 hailed J. B. Dumas as a master, had
now come to Dumas’ point of view respecting the fruitfulness of the
Pastorian theory. That theory was extended to diseases; the infinitely
small appeared as disorganizers of living tissues. The part played by
the corpuscles in the contagious and hereditary pébrine led to many
reflections on the contagious and hereditary element of human diseases.
Even the long-postponed transmission of certain diseases was becoming
clearer now that, within the vibrio of flachery, other corpuscles were
found, germs of the flachery disease, ready to break out from one year
to another.
To convince Liebig, to bring him to acknowledge the triumph of those
ideas with the pleasure of a true _savant_, such was Pasteur’s desire
when he entered Liebig’s laboratory. The tall old man, in a long frock
coat, received him with kindly courtesy; but when Pasteur, who was eager
to come to the object of his visit, tried to approach the delicate
subject, Liebig, without losing his amenity, refused all discussion,
alleging indisposition. Pasteur did not insist, but promised himself
that he would return to the charge.