LAST DAYS 233 



Ray Lankester from England, Haskovek and 

 Schottelius from Germany, Metchnikoff from Rus- 

 sia, and distinguished representatives from Bel- 

 gium, Denmark, Holland, Italy, Poland, Greece, 

 Switzerland, and Spain. Masses of students com- 

 posed a large part of the great audience which was 

 stirred by a deep enthusiasm for the man whose 

 life-long labors were being so signally honored. 

 As Pasteur entered, leaning upon the arm of the 

 President of the Republic, the band of the Repub- 

 lican Guard played a triumphal march, and the 

 entire audience rose and greeted him with pro- 

 longed applause. It was, as Kein and Lumet have 

 remarked, "the supreme homage." 



The opening ceremonies over, M. Dupuy, Min- 

 ister of Public Instruction, addressed Pasteur, re- 

 counting his great achievements and concluding in 

 the following words: "Who can say at this hour 

 how much human life owes to you, and what it will 

 owe to you in the years to come? A day will come 

 when some new Lucretius will sing in a new poem 

 of Nature the immortal master whose genius has 

 engendered such great benefits. He will not pic- 

 ture him a solitary and unfeeling man as the Latin 

 poet has portrayed his hero; he will show him 

 mingled with the life of his time, the sadness and 



