100 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



Biot, without knowing all the consequences of these studies, 

 had not been long in perceiving that he had been far too 

 sceptical, and that physiological discoveries of the very first 

 rank would be the outcome of researches on so-called spcm- 

 taneous generation. He would have wished, before he died, not 

 only that Pasteur should be the unanimously selected candidate 

 for the 1861 Zecker prize in the Chemistry Section, but also 

 that his friend, forty-eight years younger than himself, should 

 be a member of the Institute. At the beginning of 1861, there 

 was one vacancy in the Botanical Section. Biot took advan- 

 tage of the researches pursued by Pasteur within the last three 

 years, to say and to print that he should be nominated as a 

 candidate. *^I can hear the commonplace objection: he is a 

 chemist, a physicist, not a professional botanist. . . . But that 

 very versatility, ever active and ever successful, should be a 

 title in his favour. . . . Let us judge of men by their works 

 and not by the destination more or less wide or narrow that they 

 have marked out for themselves. Pasteur made his debut 

 before the Academic in 1848, with the remarkable treatise 

 which contained by implication the resolution of the paratartaric 

 acid into its two components, right and left. He was then 

 twenty-six; the sensation produced is not forgotten. Since 

 then, during the twelve years which followed, he has submitted 

 to your appreciation twenty-one papers, the last ten relating 

 to vegetable physiology. All are full of new facts, often very 

 unexpected, several very far reaching, not one of which has 

 been found inaccurate by competent judges. If to-day, by 

 your suffrage, you introduce M. Pasteur into the Botanical 

 Section, as you might safely have done for Theodore de 

 Saussure or Ingenhousz, you will have acquired for the Acade- 

 mic and for that particular section an experimentalist of the 

 same order as those two great men." 



Balard, who in this academic campaign made common cause 

 with Biot, was also making efforts to persuade several mem- 

 bers of the Botanical Section. He was walking one day in the 

 Luxembourg with Moquin-Tandon, pouring out, in his rasping 

 voice, arguments in favour of Pasteur. ''Well," said Moquin- 

 Tandon, ''let us go to Pasteur's, and if you find a botanical 

 work in his library I shall put him on the list. ' ' It was a witty- 

 form given to the scruples of the botanists. Pasteur only had 

 ^entv-four votes: Duchartre was elected. 



The study of a microscopic fungus, capable by itself of 



