134. THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



made at your own request, according to your custom of keep- 

 ing 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 grati- 

 tude. '* 



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 recol- 

 lections 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 be- 

 came in 1854 a candidate for the Academic 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 \iad begun by meditating deeply on the 



