14i2 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



European politics. They entered the Palais de Tlndustrie 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 prin- 

 cesses, 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, in- 

 terested 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 Gerome and Meissonier, that of 

 Ferdinand de Lesseps, rewarded for the achievement of the 

 Suez Canal, excited great applause. Pasteur was called with- 

 out 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 1 'Industrie, an immense chorus, accompanied 

 by an orchestra, sang Domine salvum fac imperaiorem. 



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 in- 

 troduction into their popular libraries of the works of Voltaire, 

 J. J. Rousseau, Balzac, E. Renan, and others. The com^ 

 mittee had approved this petition in terms which identified the 

 report with the petition itself- Sainte Beuve, too exclusively 



