146 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



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 smal 

 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 bril- 

 liant colleague, who was indeed a particularly charming man, 

 still youthful in spite of his forty-nine summers, active, ener- 

 getic, 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 man- 

 ner. 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 ex- 

 penses 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 College de 

 Prance, it was indeed impossible to call by the name of labora- 

 tory the narrow, damp and unhealthy cellars, which Claude 

 Bernard called "scientists' graves," and where he had con- 

 tracted 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, pre* 



