286 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



experiments with the same results.'* He went on to another 

 experiment. He cut some of the swathed bunches and hung 

 them to the vines grown in the open air, thinking that those 

 bunches — exactly similar to those which he had found in- 

 capable of fermentation — ^would thus get covered with the 

 germs of alcoholic ferments, as did the bunches grown in the 

 open air and their wood. After that, the bunches taken from 

 under the glass and submitted to the usual regime would fer- 

 ment under the influence of the germs which they would receive 

 as well as the others; this was exactly what happened. 



The difficulty now was to bring to the Academic des Sciences 

 these branches bearing swathed bunches of grapes; in order 

 to avoid the least contact to the grapes, these vine plants, as 

 precious as the rarest orchids, had to be held upright all the 

 way from Arbois to Paris. Pasteur came back to Paris in a 

 coupe carriage on the express train, accompanied by his wife 

 and daughter, who took it in turns to carry the vines. At 

 last, they arrived safely at the Ecole Normale, and from the 

 Ecole Normale to the Institute, and Pasteur had the pleasure 

 of bringing his grapes to his colleagues as he had brought his 

 hens. ''If you crush them while in contact with pure air,*' 

 he said, ''I defy you to see them ferment." A long discussion 

 then ensued with M. Berthelot, which was prolonged until 

 February, 1879. 



*'It is a characteristic of exalted minds," wrote M. Roux, 

 "to put passion into ideas. . . . For Pasteur, the alcoholic 

 fermentation was correlative with the life of the ferment ; 

 for Bernard and M. Berthelot, it was a chemical action like 

 any other, and could be accomplished without the participatioE 

 of living cells." ''In alcoholic fermentation," said M. 

 Berthelot, "a soluble alcoholic ferment may be produced 

 which perhaps consumes itself as its production goes on." 



M. Roux had seen Pasteur try to "extract the soluble alcO' 

 hclic ferment from yeast cells by crushing them in a mortar. 

 by freezing them until they burst, or by putting them into 

 concentrated saline solutions, in order to force by osmose the 

 succus to leave its envelope." Pasteur confessed that his 

 efforts were vain. In a communication to the Academic des 

 Sciences on December 30, 1878, he said — 



"It ever is an enigma to me that it should be believed that 

 the discovery of soluble ferments in fermentations properly so 

 f^sWed. or of the formation of alcohol by means of sugar, inde* 



