314. THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



especially when its Pontiff, the learned M. Pasteur, has 

 pronounced the sacramental words, I have spoken. The 

 microbe alone is and shall be the characteristic of a disease; 

 that is understood and settled; henceforth the germ theory 

 must have precedence of pure clinics ; the Microbe alone is true, 

 and Pasteur is its prophet/^ 



At the end of March, M. Rossignol began a campaign, 

 begging for subscriptions, pointing out how much the cultiva- 

 tors of the Brie — whose cattle suffered almost as much as that 

 of the Beauce — ^were interested in the question. The dis- 

 covery, if it were genuine, should not remain confined to the 

 Ecole Normale laboratory, or monopolized by the privileged 

 public of the Academic des Sciences, who had no use for it. 

 M. Rossignol soon collected about 100 subscribers. Did he 

 believe that Pasteur and his little phials would come to a 

 hopeless fiasco in a farmyard before a public of old prac- 

 titioners who had always been powerless in the presence of 

 splenic fever? Microbes were a subject for ceaseless joking; 

 people had hilarious visions of the veterinary profession con- 

 fined some twenty years hence in a model laboratory assiduously 

 cultivating numberless races, sub-races, varieties and sub- 

 varieties of microbes. 



It is probable that, if light comes from above, a good many 

 practitioners would not have been sorry to see a strong wind 

 from below putting out Pasteur *s light. 



M. Rossignol succeeded in interesting every one in this 

 undertaking. When the project was placed before the Melun 

 Agricultural Society on the 2nd April, they hastened to approve 

 of it and to accord their patronage. 



The chairman. Baron de la Rochette, was requested to 

 approach Pasteur and to invite him to organize public experi- 

 ments on the preventive vaccination of charbon in the districts 

 0." Melun, Fontainebleau and Proving. 



**The noise which those experiments will necessarily cause,*' 

 wrote M. Rossignol, ''will strike every mind and convince 

 those who may still be doubting ; the evidence of facts will have 

 the result of ending all uncertainty.^' 



Baron de la Rochette was a typical old French gentleman; 

 his whole person was an ideal of old-time distinction and 

 courtesy. "Well up to date in all agricultural progress, and 

 justly priding himself, with the ease of a great landowner, that 

 he made of agriculture an art and a science, he could speak in 



