CHAPTER XI 



1882—1884 



Pasteur was in the midst of some new experiments when he 

 heard that the date of the election to the Academie Francaise 

 was fixed for December 8. Certain candidates spent half their 

 time in fiacres, paying the traditional calls, counting the 

 voters, calculating their chances, and taking every polite phrase 

 for a promise. Pasteur, with perfect simplicity, contented 

 himself with saying to the Academicians whom he went to see, 

 *'I had never in my life contemplated the great honour of 

 entering the Academie Frangaise. People have been kind 

 enough to say to me, 'Stand and you will be elected.' It is 

 impossible to resist an invitation so glorious for Science and 

 so flattering to myself." 



One member of the Academie, Alexandre Dumas, refused to 

 Jet Pasteur call on him. '*I will not allow him to come and 

 see me," he said; *'I will myself go and thank him for consent- 

 ing to become one of us." He agreed with M. Grandeau, who 

 wrote to Pasteur that "when Claude Bernard and Pasteur con- 

 sent to enter the ranks of a Society, all the honour is for the 

 latter." 



When Pasteur was elected, his youthfulness of sentiment was 

 made apparent; it seemed to him an immense honour to be 

 one of the Forty. He therefore prepared his reception speech 

 with the greatest care, without however allowing his scientific 

 work to suffer. The life of his predecessor interested him more 

 and more ; to work in the midst of family intimacy had evidently 

 been Littre's ideal of happiness. 



Few people, beyond Littre's colleagues, know that his wife 

 and daughter collaborated in his great work; they looked out 

 the quotations necessary to that Dictionary, of which, if laid 

 end to end, the columns would reach a length of thirty- 

 seven kilometres. The Dictionary, commenced in 1857, when 



