280 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



master had left any notes relative to the work which embodied 

 his last thoughts. M. d'Arsonval, after a few days' search, 

 discovered some notes, carefully hidden in a cabinet in Claude 

 Bernard's bedroom ; they were all dated from the 1st to the 

 20th of October, 1877 ; of November and December there was 

 no record. Had he then not continued his experiments during 

 that period? Paul Bert thought that these notes did not 

 represent a work, not even a sketch, but a sort of programme. 

 " It was all condensed into a series of masterly conclusions," 

 said Paul Bert, " which evidenced certitude, but there were no 

 means of discussing through which channel that certitude had 

 come to his prudent and powerful mind." What should be 

 done with those notes? Claude Bernard's three followers 

 decided to publish them. "We must," said Paul Bert, " while 

 telling the conditions under which the manuscript was found, 

 give it its character of incomplete notes, of confidences made to 

 itself by a great mind seeking its way, and marking its road 

 indiscriminately with facts and with hypotheses in order to 

 arrive at that feeling of certainty which, in the mind of a man 

 of genius, often precedes proof." M. Berthelot, to whom the 

 manuscript was brought, presented these notes to the readers 

 of the Revue Scientifique. He pointed to their character, too 

 abbreviated to conclude with a rigorous demonstration, but he 

 explained that several friends and pupils of Claude Bernard 

 had ' ' thought that there would be some interest for Science in 

 preserving the trace of the last subjects of thought, however 

 incomplete, of that great mind." 



Pasteur, after the experiment at the Academic de Medecine, 

 hurried back to his laboratory and read with avidity those last 

 notes of Claude Bernard. Were they a precious find, explain- 

 ing the secrets Claude Bernard had hinted at? "Should I," 

 said Pasteur, " have to defend my work, this time against that 

 colleague and friend for whom I professed deep admiration, or 

 should I come across unexpected revelations, weakening and 

 discrediting the results I thought I had definitely established? " 



His reading reassured him on that point, but saddened him 

 on the other hand. Since Claude Bernard had neither desired 

 nor even authorized the publication of those notes, why, said 

 Pasteur, were they not accompanied by an experimental com- 

 mentary? Thus Claude Bernard would have been credited 

 with what was good in his MSS., and he would not have been 

 held responsible for what was incomplete or defective. 



