350 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



which he looked upon as frivolous. Moreover, he thought his 

 own century amusing, and was willing to amuse it further. 

 If he raised his eyes to Heaven, he said that we owe virtue 

 to the Eternal, but that we have the right to add to it irony. 

 Pasteur thought it strange that irony should be applied to 

 subjects which have beset so many great minds and which so 

 many simple hearts solve in their own way. 



The week which followed Pasteur's reception at the Aca- 

 demie Frangaise brought him a manifestation of applause 

 in the provinces. The town of Aubenas in the Ardeche 

 was erecting a statue to Olivier de Serres, and desired to asso- 

 ciate with the name of the founder of the silk industry in 

 France in the sixteenth century that of its preserver in the 

 nineteenth. 



This was the second time that a French town proclaimed 

 its gratitude towards Pasteur. A few months before, the 

 Melun Agricultural Society had held a special meeting in his 

 honour, and had decided " to strike a medal with Pasteur's 

 effigy on it, in commemoration of one of the greatest services 

 ever rendered by Science to Agriculture." 



But amidst this paean of praise, Pasteur, instead of dwelling 

 complacently on the recollection of his experiments at Pouilly 

 le Fort, was absorbed in one idea, characteristic of the man : 

 he wanted to at once begin some experiments on the peri- 

 pneumonia of horned cattle. The veterinary surgeon, 

 Kossignol, had just been speaking on this subject to the meet- 

 ing. Pasteur, who had recently been asked by the Committee 

 of Epizootic Diseases to inquire into the mortality often caused 

 by the inoculation of the peripneumonia virus, reminded his 

 hearers in a few words of the variable qualities of virus and 

 how the slightest impurity in a virus may exercise an influence 

 on the effects of that virus. 



He and his collaborators had vainly tried to cultivate the 

 virus of peripneumonia in chicken-broth, veal-broth, yeast- 

 water, etc. They had to gather the virus from the lung of a 

 cow which had died of peripneumonia, by means of tubes 

 previously sterilized; it was injected, with every precaution 

 against alteration, under the skin of the tail of the animal, 

 this part being chosen on account of the thickness of the skin 

 and of the cellular tissue. By operating on other parts, 

 serious accidents were apt to occur, the virus being extremely 



