378 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



which loses sight of none of her children, and which has kept 

 such a remembrance of me." 



"Nothing is more exquisite," wrote Bouley to Pasteur, 

 " than those feelings of a noble heart, giving credit to the 

 parents' influence for all the glory with which their son has 

 covered their name. All your friends recognized you, and you 

 appeared under quite a new light to those who may have 

 misjudged your heart by knowing of you only the somewhat 

 bitter words of some of your Academy speeches, when the love 

 of truth has sometimes made you forgetful of gentleness." 



It might have seemed that after so much homage, especially 

 when offered in such a delicate way as on this last occasion, 

 Pasteur had indeed reached a pinnacle of fame. His ambition 

 however was not satisfied. Was it then boundless, in spite of 

 the modesty which drew all hearts towards him? What more 

 did he wish? Two great things : to complete his studies on 

 hydrophobia and to establish the position of his collaborators 

 whose name he ever associated with his work as his acknow- 

 ledged successors. 



A few cases of cholera had occurred at Damietta in the month 

 of June. The English declared that it was J)ut endemic 

 cholera, and opposed the quarantines. They had with them 

 the majority of the Alexandria Sanitary Council, and could 

 easily prevent sanitary measures from being taken. If the 

 English, voluntarily closing their eyes to the dangers of the 

 epidemic, had wished to furnish a new proof of the importation 

 of cholera, they could not have succeeded better. The cholera 

 spread, and by July 14 it had reached Cairo. Between the 

 14th and 22nd there were five hundred deaths per day. 



Alexandria was threatened. Pasteur, before leaving Paris 

 for Arbois, submitted to the Consulting Committee of Public 

 Hygiene the idea of a French Scientific Mission to Alex- 

 andria. " Since the last epidemic in 1865," he said, " science 

 has made great progress on the subject of transmissible diseases. 

 Every one of those diseases which has been subjected to a 

 thorough study has been found by biologists to be produced by a 

 microscopic being developing within the body of man or of 

 animals, and causing therein ravages which are generally 

 mortal. All the symptoms of the disease, all the causes of 

 death depend directly upon the physiological properties of the 

 microbe. . . . What is wanted at this moment to satisfy 



