418 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



politics frighten me and I have already refused a candidature 

 in the Jura and a seat in the Senate in the course of tbis year. 



"I might be tempted perhaps, if I no longer felt active 

 enough for my laboratory work. But I still feel equal to 

 further researches, and on my return to Paris, I shall be 

 organizing a ' service ' against rabies which will absorb all my 

 energies. I now possess a very perfect method of prophylaxis 

 against that terrible disease, a method equally adapted to 

 human beings and to dogs, and by which your much afflicted 

 Department will be one of the first to benefit. 



" Before my departure for Jura I dared to treat a poor 

 little nine-year-old lad whose mother brought him to me from 

 Alsace, where he had been attacked on the 4th ult., and 

 bitten on the thighs, legs, and hand in such a manner 

 that hydrophobia would have been inevitable. He remains 

 in perfect health./' 



Whilst many political speeches were being prepared, Pasteur 

 was thinking over a literary speech. He had been requested by 

 the Academie Francaise to welcome Joseph Bertrand, elected 

 in place of J. B. Dumas the eulogium of a scientist, spoken 

 by one scientist, himself welcomed by another scientist. This 

 was an unusual programme for the Academie Fran9aise, perhaps 

 too unusual in the eyes of Pasteur, who did not think himself 

 worthy of speaking in the name of the Academie. Such was 

 his modesty ; he forgot that amongst the savants who had been 

 members of the Academie, several, such as Fontenelle, Cuvier, 

 J. B. Dumas, etc. , had published immortal pages, and that some 

 extracts from his own works would one day become classical. 



The vacation gave him time to read over the writings of 

 his beloved teacher, and also to study the life and works of 

 Joseph Bertrand, already his colleague at the Academie des 

 Sciences. 



Bertrand 's election had been simple and easy, like everything 

 he had undertaken since his birth. It seemed as if a good fairy 

 had leant over his cradle and whispered to him, "Thou shalt 

 know many things, without having had to learn them." It is 

 a fact that he could read without having held a book in his 

 hands. He was ill and in bed whilst his brother Alexander 

 was being taught to read ; he listened to the lessons and kept the 

 various combinations of letters in his mind. When he became 

 convalescent, his parents brought him a book of Natural His- 

 tory so that he might look at the pictures. He took the volume 



