DISCUSSION WITH POUCHET 107 



value of an experimental proof. Fortunately, on his 

 side Pasteur had Balard and Dumas, those confreres 

 whom he still called his masters, although he had already 

 gained the leadership himself. 



Balard loved science. He had made very good early 

 progress in it, and his discovery of bromine, made in 

 his pharmacy laboratory at Montpellier, had placed him 

 above his peers. It sufficed to see him in a laboratory 

 managing a piece of apparatus, or making a reaction, 

 to know that he was a chemist to his finger-tips. But 

 he had a certain natural indolence, and he was thence- 

 forth satisfied with his share of glory. To the scientific 

 work which he would have been able to carry on, he 

 preferred that which he found done in the laboratories 

 he frequented. Although each day having the intention 

 of returning to his own laboratory, the next day early 

 he yielded to the desire to see what was going on in the 

 laboratories of his friends. There he wished to see 

 everything, to know all the details, and we told him 

 everything, first, because he had an open mind and a 

 generous soul, then, because it would have been difficult 

 to conceal anything from him : he put into his interro- 

 gations at the same time so much shrewdness and 

 simplicity ! He admired with all his heart when any one 

 showed him a very nice demonstration! And then, one 

 was sometimes recompensed for this confidence: he 

 would suggest an idea to you, and reveal to you a method. 

 It was he who conceived, by means of the swan's-neck 

 flasks mentioned in the preceding chapter, the experi- 

 ment designed to show both that there are germs ar- 

 rested in the neck, and, by introducing into the neck a 

 drop from the interior, that the liquid has not lost its 

 genetic power. We see the drop become clouded and 

 populated, while the liquid in the flask remains unaltered. 

 All these experiments on spontaneous generation trans- 



