6 PASTEUR AND AFTER PASTEUR 



made the little house at Arbois mighty proud of 

 him. " Tell Chappuis," his father writes to him, in 

 December, 1834, " that I have bottled some of the 

 1834, bought on purpose to drink to the honour of 

 the Ecole Normale, and that for your first vacation. 

 There is more spirit at the bottom of these hundred 

 litres than in all the philosophy-books in the world : 

 but as for mathematical formulae faith, there are 

 none," Arbois runs its thread all through the fabric 

 of Pasteur's life. His mother died in 1848 : his 

 father, in 1865. Pasteur, writing from Arbois, in 

 1865, to his wife, says 



" . . . All day long, I have been remembering all 

 the signs of my poor father's love. For thirty years, 

 I was his constant, almost his only, thought and 

 care. I owe everything to him. When I was 

 young, he kept me out of bad company, and gave 

 me the habit of work, and the example of a life 

 absolutely loyal and incessantly occupied. This 

 man, by nobility of spirit and of character, was high 

 above his station, if you judge a man's station as 

 the world judges such things. He was quite clear 

 about that : he knew well that it is the man who 

 makes the station, not the station which makes the 

 man. You did not know him, dear Marie, at the time 

 when my mother and he were working so hard for 

 their dear children, whom they loved so much- 

 especially for me, because my books, and the 

 months at the College, and keeping me at 

 Besancon, were a heavy expense. 1 see him 

 still, my poor father, in such leisure as hard work 



