EARLY YEARS OF PASTEUR'S LIFE 7 



with his hands left him, incessantly educating 

 himself ; at other times, drawing, or wood-carving. 

 It was not long ago that he was showing me a 

 drawing of mine, in which he had put a cross : it 

 was the only good thing in the drawing. He had 

 a passion for knowledge and study. I have seen 

 him studying grammars, pen in hand, comparing 

 them, taking notes from them, just to gain, at 

 forty or fifty years old, the learning which had been 

 denied him by the ill-fortune of his early years." 



That is the story of Arbois. But his parents 

 did not look beyond the hope that he might obtain 

 a professorship at Arbois College. Heaven had 

 other designs on him. First, it gave him a 

 thorough grounding in mathematics and physics. 

 Then, for many years, it kept him under the 

 discipline of chemistry. Then, for twenty years 

 more, he was occupied over ferments, the diseases 

 of wines, and the diseases of silkworms. He was 

 fifty years old, when he advanced to the protective 

 treatment of sheep, cattle, poultry, and swine, 

 against disease : he was sixty-three, when he first 

 used on man his protective treatment against 

 rabies. *To change the whole outlook of medicine 

 and surgery, Heaven took and trained a "pure 

 scientist," who had never done an operation nor 

 written a prescription ; a man who had to screw 

 up his courage even to look at some of the ordinary 

 sights of a hospital ; took this non-medical man of 



