ORIENTATION TOWARDS PATHOLOGY 147 



having acquired a fragmentary knowledge of the general 

 structure of the larvae of insects by causing to be dissected 

 in his presence a white worm [larva of the May beetle] 

 or a larva of Oryctes nasicornis, after having assisted at 

 some sittings of an Imperial Commission on Silk Culture 

 from which he came away more discouraged than en- 

 lightened, after having skimmed the last published books 

 on the subject, he set out for the South. It was at the 

 beginning of June: the cultures of the silkworms were 

 almost completed. From this fact he might have plead 

 for more time and the putting off of his investigations 

 until the following year, but his master, M. Dumas, had 

 spoken : he was also more eager than he himself suspected 

 to enter into this new world, and he desired to begin the 

 work at once. 



To it he devoted six years, which it will not be unprof- 

 itable to describe in detail, and that for two reasons. 

 The first is that nothing can be more curious than to see 

 Pasteur at close quarters with a bristling, complicated 

 question, beginning by being deceived about it, by seeing 

 things the wrong side to, but led back continuously to 

 the truth by experiment, and ending by unravelling all 

 the obscurities. I do not know a more beautiful example 

 of scientific investigation. The second reason is that it 

 is the first camp on a route wherein he found immor- 

 tality. The other discoveries had given him only glory. 

 Finally, I would like to add, as a third reason, that this 

 period of his life is that of which it is easiest to write 

 the history, both because of the impressions it has left 

 on those who helped him in his labors, and because of 

 the documents he has himself published. 



In this part of his researches he had not the right to 

 keep the Olympian silence with which he loved to sur- 

 round himself until the day in which his work seemed to 

 him ripe for publicity. He said not a word about it, even 



