1844—1849 48 



had called the attention of chemists to these phenomena, but 

 his call had been unheeded. Continuing his solitary labour, he 

 had — in experimenting on cases both simple and complex — 

 studied this molecular rotatory power, without suspecting that 

 this power bore a definite relation to the hemihedral form of 

 some crystals. And now that the old man was a witness of a 

 triumphant sequel to his own researches, now that he had the 

 joy of seeing a young man with a thoughtful mind and an 

 enthusiastic heart working with him, now that the hope of this 

 daily collaboration shed a last ray on the close of his life, 

 Pasteur's departure for Dijon came as a real blow. "If at 

 least," he said, " they were sending you to a Faculty ! " He 

 turned his wrath on to the Government officials. " They don't 

 seem to realize that such labours stand above everything else ! 

 If they only knew it, two or three such treatises might bring a 

 man straight to the Institut ! ' ' 



Nevertheless Pasteur had to go. M. Pouillet gave him a 

 letter for a former Poly technician, 1 now a civil engineer at 

 Dijon, a M. Parandier, in which he wrote — 



" M. Pasteur is a most distinguished young chemist. He 

 has just completed some very remarkable work, and I hope 

 it will not be long before he is sent to a first-class Faculty. I 

 need add nothing else about him; I know no more honest, 

 industrious, or capable young man. Help him as much as you 

 can at Dijon ; you will not regret it." 



Those first weeks away from his masters and from his beloved 

 pursuits seemed very hard to Pasteur. But he was anxious to 

 prove himself a good teacher. This duty appeared to him to 

 be a noble ideal, and to involve a wide responsibility. He felt 

 none of the self satisfaction which is sometimes a source of 

 strength to some minds conscious of their superiority to others. 

 He did not even do himself the justice of feeling that he was 



1 Polytechnician. A student of the Ecole Polytechnique, a military 

 and engineering school under the jurisdiction of the Minister of War, 

 founded in 1794. Candidates for admission must be older than sixteen 

 and younger than twenty, but the limit of age is raised to twenty-five in 

 the case of private soldiers and non-commissioned officers. They must 

 also have passed their baccalaureat es lettres or es sciences — preferably 

 the latter. After two years' residence (compulsory) students pass a 

 leaving examination, and are entered according to their list number 

 as engineers of the Navy, Mines, or Civil Works, or as officers in the 

 military Engineers or in the Artillery; the two last then have to go 

 through one of the military training schools (Ecoles d'Application). 

 [Trans.] 



