1860—1864 103 



endeavoured to revive their advice, and it seemed to me that 

 they would not have disowned me." 



M. Duclaux said about this meeting: "Pasteur has since 

 then won many oratorical victories. I do not know of a greater 

 one than that deserved by that acute and penetrating improvisa- 

 tion. He was still much heated as we were walking back to 

 the Hue d'Ulm, and I remember making him laugh by asking 

 him why, in the state of mind he was in, he had not concluded 

 by hurling his wooden crystals at his adversaries' heads." 



On December 8, 1862, Pasteur was elected a member of the 

 Academie des Sciences ; out of sixty voters he received thirty- 

 six suffrages. 



The next morning, when the gates of the Montparnasse 

 cemetery were opened, a woman walked towards Biot's grave 

 with her hands full of flowers. It was Mme. Pasteur who was 

 bringing them to him who lay there since February 5, 1862, 

 and who had loved Pasteur with so deep an affection. 



A letter picked up at a sale of autographs, one of the last 

 Biot wrote, gives a finishing touch to his moral portrait. It 

 is addressed to an unknown person discouraged with this life. 

 " Sir, — The confidence you honour me with touches me. But 

 I am not a physician of souls. However, in my opinion, you 

 could not do better than seek remedies to your moral suffering 

 in work, religion, and charity. A useful work taken up with 

 energy and persevered in will revive by occupation the forces 

 of your mind. Religious feelings will console you by inspiring 

 you with patience. Charity manifested to others will soften 

 your sorrows and teach you that you are not alone to suffer in 

 this life./ Look around you, and you will see afflicted ones more 

 to be pitied than yourself. Try to ease their sufferings ; the 

 good you will do to them will fall back upon yourself and will 

 6how you that a life which can thus be employed is not a burden 

 which cannot, which must not be borne." 



On his entering the Academie des Sciences, Balard and 

 Dumas advised Pasteur to let alone his wooden crystals and to 

 continue his studies on ferments. He undertook to demon- 

 strate that " the hypothesis of a phenomenon of mere contact 

 is not more admissible than the opinion which placed the fer- 

 ment character exclusively in dead albuminoid matter. Whilst 

 continuing his researches on beings which could live without 

 air, he tried, al^e went along, a propos of spontaneous genera- 

 tion, to fin<3 some weak point in his work. Until now the 



