104 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



liquids he had used, however alterable they were, had been 

 brought up to boiling point. Was there not some new and 

 decisive experiment to make? Could he not study organic 

 matter as constituted by life and expose to the contact of air 

 deprived of its germs some fresh liquids, highly putrescible, 

 such as blood and urine? Claude Bernard, joining in these 

 experiments of Pasteur's » himself took some blood from a dog. 

 This blood was sealed up in a glass phial, with every condition 

 of purity, and the phial remained in a stove constantly heated 

 up to 30° C. from March 3 until April 20, 1862, when Pasteur 

 laid it on the Acad^mie table. The blood had suffered no sort 

 of putrefaction ; neither had some urine treated in the same 

 way. " The conclusions to which I have been led by my first 

 series of experiments," said Pasteur before the Acad^mie, " are 

 therefore applicable in all cases to organic substances." 



While studying putrefaction, which is itself but a fermenta- 

 tion applied to animal materia, while showing the marvellous 

 power of the infinitesimally small, he foresaw the immensity 

 of the domain he had conquered, as will be proved by the fol- 

 lowing incident. Some time after the Academie election, in 

 March, 1863, the Emperor, who took an interest in all that 

 took place in the small laboratory of the Rue d'Ulm, desired 

 to speak with Pasteur. J. B. Dumas claimed the privilege of 

 presenting his former pupil, and the interview took place at the 

 Tuileries. Napoleon questioned Pasteur with a gentle, slightly 

 dreamy insistence. Pasteur wrote the next day : "I assured 

 the Emperor that all my ambition was to arrive at the know- 

 ledge of the causes of putrid and contagious diseases." 



In the meanwhile, the chapter on ferments was not yet 

 closed ; Pasteur was attracted by studies on wine. At the 

 beginning of the 1863 holidays, just before starting for Arbois, 

 he drew up this programme with one of his pupils : " From the 

 20th to the 30th (August) preparation in Paris of all the 

 vessels, apparatus, products, that we must take. September 1, 

 departure for the Jura ; installation ; purchase of the products 

 of a vineyard. Immediate beginning of tests of all kinds. We 

 shall have to hurry ; grapes do not keep long." 



Whilst he was preparing this vintage tour, which he in- 

 tended to make with three " Normaliens," Duclaux, Gernez 

 and Lechartier, the three heterogenists, Pouchet, Joly and 

 Musset, proposed to use that same time in fighting Pasteur 

 on his own ground. They started from Bagneres-de-Luchon 



