1860—1864 113 



His eagerness during a conflict was only equalled by his 

 absolute forgetfulness after the conflict was over. He 

 answered some one who, years later, reminded him of that 

 past so full of attacks and praises. " A man of science should 

 think of what will be said of him in the following century, not 

 of the insults or the compliments of one day." 



Pasteur, anxious to regain lost time, hurried to return to his 

 studies on wine. " Might not the diseases of wines," he said 

 at the Academie des Sciences in January, 1864, "be caused 

 by organized ferments, microscopic vegetations, of which the 

 germs would develop when certain circumstances of tempera- 

 ture, of atmospheric variations, of exposure to air, would 

 favour their evolution or their introduction into wines? . . . 

 I have indeed reached this result that the alterations of wines 

 are co-existent with the presence and multiplication of micro- 

 scopic vegetations." Acid wines, bitter wines, " ropy " wines, 

 sour wines, he had studied them all with a microscope, his 

 surest guide in recognizing the existence and form of the evil. 



As he had more particularly endeavoured to remedy the cause 

 of the acidity which often ruins the Jura red or white wines 

 in the wood, the town of Arbois, proud of its celebrated rosy 

 and tawny wines, placed an impromptu laboratory at his 

 disposal during the holidays of 1864 ; the expenses were all to 

 be covered by the town. " This spontaneous offer from a town 

 dear to me for so many reasons," answered Pasteur to the 

 Mayor and Town Council, "does too much honour to my 

 modest labours, and the way in which it is made covers me with 

 confusion." He refused it however, fearing that the services 

 he might render should not be proportionate to the generosity 

 of the Council. He preferred to camp out with his curators 

 in an old coffee room at the entrance of the town, and they 

 contented themselves with apparatus of the most primitive 

 description, generally made by some local tinker or shoeing 

 smith. 



The problem consisted, in Pasteur's view, in opposing the 

 development of organized ferments or parasitic vegetations, 

 causes of the diseases of wines. After some fruitless endea- 

 vours to destroy all vitality in the germs of these parasites, 

 he found that it was sufficient to keep the wine for a few 

 moments at a temperature of 50° C. to 60° C. "I have also 

 ascertained that wine was never altered by that preliminary 

 operation, and a3 nothing prevents it afterwards from under- 



i 



