1865—1870 151 



had started, and would give his thought and attention to some 

 detail for hours at a time. After this minute observation he 

 would suddenly display a marvellous ingenuity in varying tests, 

 foreseeing and avoiding causes of error, and at last, after so 

 many efforts, a clear and decisive experiment would come, as it 

 had done in the cases of spontaneous generation and of 

 ferments. 



The contrasts in his mind had their parallel in his character : 

 this usually thoughtful, almost dreamy man, absorbed in one 

 idea, suddenly revealed himself a man of action if provoked by 

 some erroneous newspaper report or some illogical statement, 

 and especially when he heard of some unscrupulous silkworm 

 seed merchant sowing ruin in poor magnaneries for the sake of 

 a paltry gain. When, on his return to Paris, he found himself 

 mixed up with the small revolution in the Ecole Normale, he 

 was seen to efface himself modestly before his masters when 

 honours and titles came in question. Now he had interrupted 

 his researches in order to do a kindness to the people of Orleans, 

 who, practical as they were, and perhaps a Httle disdainful of 

 laboratory theories, had been surprised to find him as careful 

 of the smallest detail as they themselves were. 



He was then in the full maturity of his forty-five years. His 

 great intuition, his imagination, which equalled any poet's, 

 often carried him to a summit whence an immense horizon lay 

 before him; he would then suddenly doubt this imagination, 

 resolutely, with a violent effort, force his mind to start again 

 along the path of experimental method, and, surely and slowly, 

 gathering proofs as he went, he would once more reach his 

 exalted and general ideas. This constant struggle within him- 

 self was almost dramatic; the words " Perseverance in Effort," 

 which he often used in the form of advice to others, or as a 

 programme for his own work, seemed to bring something far 

 away, something infinite before his dreamy eyes. 



At the end of the year, an obstacle almost arrested the great 

 experiments he contemplated. He heard that the promises 

 made to him were vanishing away, the necessary credit having 

 been refused for the building of the new laboratory. And this, 

 Pasteur sadly reflected, when millions and millions of francs 

 were being spent on the Opera house ! Wounded in his feel- 

 ings, both as a scientist and a patriot, he prepared for the 

 Moniteur, then the official paper, an article destined to shake 

 the culpable indifference of public authorities. 



