160 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



tried to speak, but in vain ; after a few moments he was able to 

 call for assistance. Mme. Pasteur sent at once for Dr. 

 Godelier, an intimate friend of the family, an army surgeon, 

 Clinical Professor at the Ecole du Val-de-Grace ' ; and Pasteur, 

 paralysed one moment and free again the next, explained his 

 own symptoms during the intervals of the dark struggle which 

 endangered his life. 



The cerebral haemorrhage gradually brought about absence 

 of movement along the entire left side. When the next morn- 

 ing Dr. Noel Gueneau de Mussy, going his regulation round of 

 the Ecole Normale students, came into his room and said, so as 

 not to alarm him, "I heard you were unwell, and thought I 

 would come to see you," Pasteur smiled the sad smile of a 

 patient with no illusions. Drs. Godelier and Gueneau de 

 Mussy decided to call Dr. Andral in consultation, and went to 

 fetch him at three o'clock at the Acad^mie de Meelecine. Some- 

 what disconcerted by the singular character of this attack of 

 hemiplegia, Andral prescribed the application of sixteen leeches 

 behind the ears; blood flowed abundantly, and Dr. Godelier 

 wrote in the evening bulletin (Tuesday): "Speech clearer, 

 some movements of the paralysed limbs ; intelligence perfect." 

 Later, at ten o'clock: "Complains of his paralysed arm." 

 "It is like lead ; if it could only be cut off ! " groaned Pasteur. 

 About 2 a.m. Mme Pasteur thought all hope was gone. The 

 hastily written bulletin reads thus : " Intense cold, anxious 

 agitation, features depressed, eyes languid." The sleep which 

 followed was as the sleep of death. 



At dawn Pasteur awoke from this drowsiness. " Mental 

 faculties still absolutely intact," wrote M. Godelier at 12.30 

 on Wednesday, October 21. ' The cerebral lesion, whatever 

 it may be, is not worse; there is an evident pause." Two 

 hours later the words, " Mind active," were followed by the 

 startling statement, " Would willingly talk science." 



While these periods of calm, agitation, renewed hopes, and 

 despair were succeeding each other in the course of those 

 thirty-six hours, Pasteur's friends hastened to his bedside. He 

 said to Henri Sainte Claire Deville, one of the first to come : 

 ' ' I am sorry to die ; I wanted to do much more for my 

 country." Sainte Claire Deville, trying to hide his grief under 



1 Val-de-Grdce. A handsome monument of the seventeenth century, 

 now a military hospital. [Trans.] 



