238 LOUIS PASTEUR. 



necessary, to have recourse to two vaccines, one weak 

 and the other stronger, with an interval of from 12 to 

 15 days between the two inoculations. 



It was on February 28, 1881, that Pasteur com- 

 municated to the Academy of Sciences, in his own 

 name, and in those of his two fellow workers, the 

 exposition of this great discovery. Loud applause 

 burst forth with patriotic joy and pride. And yet so 

 marvellous were these results that some colleagues 

 could not help saying, ' There is a little romance in 

 all this.' All this reminds one, in fact, of what the 

 alchemist of Lesage did to the demons which annoyed 

 him. He shut them up in little bottles, well corked, 

 and so kept them imprisoned and inoffensive. Pasteur 

 shut up in glass bulbs a whole world of microbes, with 

 all sorts of varieties which he cultivated at will. Viru- 

 lences attenuated or terrible, diseases benign or deadly, 

 he could offer all. Hardly had the journals published 

 the compte-rendu of this communication when the 

 President of the Society of Agriculture in Melun, M. 

 le Baron de la Kochette, came, in the name of the 

 Society, to invite Pasteur to make a public experiment 

 of splenic fever vaccination. 



Pasteur accepted. On April 28 a sort of conven- 

 tion was entered into between him and the Society. 

 The Society agreed to place at the disposal of Pasteur 

 and his two young assistants, Chamberland and Roux, 



