A STUDIOUS BOYHOOD 13 



tions and titles which give an assured position 

 in society. His examination was not especially 

 brilliant, but he received good marks in Greek, 

 Latin, philosophy and French composition, low 

 marks in history and geography, and excellent 

 ones in the sciences. His dominant qualities 

 were already revealing themselves in this first 

 examination. Furthermore, having passed his 

 baccalaureate, Louis Pasteur, whom the direc- 

 tor of the school had taken on as assistant tu- 

 tor for the tannery was far from prospering 

 continued to pursue special courses in mathe- 

 matics. 



This precise trend given to his studies, which 

 delivered him over into the hands of science, 

 in no way prevented him from appreciating 

 literature and poetry. This was the reverse 

 side of his nature, the sentimental and dreamy 

 side, which had need of nourishment and which 

 never was wholly effaced by any amount of ab- 

 stract studies studies of a kind that we should 

 have expected to find most distasteful to him. 

 Louis Pasteur loved, beyond all other books. 



