78 PASTEUR 



traditional signboard had been left 

 above the entrance, in consequence of which 

 it often happened to us to have customers 

 enter and ask for food and drinks. Gen- 

 erally they halted at the door, surprised at 

 the strangeness of the furnishings, and took 

 themselves off without a word, assuredly 

 carrying with them visions of the almanac 

 of Nostradamus. It must be said in their 

 defense that, if the room no longer resembled 

 a cafe, it resembled a laboratory quite as little. 

 There was no gas; the heating was done with 

 coal, the flames of which were made more ac- 

 tive at the required moment with the help of 

 fans. There was no water ; we ourselves went, 

 like Rebecca, to draw it at the public fountain, 

 or, like Nausicaa, to wash our utensils by the 

 river bank. Our tables were trestles, and as 

 for our apparatus, since nearly all of it came 

 from the local carpenter, tinsmith or black- 

 smith of Arbois, it may be imagined that they 

 did not have the canonical forms and that, 

 when we walked through the streets on our 



