84 PASTEUR 



prosperous that the mulberry tree had come to 

 be called the tree of gold, had fallen off alarm- 

 ingly, with an annual loss of more than fifty 

 million francs. The people were reduced to 

 dire poverty, and the sorely tried land owners, 

 helpless to combat the cause of their ruin, ap- 

 pealed to the government. Strange maladies 

 were spreading among the silk-worms, which 

 died in countless numbers, and there was no 

 remedy that seemed to help them. Dumas, 

 commissioned to present to the Senate the peti- 

 tion from the affected district, having confi- 

 dence in the genius of Pasteur, begged him to 

 consent to go and study on the spot this disease 

 of the silk-worms, which was proving so fatal 

 to a national industry that in the single district 

 of Alais it had caused within five years a loss 

 of nearly a hundred and fifty million francs. 



Pasteur knew nothing of the subject, but in 

 the face of such a permanent menace, which 

 condemned a whole section of France to the 

 blackest misery, he consented to absent him- 

 self from his beloved laboratory in the Rue 



