THE SUPREME HOMAGE 201 



"MONSIEUR THE MINISTER: 



"GENTLEMEN: In the midst of all this brilliance 

 my first thought reverts regretfully to all those men 

 of science who spent their lives in vain endeavours. 

 In the past they had to struggle against prejudices 

 which stifled their ideas. These prejudices con- 

 quered, they still encountered other obstacles and 

 difficulties of all sorts. 



"It was only a few years ago, before the public 

 authorities and the municipal council had begun to 

 provide magnificent abodes for science, that a man 

 whom I greatly loved and admired, Claude Ber- 

 nard, possessed as his sole laboratory a low and 

 humid cellar, only a few steps from here. Perhaps 

 it was in that cellar that he contracted the disease 

 which caused his death. Upon learning of the re- 

 ception you were preparing for me tonight, his was 

 the first image that rose before my mind. I salute 

 the memory of that great man. 



"Gentlemen, though an ingenious and delicate 

 thought, it would seem as though you had wished 

 to cause a vision of my entire life to pass before 

 my eyes. One of my compatriots from the Jura, the 

 mayor of the city of Dole, has brought me a photo- 

 graph of the very humble home in which my father 

 and mother lived their hard and needy life. 



"The presence of all these students from the Ecole 



