208 PASTEUR 



deductions of this brilliant mind, had been sur- 

 prised, touched, deeply moved by the courtesies 

 and delicate attentions that were prompted by 

 a heart which opened to friendship all the more 

 widely because it opened only in deep earnest. 

 Dumas, who had a wide experience of men, 

 loved and admired Pasteur as a genius without 

 pride and full of kindliness. On this New 

 Year's afternoon he fell to chatting with a cor- 

 diality that contained something of the un- 

 quenchable gaiety of his father. In this little 

 chamber adjoining the laboratory, how remote 

 he was from all the worlds that he had studied, 

 the worlds inhabited by the class of beings he 

 had studied, "microbes in human form," as he 

 called them, creatures that were either danger- 

 ous, ridiculous or vile! Occasionally, however, 

 he had shown upon the stage man as he might 

 be, and as he ought to be, a Montaiglin, a 

 Claude, "poor, well-meaning man, out of place 

 in our times." For back of this dramatic au- 

 thor was a man eager to exert a moral influence, 

 back of the realist a symbolist, back of the satir- 



