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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. II. No. 49. 



College Eoyal of Besangon, where lie stayed 

 from 1839 until 1842. There he took in 

 1840 the title of Master of Arts, or ' Bache- 

 lier,' and prepared for the ' Ecole normale 

 Superieure.' Then he did not show any ap- 

 titude for chemistry; it is true that the old 

 professor of chemistry and phj^sics was a 

 old fashioned savant, extremely diifuse in 

 his lectures, and Pasteur was not attracted 

 by the lessons; so much so, that it was I, 

 who have but little capacity for the work, 

 who was chosen as the assistant by the 

 professor. There was no pay, and the pro- 

 fessor chose for his assistant the pupil that 

 he liked best, provided he was an ' interne,' 

 in order to have him within reach one or 

 two hours before his lecture to prepare the 

 experiments and the instruments. Then 

 Pasteur was not what is called a brillant 

 student, but he was a good one, standing 

 second in our class, myself being No. 3. 

 As a great privilege, the provisor of the 

 college gave to Pasteur and me one room, 

 where we worked and slept, instead of be- 

 ing obliged to be with the other pupils in 

 the ' Salle d'Etudes,' and in a great dormi- 

 tory. Our room was only whitewashed, 

 and our furniture most elementary. "What 

 Pasteur did, at once, was to make a good 

 fresco picture, on the side of the wall above 

 the blackboard. That picture, well exe- 

 cuted considering the time and the youth 

 of the painter, represented a scene of Childe 

 Harold of Bj-ron. Pasteur had a remark- 

 able disposition for artistic work, and we 

 all thought then that he would become an 

 ai'tist; so much so that we called him, as a 

 nickname, 'The Artist.' And the title 

 stuck to him many years after his college life. 

 I may add that he drew my portrait in 

 colored pencil, at that time a good likeness, 

 when I was eighteen years old. I posses it 

 still, it is signed ' P.(asteur) L.(udovicus) 

 del (delineavit), 1842.' 



From 1843 to 1846 Pasteur was a pupil 

 of the Ecoh Normale Superieure, following the 



lectures of the Sorbonne, as is the custom. 

 The third year he chose the ' Sciences 

 physiques et chimiques,' and graduated an 

 ' Agrege ' for those sciences in August, 1846. 

 It was during his stay at the Normal School 

 that Pasteur showed his taste for chemistry. 

 He was in perfect rapture at the end of each 

 lecture on chemistry by the two ordinary 

 professors of that science then at la Sor- 

 bonne, Messrs. Balard and Jean Baptiste 

 Dumas. To be sure Pasteur admired the 

 talent of exposition of Dumas ; but was 

 a little shocked by his way of dressing too 

 much like a scientific dandj', by his too 

 studied posture and by his affectation. It 

 was not so with Balard, who was entirely 

 sympathetic to the modest tastes of Pas- 

 teur. But what attracted most of his at- 

 tention was neither Balard nor Dumas, but 

 their assistant, then a rather old man, M. 

 Barruel. As a practical chemist, a skilful 

 manipulator, Barruel had few equals, if any ; 

 all the oi^erations always succeeded with 

 such precision, exactness and at the right 

 time that Pasteur was absolutely astounded 

 and in perfect rapture. I have seen him, 

 at the end of some of those lectures, with 

 his eyes filled with tears, ready to cry; so 

 much was he moved by what he had heard 

 and seen. 



At the end of 1846 Pasteur was ap- 

 pointed assistant to Professor Balard, who 

 was ' Maitre des conferences de chimie,' 

 at the Normal School ; a new post, poorly 

 paid and rather difficult to obtain from the 

 French government, which then was spar- 

 ing in regard to new scientific expenditures. 

 All that Pasteur wanted was to stay in 

 Paris, no matter how poorly he was paid. 

 At that time the Normal School was on the 

 point of being removed from the old and 

 inadequate building of the annex of the 

 Louis-le-Graud College, to a large and even 

 beautiful mansion built especially for that 

 purpose in the rue d'Ulm. The school was 

 not removed, however, until September, 



