COLONEL ALBERT A. POPE.
Born in Boston, 1843.
AGE 7.
AGE 15.
AGE 19. 1862. LIEUTENANT IN THE 35TH MASSACHUSETTS INFANTRY.
AGE 27.
AGE 48.
DREAMS GO BY CONTRARIES.
By George H. Jessop.
“I don’t want to hurry any one,” remarked our host, shaking the ashes out of a well-blackened meerschaum, “but we have a long day before us to-morrow, and if any one wants any sleep this is the time to take it.”
No response from any one of the half-dozen men lounging in the snug armchairs of that most perfectly appointed smoking-room.
“I don’t mind,” said Sir Alan. “Two or three hours in bed are enough for me at any time. Please pass the spirit case, Jones. I wonder you’re not sleepy, Tom Everton. You used always to be in bed by eleven when you had an early morning in prospect, but I suppose matrimony has cured you of that along with other failings.”
“Tom says he isn’t going,” some one remarked.
“Not going! Pooh, nonsense! I thought he’d made up his mind to bring down a hart royal, at least, or leave his bones on Balmaquidder Brae.”
Mr. Everton looked decidedly uncomfortable.
“I—I should like to try of all things,” he stammered, “but—well—I won’t—at least I think—I—I shan’t go with you to-morrow—that is, if Sir Alan will excuse me.”
“Please yourself and you’ll please me,” replied the hospitable baronet; “but if it isn’t any secret I’d like to know what has made you change your mind so suddenly.”
“He promised Mrs. Everton he wouldn’t go,” broke in the previous speaker. “She dreamed a dream, and, like Pharaoh’s chief baker, she thought there was something in it.”
“Do be quiet, Jones,” interrupted Everton, irritably. “My wife had a rather odd dream last night, and she’s a bit nervous, you know, and—well, after all, it’s not much to give up one day’s deer-stalking, if any one’s going to make herself miserable over it.”
We all knew each other pretty well, this little circle of guests collected by Sir Alan to help him to shoot his Scotch mountain, and very free and outspoken was the “chaff” that flew around poor Tom Everton’s devoted head. He bore it with great good-humor for some time, till Jones made a rather uncalled-for remark involving questions of free will and “petticoat government.” Then Tom flared up.
“I don’t stay at home because I’m afraid of anything, but simply because I have promised. My wife dreamed that I went out with this party, and it grew late without any of us coming back. Then she thought she saw me lying face down in the Balmaquidder, and she seemed to know I was dead. I don’t remember the details, but I know she worked herself up into a shocking nervous state about it till I promised not to go. Of course it’s all nonsense, I know that, but what can I do?”
“Do as you promised!” It was Colonel Eyre’s deep voice that uttered the words, and we all glanced round at the speaker. He had remained silent 319 during the badinage occasioned by Everton’s determination, sitting with his tumbler of Scotch whiskey-and-water in front of him, puffing away silently at the short brier-root, whose bowl scarcely cleared the sweep of his heavy, grizzled mustache. He was holding the pipe in his hand now, sitting erect and speaking with unmistakable earnestness of manner. “Do as you promised, and don’t be too sure it’s all nonsense, either. I have known cases in which men have lived to be very thankful that they yielded to a presentiment.”
“But this was a dream, colonel,” broke in the irrepressible Jones.
“Dream be it, then! Stay at home, Everton. As you say, it’s not much to miss a day’s shooting. And if you neglect this warning the chances are you may never live to regret it.” The speaker took a sip from the tumbler in front of him, replaced his pipe between his lips, and leaned back as if the subject were at an end.
But the colonel, an Indian officer of many years’ service, was popularly supposed to have led a life of adventure, and to have figured in more than one story whose exciting incidents could well bear repetition. As a rule, he was a taciturn man, and it was by no means easy to “set him talking,” as the story goes. The present seemed an opportunity too good to be lost, and several voices demanded the experience by whose authority he had spoken so decidedly.
“Well, yes,” said Colonel Eyre slowly, “I have seen a presentiment very remarkably fulfilled. I am not much of a hand at yarning, but, if you wish, I have no objection to give you a leaf out of my own book, if it’s only that you may leave my friend Tom here in peace to follow his own course, without badgering him about it. Yes, I mean you, Mr. Jones,” he went on, impaling that helpless youngster with a glance that sent him nervously to the spirit case, while the rest of us settled ourselves 320 comfortably to listen, and Sir Alan, with a “Fire ahead, colonel,” drew his chair forward into a better position.
“It was a good while after the breaking of the monsoon in ’68,” began the colonel, slowly; “the weather was cool and pleasant enough, so that, on the face of it, it seemed no great hardship when I was ordered to take a detachment down to Sumbalpar. I was stationed at Raipur at the time, in the Orissa district, and word came of some trouble with the Zemindars above Sumbalpar. The only thing that seemed inconvenient was the suddenness of the order. It was just ‘Fall in and march out’ without delay of an hour. I was a young married man in those days, pretty much in the position of my friend Tom Everton, with a wife of two years and a bit of a baby a few months old. It wasn’t pleasant to leave them behind me in a place like Raipur, and, of course, it was out of the question to start them at an hour’s notice. I spoke to my bearer, Josein, one of the best native servants I ever saw, and directed him to make arrangements for an early march on the following morning. He was to see my family driven quietly over to Sumbalpar in the tonga. They were to travel by easy stages under the charge of a careful bilewallah. If there are any ‘griffs’ in this company, I may explain for their benefit that a tonga is a kind of bullock wagon, and a bilewallah is the driver of the same. Well, I had just time for a few words of comfort and farewell—Tom will appreciate all that—before I rode out of Raipur at the head of my column. We camped that night in the jungle, after a march of about twenty miles, and it was under canvas that I was visited with the dream or presentiment, or whatever you choose to call it, that gives such point as it may possess to this old-time yarn of mine.”
The colonel paused to refill his glass, but every one’s interest was now awakened, and no one broke the momentary silence that ensued.
“It was pretty late before I fell asleep,” resumed Colonel Eyre, setting down his tumbler, “and it was still dark when I awoke, or seemed to awake, with my wife’s voice ringing in my ears—a shriek of agony that made me start up from my pillow and listen breathlessly. There was a lantern burning in my tent—I had left it so when I lay down—and by the glimmer of light I saw a large, dark mass spread itself between me and the canvas roof and gradually settle down on my head. I did not know what it was—it was vague and formless in outline—but I had a consciousness that it was something of a dangerous nature—something that threatened my life—and I struggled to throw myself to one side or the other. In vain. I could not move hand or foot. I lay as if chained to the bed, and still the dark mass descended, shutting out light and air and seeming to suffocate me.”
“Nightmare!” remarked Sir Alan.
“Very possibly,” returned the colonel. “Suddenly, just as I gave myself up for lost, and sank back on the pillow exhausted, I heard my wife’s voice again, this time clear and articulate. ‘Save yourself, Gerald,’ it cried. ‘Make one more effort for my sake.’ I glanced up at the threatening outline, nerving myself for a final struggle. It was no longer formless; its approach had ceased to be slow. Swift as the swoop of a falcon it descended upon me—the immense body of a tiger on the spring—its cruel jaws agape, its enormous paws with every claw unsheathed, and its hot, fetid breath on my very brow!”
“A decidedly uncomfortable dream,” observed Jones.
“Of course all this passed in one-tenth of the time I take to tell it. I rolled out from under the hungry jaws, and just as I reached the ground I heard the angry growl of the baffled monster, followed by a shattering roar loud enough to waken the Seven Sleepers. As my senses came back to me, I found myself lying half on the ground, half on my low camp bed, my body bathed in perspiration, and trembling in every limb. Just then my batman put his head inside the tent-flap and asked me if I had heard the roar, adding that there was a tiger in the camp. I pulled on my clothes, 321 and I could hear the men walking about among the tents, searching and whispering—but no trace of a tiger could we discover.”
“Then it was a real tiger?” inquired Tom.
“It would seem so, as the whole camp had heard the roar as well as myself. However, it was almost morning by this time, and as every one was afoot and moments were precious I gave orders to push on at once. A hurried chota hazree was quickly prepared and despatched, and by the time the sun rose we were fairly on our way, with a good prospect of reaching Sumbalpar before nightfall. I couldn’t shake off the impression of the dream, however, try as I would. Besides, some natives who had come in before we broke camp told us of a man-eater which had been infesting the district. A tiger that has once tasted human flesh, as you may have heard, is never content with beef or venison afterwards, and they sometimes make themselves the terror of a whole country-side before they are shot. What with the vague misgivings suggested by my dream, and the tangible danger of the man-eater, I found myself growing more and more uneasy with every mile we marched. Finally, I determined to turn back and meet my wife. I was well mounted, and I believed I could gallop to the rear, assure myself that all was well with her, and pick up my command again before it reached Sumbalpar. I left the detachment in charge of a sergeant—poor old Busbee, he died 322 of jungle fever that same year—and rode back as fast as King Tom, a very speedy chestnut, could lay leg to ground. I passed the spot where we had spent the night, and kept on several miles beyond without seeing anything to cause uneasiness. My fears were beginning to disperse, and common sense made itself heard. I realized that I might find it very difficult to give a satisfactory explanation of my absence if the men reached Sumbalpar without me—they do not pay much attention to dreams at headquarters. This view of the case became more impressive with each mile I rode, and I determined that if the next turn in the path did not bring my family into view, or show me some other good reason for pushing on, I would turn back and rejoin my command. Thus resolved, I cantered forward, swung round the tangled angle of brush that limited my view, and saw——”
Here the colonel stopped for another sip of whiskey-and-water.
“What did you see?” cried Sir Alan. “Your wife?”
“Yes, sir, I saw her. She was sitting with the baby in her lap in the tonga—pale—I have never seen such an expression of strained terror on any human countenance. The bilewallah was in front, trying to keep the bullocks, which seemed almost frantic with fear, to the path. I knew the man well—one of the best hands with a team at the station—but just then his face was so distorted with fright that I hardly recognized him. You know that lilac-grayish tinge a native’s face gets when he is scared almost to death——”
“I know, I know,” broke in Sir Alan. “But what was the matter—what was frightening them? Could you see anything?”
“Indeed I could,” replied the colonel. “Cause enough they had; not five yards behind them trotted the largest tiger it has ever been my fortune to see.”
Various exclamations testified to the completeness of the surprise to which Colonel Eyre had treated his audience.
“Was it a man-eater?” I asked.
“At first I supposed it was, but if it had been I never should have seen them alive. After I shot the beast——”
“Oh, you did shoot him?”
“Don’t ask me how! I am counted a fair shot—I was far better then; but when I levelled my rifle at that brute’s heart, when I realized how much hung on the result—for if I had missed, or if I had merely wounded him, he would have been in the tonga at a single spring, and nothing under heaven itself could have saved those dearest to me from a horrible death—when I realized all this, I don’t know how I found the nerve to pull the trigger. I suppose I knew it was the only chance. My appearance had enraged the animal and he was just preparing to spring. This I do know, and I’m not ashamed to own it: when I saw that I had laid the tiger out with a single shot—a thing that doesn’t happen twice in a lifetime—I fell flat beside the tonga in the act of helping my wife down; for the first and last time in my life I fainted.
“Yes, it was a pretty hard trial on the nerves,” resumed the colonel, as our discussion of the situation sank into silence, “but nothing to what my wife had gone through. That tiger had followed them for more than four miles through the jungle. The bilewallah, with rare presence of mind, had managed to keep the bullocks to their steady jog-trot—any increase of pace or appearance of flight would have provoked a spring. She, poor woman, had succeeded in hushing her baby, for had the child cried, nothing is surer than that the sound would have led to an attack. It must have been an awful 323 four miles for her. It was years before she recovered from the effect.”
“And why did not the tiger attack them?” inquired Jones. “Does any one know?”
“The animal was doubtless waiting to kill them till they got into the vicinity of water,” explained Colonel Eyre. “Tigers often do that with cattle and other large quarry. There was water a mile or less further on. I had noticed it myself in passing. If I had not come upon the ground, another ten minutes would have sealed their fate.”
“So it may fairly be said that your dream was the means of saving their lives,” observed Tom Everton, who, although the most silent, had not been the least attentive of the listeners.
“I think we may fairly admit so much,” replied Colonel Eyre. “If it had not been for my dream, I do not think the report of the man-eater would have brought me back. On the other hand, but for hearing about the man-eater and actually being awakened by the roar of a tiger, I am not sure that the dream would have had weight enough with me to induce me to leave a detachment on the march—a serious thing, gentlemen, as some of you who are soldiers know well enough.”
“It’s a very curious circumstance, certainly,” observed Sir Alan; and then there was a pause.
“But see here, colonel,” Tom broke in again, “the dream, if a warning at all, was a warning of danger to you, yourself, and though you certainly heard Mrs. Eyre’s voice calling to you, yet it was urging you to save yourself, and not summoning you to her assistance.”
“That is very true, and it puzzled me at the time. But, as I argued, it is wonderful enough to get a warning of danger in the future at all; you must not expect to have it spelled out to you in large print. Now, as to this dream of Mrs. Everton’s—it prefigures danger to you, as I understand?”
“You must go to Mrs. Everton herself for the details. All that I remember is that she saw me lying drowned in the Balmaquidder, and read the vision as a warning that some accident would befall me if I joined the shooting-party to-morrow. But, by the light of your experience, it would seem the danger is to her, not to me.”
“I’m not quite so sure of that,” returned the colonel, thoughtfully.
“Well, I think there can be no question that your dream saved your wife’s life,” observed Jones, upon whose scepticism the colonel’s narrative had made some impression.
“No question at all,” rejoined that officer, rising, “and therefore, young man, pay attention to dreams, whether they be your own or those of your better half, which should be, a fortiori, better and more reliable than your own. Good-night, gentlemen. It’s past one o’clock, and we have an early start before us.”
In ten minutes more silence and darkness reigned in the smoking-room of Balmaquidder Lodge.
Next morning the men of the party were up and stirring betimes. As I left my bedroom, candle in hand, I heard voices proceeding from the apartment occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Everton. “Ah, ha,” thought I, “Tom’s curtain lecture is not over yet.” However, our friend’s absence was forgotten in the enjoyment of a substantial Highland breakfast, and by the time the sun asserted his power against the mist we were bravely breasting a steep mountain side, spurred on by the hope of a good day’s sport.
Only one incident occurred at our start. Sir Alan was setting his face against a steep brae when he was 324 stopped by the bare-legged gillie who acted as our guide. “Dinna gae yon gait, Sir Alan. We must win ower by the brig below.”
“Can’t we get across by the stepping-stones at the ford?” inquired our host, impatiently. “The bridge is a mile of a round.”
“I dinna ken that the stanes’ll be ower muckle safe, Sir Alan, forbye ye canna see them at a’ wi’ the white water swirling ower them, and the pool maybe ten feet deep close in under them. We mought win ower recht enoo, an’ again we mought na—ye ken——”
“Yes, I ken,” interrupted Sir Alan. “We’ll go round by the bridge, gentlemen. There’s a flood in the river, it appears—a cheerful habit the Balmaquidder has when you least want it or expect it.”
By the bridge accordingly we went, and when I saw the brown water whirling down in swift eddies I was thankful that we had not attempted the stepping-stones.
It was evening, and fast growing dark, when we reached the glen on our return, wet, tired, and hungry, but thoroughly satisfied with the day’s result. We were stepping out briskly, for we knew we were close to home, when a big mountain hawk swooped right in front of us. Jones, who had not drawn the cartridge from his rifle, let fly on the instant, without remembering how small was his chance with a bullet at quarry on the wing. We were amusing ourselves chaffing Jones as the bird flew off untouched when Colonel Eyre, who was a few steps to the rear, pulled up short and raised his hand to signal for silence.
We all heard it then—a shrill, lamentable voice ringing sharply from the hillside; there was no mistaking the purport of that appeal, it was a cry for help. But the mist was beginning to settle and the echo baffled us. For a moment we looked blankly at each other and around, not knowing whither to turn.
Again the cry, “Help, help, help!” with a note of agony in it that stirred the blood like a trumpet. “God guide us—’tis at the foord above you,” cried the gillie, and, tired as we were, none of us were far behind him when he reached the stepping-stones.
They were hidden by a mass of swirling, broken water, but just below them lay the pool of which the guide had spoken—calm by comparison with the ford, but agitated nevertheless with a swift current that flashed between steep banks faced with granite; as ugly a place for an accident as might be found in the whole length of the brawling Balmaquidder.
And an accident had happened, plainly enough. On one of the granite boulders knelt Mrs. Everton, leaning back with all her might against the drag of a plaid, one end of which she 325 held, while the other was lost in the black shadows of the pool.
She heard our footsteps as we ran up, but did not turn her head. “Help, help!” she cried again. “I can’t hold on much longer, and he—oh——”
She broke off with a sob, as strong hands relieved her of the extemporized life-line, and Colonel Eyre, bending forward, peered down into the obscurity of the pool. I was one of those who had grasped the shore end of the plaid, and the strain told me that whoever was below still maintained his grasp. “Can you hold on another moment?” asked the colonel; then, without waiting for a reply, “Cling close for dear life. Now, boys, gently does it. A steady, slow pull—no jerking;” and in another moment the dripping, half-senseless form of Tom Everton was drawn out on the bank, his drowning grip of the plaid still unloosened, and laid beside the fainting form of his wife.
“It was this way,” Tom explained some hours later, when we were all assembled for our usual smoking-room symposium. “I dare say I was pretty cross all day, thinking of the sport you fellows were having, and all I was missing, and towards evening my wife suggested that we should walk out and try to meet you. We kept along the river up to the stepping-stones, but the crossing there looked so bad that my wife would not hear of my attempting it. I did not think it so very dangerous, but I dare say I’d have let her have her own way——”
“As you usually do,” interjected Jones.
“——when all of a sudden I heard a shot close by on the other side. Then I started over at once. I’ve been across the ford a dozen times, but before I had taken three steps I found the stream was too strong for me. I tried to turn back, but the current seemed to whirl me right off my feet; I went sliding over the slippery stones, and in two seconds I was soused well over my head into the pool below, and spinning round like a troll in a brook. I tried to grasp hold of something on the bank, but that was the only result”—showing his lacerated hands—“and I think I must have been very close to kingdom come, when something or another flapped in my face. I clutched it and hung on like grim death; it was Jenny’s plaid, which she had the presence of mind to fling me and the pluck and strength to hold on to till you came to help. God bless her, I say”—Tom’s voice faltered a little—“she’s a wife to be proud of; and the next time she has a dream and wants me to stay at home, she shan’t have to ask me twice.”
“Oh, by the by, the dream!” broke in Sir Alan. “Is this accident to Tom to be regarded as the fulfilment of his wife’s dream or not?”
“Mrs. Everton’s dream was a warning,” said the colonel. “I should say that, having profited by the warning——”
“But stay,” I argued, “did she profit by the warning? She persuaded her husband to stay at home. Now, if he had gone with us he would have crossed by the bridge and been as safe as any of us. The dream did not save him. On the contrary, it very nearly drowned him.”
“She acted for the best, and all’s well that ends well,” replied the colonel. “Look at my dream, now. If I had not gone to my wife’s help and 326 shot that tiger I should never have seen her again. No, no, as I said before, you can’t expect these warnings to be printed out in big type. You must just take them as they come, and chance your reading them aright.”
“And come within an ace of drowning yourself, or some one else,” interjected Jones.
“It only bears out the old saying that ‘Dreams go by contraries,’” I remarked. “Still, these are a very remarkable pair of coincidences.”
“Here’s my view,” said Sir Alan. “Eat light suppers, go to bed healthily tired, and you won’t dream at all; or, if you must, forget all about it as soon as possible. You can torture a warning out of almost anything, and make yourself wretched trying to find out where the hidden danger is, and very likely rush right into it, as Everton did, trying to avoid it. Half the time dreams do go by contraries, and it’s dangerous meddling with what we don’t understand.”
And by the time the spirit case had completed its next round, we all agreed with Sir Alan.
THE TABLES TURNED.
By William Wordsworth.
Up! up, my friend! and quit your books,
Or surely you’ll grow double;
Up! up, my friend! and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?
The sun, above the mountain’s head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long, green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.
Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife;
Come, hear the woodland linnet—
How sweet his music! on my life,
There’s more of wisdom in it!
And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher;
Come forth into the light of things—
Let Nature be your teacher.
She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless;
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things—
We murder to dissect.
Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
PASTEUR AT HOME.
WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE WORK DONE AT THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE IN PARIS.
By Ida M. Tarbell.
“Institut Pasteur.” The coachman nodded. The cab door slammed. The vehicle rattled across the Seine, left the grand boulevards, passed the garden of the Luxembourg, and fell into a long, narrow street running off into the southwestern corner of Paris. The high, dignified house-fronts and the stately portals were soon passed; busy little shops took their place. We were in an industrial quarter whose commonplace was only varied here and there by a fine old hôtel, the country house of some rich proprietor, probably, in the days, not so very long ago, when all this portion of the city was without the walls, and when an industrial invasion was undreamed of.
The cab left the Rue Vaugirard, crossed a superb boulevard, entered the Rue Dutot, and stopped. Behind a long, high, black grille, and separated from it by a hedge of shrubbery, a grass plot, and a broad gravelled drive-way, rose a red-brick, stone-trimmed façade. Across the front, above the handsome doorway, one read Institut Pasteur; and, still higher, Subscription Publique, MDCCCLXXXVIII.
On the grass plot in front of the stately marble steps stood a small bronze statue mounted on a high granite pedestal. It represented a boy of twelve or fourteen years in a life-and-death struggle with a mad dog. He has succeeded in fastening about the neck of the furious animal the thong of a long whip. He is strangling him. Beside the boy, or the ground, is a wooden shoe. With it he will beat the beast to death. The statue tells the story of one of the earliest subjects treated by M. Pasteur for hydrophobia, Jean-Baptiste Jupille, a shepherd lad, who, seeing a group of children attacked by a mad dog, throttled the animal and beat it dead with his sabot. He carried away a dozen or more bites from the conflict, was sent to Paris, inoculated, and cured. A fitting subject to place before the doorway of the Pasteur Institute!
THE STATUE OF JUPILLE.
Statue, façade and lawn are new. The bricks have not yet lost their glare. One can almost see the dust still on the stone. The bronze has not lost its fresh lustre. Even the lawn has the unevenness of new sod, the horse-chestnut trees are small, the ivy has not had time to climb far up the walls.
Everything is still and sealed in front, but to the right, from the concierge’s 328 lodge back to a solid, practical, dark stone building in the rear of the main hall, is a throng of idle people, chatting in clusters, sunning themselves on the benches, walking up and down. It is a strikingly cosmopolitan company. There are Arabs in red, brown, blue, or white; Italian women in aprons and lace head-dresses; Spanish peasants in dark cloaks and broad-brimmed hats; Yankees, Zouaves, Russians. The low babel of a multitude of tongues fills the air.
One only brushes the edge of this crowd as he makes his way to the doorway in the end of the main building, the entrance to the private apartment of M. Pasteur.
Narrow winding stairs lead up to a suite of lofty rooms, furnished with solid, dignified woods, carpeted with soft, dark rugs, windows and doors hung with heavy stuffs. The immediate impression is one of comfort, warmth and quiet. The impression deepens as one enters the library, where, before a desk, sits the great French savant, Madame Pasteur near by. There is something home-like here. This might be the sitting-room of some well-to-do New England squire or judge. Involuntarily one searches in the face of the eminent savant, eying him so keenly and so kindly, for traces of relationship with the Puritan type. There is the same square determination, the same obstinacy of purpose, the same direct sincerity; but it is mellowed by Latin tenderness, kindled by French brilliancy.
This is a great man, one feels instinctively—a man so great that he despises notoriety—and a journalist. It is reassuring.
THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE.
The great master does not look to be seventy years of age as he sits behind his desk, his elbow on the table, his hand supporting his head. His hair and beard are still iron-gray; the hair is concealed largely by the silk skullcap he always wears, but the beard is abundant. The eyes are as penetrating, as full of ardor, as ever. It is only when he speaks or moves that one sees the ravages of the paralysis which overtook him twenty-five years ago, after his terrible three years of labor in the little house at Alais, investigating the disease of the silk-worm. The whole left side has been since then nearly useless. His speech is hesitating, his motion difficult, but in spite of his feebleness he spares no pains to interest his guest. One talks with M. Pasteur with the ease and naturalness of the fireside.
“Look at my birthplace,” he says, 329 rising, and taking from the mantel a photograph of the humble home at Dôle, Jura, where he was born. “My village gave it to me at my fête.”
I happen to know the story of the picture, and examine it with pleasure. There was, indeed, no more touching feature in the great Pasteur jubilee of last December than the presentation of this photograph by the Mayor of Dôle.
The little village has always had a loyal pride in the fact that M. Pasteur was born there. Ten years ago it celebrated the French Fourth of July (July 14) by placing a plaque on the façade of the house, bearing the inscription:
Ici est né Louis Pasteur,
Le 22 Dec., 1822.
M. Pasteur was present and made a speech. In the course of it he referred to his parents, their ambition for him, their self-sacrifice, their faith in him. He recalled his father’s words: “Louis, if I see you one day a professor in the college of Arbois I shall be the happiest man on earth.” Overpowered by his recollections, he broke down, sobbing.
The villagers of Dôle have never forgotten the scene. When the great Pasteur jubilee was celebrated they sent up their mayor, commissioned to present the picture of the early home, together with a facsimile of the register of M. Pasteur’s birth. That they were not mistaken in thinking that he would be pleased, it is easy to see as he stands before me, eying the humble house with tender pride.
THE LODGE.
“Have you no picture of yourself taken in your boyhood at Dôle?”
“No,” he answered. “The earliest picture I have is much later. Let me see, I must have been decorated then. Where is the old album?”
The album is brought, a small square book, looking as if it had just come off the table in the best room of a New England farm-house. There is the same high-relief decoration, the same gilt lines edging the photograph apertures. And these people? Verily, they might have lived in New England forty years ago!
M. Pasteur turns the leaves. Madame Pasteur leans over his shoulder. They stop now and then and exchange a smile as they come upon an old friend. At last the sought-for photograph is found. M. Pasteur at thirty—a great man already, for already he has made discoveries in crystallography which have won him a name among scientists.
The plans for investigation which filled the head of the young man who sits up so straight in the old photograph were never completed. The enthusiastic student of crystallography was forced to change the subject of his studies. Even now the great savant laments the change.
“If I have a regret,” he says, “it is that I did not follow that route, less rude, it seems to me, and which would have led, I am convinced, to wonderful discoveries. A sudden turn threw me into the study of fermentations, fermentations set me at diseases, but I am still inconsolable to think that I have never had time to go back to my old subject.”
Beside the hero of the studies in crystallography M. Pasteur places his latest picture. It lacks in youthfulness, but it has gained in ripeness. This photograph has much of the vigor and the alertness one sees in the splendid bust by Paul Dubois displayed 330 in the Salon of 1880, and now in a gallery at Copenhagen. This bust is the most satisfactory portrait of M. Pasteur ever made, unless it be the painting by Edelfelt displayed in the Salon of 1886. In the same Salon appeared Bonnat’s portrait of M. Pasteur and his granddaughter.
M. PASTEUR IN HIS SALON.
As I look at M. Pasteur in his library, however, I see only the old model of Bonnat. I have difficulty in believing, indeed, as I watch him bending smilingly over the old album, now and then laughing aloud at the discovery of some forgotten picture, that this man, over fifty years ago, for the sake of an education, made himself a jack-of-all-trades in the college of Besançon, and was aroused every morning at four o’clock with the night-watchman’s cry: “Come, Pasteur, chase the demon of laziness.” It is difficult to picture him in the intoxication of scientific enthusiasm and discovery, sacrificing health, leisure, pleasure, to the passion of learning which had taken possession of him.
He is so gentle, it seems incredible that he has had to meet coldness, contempt, opposition of every species, in his life; that, when he asked the most modest of appropriations from the government, he met the contemptuous reply that “there was no rubric in the budget for allowing three hundred dollars a year for experiments;” that for every step in his discoveries he has had literally to fight, contending with Pouchet and Joly on the subject of spontaneous generation, with Liebig on fermentations, with the Germans and Italians on the attenuation of virus, with the popular opinion of his own compatriots when he dared vaccinate for hydrophobia, and when his supporters dared erect the present Institute to facilitate his work.
One cannot picture him tête-à-tête with mad dogs. It is hard to believe him capable of that astonishing self-mastery which made him withhold for months, and sometimes even years, the results of incomplete investigations, and of the equal hardihood which, when he was convinced of a truth, led him to accept the most severe and most public tests of its exactness.
I make an attempt to find the scientist and venture a question.
“Oh,” says M. Pasteur, “if you want to know that, you must go and 331 see M. Roux. You will find him in the laboratory.”
We rise and go into the long hall. At the opposite end from the library two large doors open into the spacious vestibule which occupies the centre of the main building.
“You can go out by the main hall and directly into the laboratory, or down the private stairs.” I hesitated. No, I would not spoil my impression of M. Pasteur at home. I would keep laboratory and home separate. I descended to the private entrance, and, as I went down, two kindly faces looked over at me, and the gentle, hesitating voice of the great savant said:
“Take care, it is dark. Don’t slip. Take care.” On the last step I stopped and looked up. The two friendly faces were still looking down.
THE HOUSE AT DÔLE, WHERE M. PASTEUR WAS BORN.
I had come to see the destroyer of the theory of spontaneous generation, the demonstrator of the microbe origin of disease, the conqueror of hydrophobia. I had found something greater, perhaps, than them all—a perfectly gentle soul.