In the midst of the joys of seeing these problems solved by chemistry, yet another ray of sunshine was reserved for me, adding its gladness to that of my success. Let us go back a couple of years. The chief inspectors visited our grammar school. These personages travel in pairs: one attends to literature, the other to science. When the inspection was over and the books checked, the staff was summoned to the principal's drawing room, to receive the parting admonitions of the two luminaries. The man of science began. I should be sadly put to it to remember what he said. It was cold professional prose, made up of soulless words which the hearer forgot once the speaker's back was turned, words merely boring to both. I had heard enough of these chilly sermons in my time; one more of them could not hope to make an impression on me.
The inspector in literature spoke next. At the first words which he uttered, I said to myself: 'Oho! This is a very different business!'
The speech was alive and vigorous and full of images; indifferent to scholastic commonplaces, the ideas soared, hovering gently in the serene heights of a kindly philosophy. This time, I listened with pleasure; I even felt stirred. Here was no official homily: it was full of impassioned zeal, of words that carried you with them, uttered by an honest man accomplished in the art of speaking, an orator in the true sense of the word. In all my school experience, I had never had such a treat.
When the meeting broke up, my heart beat faster than usual: 'What a pity,' I thought, 'that my side, the science side, cannot bring me into contact, some day, with that inspector! It seems to me that we should become great friends.'
I inquired his name of my colleagues, who were always better informed than I. They told me it was Victor Duruy.
Well, one day, two years later, as I was looking after my Saint Martial laboratory in the midst of the steam from my vats, with my hands the color of boiled lobster claws from constant dipping in the indelible red of my dyes, there walked in, unexpectedly, a person whose features straightway seemed familiar. I was right, it was the very man, the chief inspector whose speech had once stirred me. M. Duruy was now minister of public instruction. He was styled, 'Your excellency;' and this style, usually an empty formula, was well deserved in the present case, for our new minister excelled in his exalted functions. We all held him in high esteem. He was the workers' minister, the man for the humble toiler.
'I want to spend my last half-hour at Avignon with you,' said my visitor, with a smile. 'That will be a relief from the official bowing and scraping.'
Overcome by the honor paid me, I apologized for my costume—I was in my shirt sleeves—and especially for my lobster claws, which I had tried, for a moment, to hide behind my back.
'You have nothing to apologize for. I came to see the worker. The working man never looks better than in his overall, with the marks of his trade on him. Let us have a talk. What are you doing just now?'
I explained, in a few words, the object of my researches; I showed my product; I executed under the minister's eyes a little attempt at printing in madder red. The success of the experiment and the simplicity of my apparatus, in which an evaporating dish, maintained at boiling point under a glass funnel, took the place of a steam chamber, caused him some surprise.