The result of his researches satisfied Metchnikoff; moreover, he began to feel again hopeful of his wife’s recovery. The only dark spot was that Setchénoff’s efforts had failed. Metchnikoff was not appointed by the Faculty of Medicine, for it was found advisable to replace the Chair of Zoology by one on Venereal Diseases. On the other hand, he was nominated for the Odessa University, supported by Cienkovsky and unanimously elected.
As he only had to go to his new post in the autumn, he went for the summer to St. Vaast in Normandy to study Lucernaria; unfortunately the stay was not a success; the weather was cold and the sea very rough, which made the Lucernaria impossible to find. Life conditions were very difficult, all the male population being at sea and the women being in the fields. In order not to waste this journey he studied Ascidians, and found that he had previously been mistaken at Naples when he thought that the nervous system of those animals originated from the lower embryonic layer. Kovalevsky had been right in affirming the contrary, and Elie hastened to write to tell him so.
St. Vaast, open to every wind, was not favourable to the patient, and Metchnikoff had to take her away. They went to Russia to stay with her parents and then to Panassovka. The doctors having advised a course of treatment by “koumiss,” or fermented mare’s milk prepared in a special way by the Tartars, Elie engaged a Tartar servant specially for that purpose, but in vain. In spite of every treatment, his wife’s health was steadily growing worse. The cold at St. Vaast had been followed by such a dry heat in Russia that, in order to procure a little coolness for the patient, they had to spread wet sheets around her. She constantly had high temperatures and frequent attacks of hæmorrhage. It was obvious that she must leave Russia, and Metchnikoff, obliged to rejoin his post at Odessa, asked Mlle. Fédorovitch to go with her to Montreux.
The separation was all the harder that all hope of recovery was beginning to wane. The patient, however, had been told of the magical effect of Madeira in cases of tuberculosis, and she clung to the idea as to a plank of safety. Elie resolved to take her there. He set to work with renewed ardour in order to obtain the sum necessary for the journey; in spite of all his self-denial, his normal resources would not have sufficed, and he had recourse to translations and literary articles. He had a theme ready, which he developed in a paper called Education from the Anthropological Point of View—in fact a preliminary sketch of his ideas on the disharmonies in human nature. In it, he analysed the disharmonies due to the great difference of development between the child and the adult: whilst the young of animals are very rapidly able to imitate the adults and to live like them, the man-child is incapable of it. His brain, especially in civilised races, demands a long period of development in order to equal that of the adult, whilst certain instincts in the organism mature, on the contrary, long before their function is possible. Moreover, a child’s sensibility is extremely developed whilst his will is by no means so. These causes provoke suffering and a series of regrettable consequences.
Apart from frenzied efforts and unceasing labour, Metchnikoff was going through a painful moral crisis, due to the impossibility of making his conduct accord with his convictions. Party intrigues continued to be rife at the Odessa University: Poles were being persecuted by Nationalists; one professor was refused admission on account of his Polish nationality, and Cienkovsky resigned by way of protest. Metchnikoff shared his views and longed to follow his example, but was prevented by his lack of means and felt it deeply. It also went against his conscience to ask for leave as frequently as his wife’s condition made it necessary.
She wished to see her parents once again before going to Madeira, and he took her to Russia for the last time: she never saw her family again.
At last they were able to start. The long journey was very fatiguing, the sea voyage was rough, but, when she landed in Madeira, the patient thought herself saved. The very next morning Metchnikoff started feverishly on a voyage of discovery. Nature on the island was extremely beautiful; alone the sight of numerous sick people reminded him of suffering and death. The words “a flower-decked grave” haunted his mind, and a growing despondency warned him that he had nothing to expect from this luxuriant spot. From the aspect of the rocky coast, beaten by the waves, he realised that the beach fauna must be very poor; his only refuge, research work, was likely to be denied him.
He was advised to hire a small house, which would be cheaper than a boarding-house, and he did find a pretty furnished villa with a garden; it was beyond his means, but a young Russian named Mertens, who had been a fellow-traveller, proposed to share it with them. The arrangement proved highly satisfactory, and Mertens, at first merely an agreeable neighbour, became a close friend.
Before leaving for Madeira, Metchnikoff had obtained a scientific mission and a subsidy from the Society of Natural Science Lovers of Moscow, and felt it a moral obligation to obtain some results. The scantiness of the marine fauna was a bitter disappointment; he had to fall back upon what little he found, and embarked on the study, hitherto unknown, of the embryology of Myriapoda. But this research work brought him a new source of torment instead of satisfaction: he could not master the technique, which proved to be very difficult, and this irritated him; his failures disappointed him, made him vexed with himself; his nerves, already strung to the highest point by suffering and anxiety, made the disappointment unbearable. On the other hand, the external aspect of life formed a striking contrast with the state of his mind. A wealth of natural beauty, all flowers and perfumes, in an incomparable site, congenial surroundings and home comforts formed the frame for these two young lives, of which one was waning whilst the other was spent in a useless struggle to save it.
Metchnikoff’s natural pessimism was growing under the influence of these painful circumstances. His conception of life was a sombre one; he said to himself that the “disharmonies” of human nature must infallibly end in a general decadence of humanity. He set forth his reflections in an article entitled The Time for Marriage, in which he discussed the following concrete fact: With the progress of civilisation and culture, the time for marriage recedes gradually, whereas puberty remains as early as before; the result is that the time between puberty and marriage is becoming longer and longer, and constitutes a growing period in which there is no harmony. The statistics of suicides prove that there is a close connection between them and the period of disharmonies.