In Paris as in Petrograd, as in Odessa, you have become a leader of thought, and you have kindled in this Institute a scientific focus which has radiated afar.
Your laboratory is more alive than any in the house; workers come to it in crowds. There, the bacteriological events of the day are discussed, interesting preparations examined, ideas sought for that may help an experimenter to solve difficulties in which he has become involved. It is to you that one comes to ask for a control experiment on a newly observed fact, for a criticism of a discovery that does not always survive the test.
Moreover, as you read everything, every one comes to you for information, for an account of a newly published memoir which there is no time to read. It is much more convenient than to consult the library and also much safer, for errors of translation and interpretation are avoided.
Your erudition is so vast and so accurate that it is made use of by the whole house. How many times have I not availed myself of it? One never fears to take advantage of it, for no scientific question ever finds you indifferent. Your ardour warms the indolent and gives confidence to the sceptical.
You are an incomparable collaborator as I know, I who have had the good fortune of being associated with your researches on several occasions. Indeed, you did nearly all the work!
More even than your science, your kindliness attracts; who amongst us has not experienced it? I have had a touching proof of it when, many times, you have nursed me as if I were your own child. You are so happy in doing good that you even feel gratitude towards those whom you serve.
This is such an intimate gathering that I may be allowed to say quite openly that it is so painful to you not to give that you prefer being exploited rather than close your hand.
The Pasteur Institute owes you much; you have brought to it the prestige of your renown, and by your work and that of your pupils you have greatly contributed to its glory. You have given a noble example of disinterestedness by refusing any salary in those years when the budget was balanced with difficulty and by preferring to the glorious and lucrative situations that were offered to you the modest life of this house. Still a Russian by nationality, you have become French by your choice, and you contracted a Franco-Russian alliance with the Pasteur Institute long before the diplomats thought of it.
At the beginning the members of the Pasteur Institute were few, and the association bore a quasi-family character, Pasteurians often being compared with a monastic order, united by the worship of science. The progressive growth of the Institute inevitably destroyed its character of intimacy, but it remained a precious scientific focus, and this is what Metchnikoff said of it in 1913, à propos of the twenty-fifth anniversary of its foundation:
If we weigh the for and against of the Pasteur Institute, it is indisputable that the first surpasses the second by a great deal. I do not think another institution exists that is equally favourable to work. Innumerable proofs have been adduced to attest this in the twenty-five years that our House has existed.