RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH.
FIRST DISCOVERIES.
'Come, M. Pasteur! you must shake off the demon of idleness!' It was the night watcher of the College of Besançon, who invariably at four o'clock in the morning entered Pasteur's room and roused him with this vigorous salute, which was accompanied, when necessary, by a sound shaking. Pasteur was then eighteen years of age. In addition to his food and lodging, the royal college paid him twenty-four francs a month. But if his place was a modest one, it sufficed at the time for his ambition: it was the first tie which bound him to the University.
'Ah,' said his father to him frequently, 'if only you could become some day professor in the College of Arbois I should be the happiest man on earth.'
Already, when he resided at Dôle, and when his son was not yet two years old, this father permitted himself to dream thus of the future. What would he have said had it been announced to him that fifty-eight years later, on the façade of the little house in the Rue des Tanneurs, would be placed, in the presence of his living son—laden with honours, laden with glory, passing in the midst of a triumphal procession along the paved town—a plate bearing these words in letters of gold:
Here was born Louis Pasteur,
December 27, 1822.
Pausing before this house, Pasteur recalled the image of his father and mother—of those whom he called his dear departed ones—and from the far-off depths of his childhood came so many memories of affection, devotion, and paternal sacrifices that he burst into tears.
The life of his father had been a rough one. An old soldier, decorated on the field of battle, on returning to France, where he had no longer a home, he was obliged to work hard to earn his bread. He took up the trade of a tanner. Soon afterwards, having made the acquaintance of a worthy young girl, he joined his lot with hers, and together they entered courageously on the labours of their married life—he calm, reflective, and more eager, whenever he had a moment of repose, for the society of books than for the society of his neighbours; she full of enthusiasm, her heart and spirit agitated by thoughts above the level of her modest life. Both of them watched with ceaseless solitude over their little Louis, of whom, with mingled pride and tenderness, they used to say, 'We will make of him an educated man.'
In 1825 the Pasteur family quitted Dôle and established themselves at Arbois, where, on the borders of the Cuisance, the father of our hero had bought a small tanyard. At this town, and in this yard, Louis Pasteur spent his childhood. As soon as he was old enough to be received as a half-pay scholar he was sent to the communal college. He, the smallest of all the pupils, was so proud of passing under the great arched doorway of this ancient establishment, that he arrived laden with enormous dictionaries, of which there was no need.
In the midst of his laborious occupations the father of Pasteur took upon himself the task of superintending his son's lessons every evening. This was at first no sinecure. Louis Pasteur did not always take the shortest road either to reach his class or to return to his work at home. Some old friends still living remember having made with the little Pasteur fishing parties, which proved so pleasant that they have been continued to the present day. The boy, moreover, instead of applying himself to his lessons, often escaped and amused himself by making large portraits of his neighbours, male and female. A dozen of these portraits are still to be seen in the houses of Arbois, all bearing his signature. Considering that his age at the time was only thirteen, the accuracy of the drawing is astonishing.
'What a pity,' said an old lady of Arbois a short time since, 'that he should have buried himself in chemistry! He has missed his vocation, for he might by this time have made his reputation as a painter.'