Pasteur wrote to his daughter: “Success is definitely confirmed; the vaccinated animals are keeping perfectly well, the test is complete. On Wednesday a report of the facts and results will be drawn up which I shall communicate to the Académie des Sciences on Monday, and on Tuesday to the Académie de Médecine.”
And, that same day, he addressed a joyful telegram to Bouley, who, in his quality of General Inspector of Veterinary Schools, had been obliged to go to Lyons. Bouley answered by the following letter:
“Lyons, June 5, 1881. Dearest Master, your triumph has filled me with joy. Though the days are long past now when my faith in you was still somewhat hesitating, not having sufficiently impregnated my mind with your spirit, as long as the event—which has just been realized in a manner so rigorously in conformity with your predictions—was still in the future, I could not keep myself from feeling a certain anxiety, of which you were yourself the cause, since I had seen you also a prey to it, like all inventors on the eve of the day which reveals their glory. At last your telegram, for which I was pining, has come to tell me that the world has found you faithful to all your promises, and that you have inscribed one more great date in the annals of Science, and particularly in those of Medicine, for which you have opened a new era.
“I feel the greatest joy at your triumph; in the first place, for you, who are to-day receiving the reward of your noble efforts in the pursuit of Truth; and—shall I tell you?—for myself too, for I have so intimately associated myself with your work that I should have felt your failure absolutely as if it had been personal to me. All my teaching at the Museum consists in relating your labours and predicting their fruitfulness.”
Those experiments at Pouilly le Fort caused a tremendous sensation; the whole of France burst out in an explosion of enthusiasm. Pasteur now knew fame under its rarest and purest form; the loving veneration, the almost worship with which he inspired those who lived near him or worked with him, had become the feeling of a whole nation.
On June 13, at the Académic des Sciences, he was able to state as follows his results and their practical consequences: “We now possess virus vaccines of charbon, capable of preserving from the deadly disease, without ever being themselves deadly—living vaccines, to be cultivated at will, transportable anywhere without alteration, and prepared by a method which we may believe susceptible of being generalized, since it has been the means of discovering the vaccine of chicken-cholera. By the character of the conditions I am now enumerating, and from a purely scientific point of view, the discovery of the vaccine of anthrax constitutes a marked step in advance of that of Jenner’s vaccine, since the latter has never been experimentally obtained.”
On all sides, it was felt that something very great, very unexpected, justifying every sort of hope, had been brought forth. Ideas of research were coming up. On the very morrow of the results obtained at Pouilly le Fort, Pasteur was asked to go to the Cape to study a contagious disease raging among goats.
“Your father would like to take that long journey,” wrote Mme. Pasteur to her daughter, “passing on his way through Senegal to gather some good germs of pernicious fever; but I am trying to moderate his ardour. I consider that the study of hydrophobia should suffice him for the present.”
He was at that time “at boiling point,” as he put it—going from his laboratory work to the Academies of Sciences and Medicine to read some notes; then to read reports at the Agricultural Society; to Versailles, to give a lecture to an Agronomic Congress, and to Alfort to lecture to the professors and students. His clear and well-arranged words, the connection between ideas and the facts supporting them, the methodical recital of experiments, allied to an enthusiastic view of the future and its prospects—especially when addressing a youthful audience—deeply impressed his hearers. Those who saw and heard him for the first time were the more surprised that, in certain circles, a legend had formed round Pasteur’s name. He had been described as of an irritable, intolerant temper, domineering and authoritative, almost despotic; and people now saw a man of perfect simplicity, so modest that he did not seem to realize his own glory, pleased to answer—even to provoke—every objection, only raising his voice to defend Truth, to exalt Work, and to inspire love for France, which he wished to see again in the first rank of nations. He did not cease to repeat that the country must regain her place through scientific progress. Boys and youths—ever quick to penetrate the clever calculations of those who seek their own interest instead of accomplishing a duty—listened to him eagerly and, very soon conquered, enrolled themselves among his followers. In him they recognized the three rarely united qualities which go to form true benefactors of humanity: a mighty genius, great force of character, and genuine goodness.
The Republican Government, desirous of recognizing this great discovery of splenic fever vaccination, offered him the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour. Pasteur put forward one condition; he wanted, at the same time, the red ribbon for his two collaborators. “What I have most set my heart upon is to obtain the Cross for Chamberland and Roux,” he wrote to his son-in-law on June 26; “only at that price will I accept the Grand Cross. They are taking such trouble! Yesterday they went to a place fifteen kilometres from Senlis, to vaccinate ten cows and 250 sheep. On Thursday we vaccinated 300 sheep at Vincennes. On Sunday they were near Coulommiers. On Friday we are going to Pithiviers. What I chiefly wish is that the discovery should be consecrated by an exceptional distinction to two devoted young men, full of merit and courage. I wrote yesterday to Paul Bert, asking him to intervene most warmly in their favour.”