“To the memory of my father, a soldier under the first Empire, and a knight of the Legion of Honour. The more I have advanced in age, the better I have understood thy love and the superiority of thy reason. The efforts I have given to these Studies and those which have preceded them are the fruit of thy example and advice. Wishing to honour these pious recollections, I dedicate this work to thy memory.”
The two dedications are very similar. Those two soldiers’ sons had kept the virile imprint of the paternal virtues. A great tenderness was also in them both; Littré, when he lost his mother, had felt a terrible grief, comparable to Pasteur’s under the same circumstances.
In spite of Pasteur’s interest in studying Littré in the Bordeaux library, he did not cease thinking of yellow fever. He often saw M. Berchon, the sanitary director, and inquired of him whether there were any news of the Richelieu. A young physician, Dr. Talmy, had expressed a desire to join Pasteur at Bordeaux and to obtain permission, when the time came, to be shut up with the patients in the lazaretto. Pasteur wrote on December 25 to Mme. Pasteur: “There is nothing new save the Minister’s authorization to Dr. Talmy to enter the lazaretto; I have just telegraphed to him that he might start. The owners of the Richelieu still suppose that she will reach Pauillac on Tuesday. M. Berchon, who is the first to be informed of what takes place in the roads, will send me a telegram as soon as the Richelieu is signalled, and we shall then go—M. Talmy, Roux and I—to ascertain the state of the ship, of course without going on board, which we should not be allowed to do if it has a suspicious bill of health.”
And, as Mme. Pasteur had asked what happened when a ship arrived, he continued in the same letter: “From his boat to windward, M. Berchon receives the ship’s papers, giving the sanitary state of the ship day by day. Before passing from the hands of the captain of the vessel to those of the sanitary director, the papers are sprinkled over with chloride of lime.
“If there are cases of illness, all the passengers are taken to the lazaretto; only a few men are left on board the ship, which is henceforth in quarantine, no one being allowed to leave or enter it.
“God permit that, in the body of one of those unfortunate victims of medical ignorance, I may discover some specific microscopic being. And after that? Afterwards, it would be really beautiful to make that agent of disease and death become its own vaccine. Yellow fever is one of the three great scourges of the East—bubonic plague, cholera, and yellow fever. Do you know that it is already a fine thing to be able to put the problem in those words!”
The Richelieu arrived, but she was free from fever. The last passenger had died during the crossing and his body had been thrown into the sea.
Pasteur left Bordeaux and returned to his laboratory.
CHAPTER XI
1882—1884
Pasteur was in the midst of some new experiments when he heard that the date of the election to the Académie Française was fixed for December 8. Certain candidates spent half their time in fiacres, paying the traditional calls, counting the voters, calculating their chances, and taking every polite phrase for a promise. Pasteur, with perfect simplicity, contented himself with saying to the Academicians whom he went to see, “I had never in my life contemplated the great honour of entering the Académie Française. People have been kind enough to say to me, ‘Stand and you will be elected.’ It is impossible to resist an invitation so glorious for Science and so flattering to myself.”