Pasteur, standing with bowed head, his eyes full of tears, was for a few moments unable to reply, and then, making a violent effort, he said in a low voice—
“My dear master—it is indeed forty years since I first had the happiness of knowing you, and since you first taught me to love science.
“I was fresh from the country; after each of your classes, I used to leave the Sorbonne transported, often moved to tears. From that moment, your talent as a professor, your immortal labours and your noble character have inspired me with an admiration which has but grown with the maturity of my mind.
“You have surely guessed my feelings, my dear master. There has not been one important circumstance in my life or in that of my family, either happy or painful, which you have not, as it were, blessed by your presence and sympathy.
“Again to-day, you take the foremost rank in the expression of that testimony, very excessive, I think, of the esteem of my masters, who have become my friends. And what you have done for me, you have done for all your pupils; it is one of the distinctive traits of your nature. Behind the individual, you have always considered France and her greatness.
“What shall I do henceforth? Until now, great praise had inflamed my ardour, and only inspired me with the idea of making myself worthy of it by renewed efforts; but that which you have just given me in the names of the Académie and of the Scientific Societies is in truth beyond my courage.”
Pasteur, who for a year had been applauded by the crowd, received on that June 25, 1882, the testimony which he rated above every other: praise from his master.
Whilst he recalled the beneficent influence which Dumas had had over him, those who were sitting in his drawing-room at the Ecole Normale were thinking that Dumas might have evoked similar recollections with similar charm. He too had known enthusiasms which had illumined his youth. In 1822, the very year when Pasteur was born, Dumas, who was then living in a student’s attic at Geneva, received the visit of a man about fifty, dressed Directoire fashion, in a light blue coat with steel buttons, a white waistcoat and yellow breeches. It was Alexander von Humboldt, who had wished, on his way through Geneva, to see the young man who, though only twenty-two years old, had just published, in collaboration with Prévost, treatises on blood and on urea. That visit, the long conversations, or rather the monologues, of Humboldt had inspired Dumas with the feelings of surprise, pride, gratitude and devotion with which the first meeting with a great man is wont to fill the heart of an enthusiastic youth. When Dumas heard Humboldt speak of Laplace, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac, Arago, Thenard, Cuvier, etc., and describe them as familiarly accessible, instead of as the awe-inspiring personages he had imagined, Dumas became possessed with the idea of going to Paris, knowing those men, living near them and imbibing their methods. “On the day when Humboldt left Geneva,” Dumas used to say, “the town for me became empty.” It was thus that Dumas’ journey to Paris was decided on, and his dazzling career of sixty years begun.
He was now near the end of his scientific career, closing peacefully like a beautiful summer evening, and he was happy in the fame of his former pupil. As he left the Ecole Normale, on that June afternoon, he passed under the windows of the laboratory, where a few young men, imbued with Pasteur’s doctrines, represented a future reserve for the progress of science.
That year 1882 was the more interesting in Pasteur’s life, in that though victory on many points was quite indisputable, partial struggles still burst out here and there, and an adversary often arose suddenly when he had thought the engagement over.