An early departure was necessary: the broken ceilings were dropping to pieces, shaken off by an incessant vibration of the ground which continued after the second shock, and of which Pasteur observed the effect on glass windows with much interest. Pasteur and his family dove off to Vintimille in a carriage, along a road lined with ruined houses, crowded with sick people in quest of carriages and peasants coming down from their mountain dwellings, destroyed by the shock, leading donkeys loaded with bedding, the women followed by little children hastily wrapt in blankets and odd clothes. At Vintimille station, terrified travellers were trying to leave France for Italy or Italy for France, fancying that the danger would cease on the other side of the frontier.
“We have resolved to go to Arbois,” wrote Mme. Pasteur to her son from Marseilles; “your father will be better able there than anywhere else to recover from this shock to his heart.”
After a few weeks’ stay at Arbois, Pasteur seemed quite well again. He was received with respect and veneration on his return to the Academies of Sciences and of Medicine. His best and greatest colleagues had realized what the loss of him would mean to France and to the world, and surrounded him with an anxious solicitude.
At the beginning of July, Pasteur received the report presented to the House of Commons by the English Commission after a fourteen months’ study of the prophylactic method against hydrophobia. The English scientists had verified every one of the facts upon which the method was founded, but they had not been satisfied with their experimental researches in Mr. Horsley’s laboratory, and had carried out a long and minute inquiry in France. After noting on Pasteur’s registers the names of ninety persons treated, who had come from the same neighbourhood, they had interviewed each one of them in their own homes. “It may therefore be considered as certain”—thus ran the report—“that M. Pasteur has discovered a prophylactic method against hydrophobia which may be compared with that of vaccination against small-pox. It would be difficult to overestimate the utility of this discovery, both from the point of view of its practical side and of its application to general pathology. We have here a new method of inoculation, or vaccination, as M. Pasteur sometimes calls it, and similar means might be employed to protect man and domestic animals against other virus as active as that of hydrophobia.”
Pasteur laid this report on the desk of the Academy of Sciences on July 4. He spoke of its spirit of entire and unanimous confidence, and added—
“Thus fall to the ground the contradictions which have been published. I leave on one side the passionate attacks which were not justified by the least attempt at experiment, the slightest observation of facts in my laboratory, or even an exchange of words and ideas with the Director of the Hydrophobia Clinic, Professor Grancher, and his medical assistants.
“But, however deep is my satisfaction as a Frenchman, I cannot but feel a sense of deepest sadness at the thought that this high testimony from a commission of illustrious scientists was not known by him who, at the very beginning of the application of this method, supported me by his counsels and his authority, and who later on, when I was ill and absent, knew so well how to champion truth and justice; I mean our beloved colleague Vulpian.”
Vulpian had succumbed to a few days’ illness. His speech in favour of Pasteur was almost the farewell to the Academy of this great-hearted scientist.
The discussion threatened to revive. Other colleagues defended Pasteur at the Academy of Medicine on July 12. Professor Brouardel spoke, also M. Villemin, and then Charcot, who insisted on quoting word for word Vulpian’s true and simple phrase: “The discovery of the preventive treatment of hydrophobia after a bite, entirely due to M. Pasteur’s experimental genius, is one of the finest discoveries ever made, both from the scientific and the humanitarian point of view.” And Charcot continued: “I am persuaded that I express in these words the opinion of all the medical men who have studied the question with an open mind, free from prejudice; the inventor of antirabic vaccination may, now more than ever, hold his head high and continue to accomplish his glorious task, heedless of the clamour of systematic contradiction or of the insidious murmurs of slander.”
The Academy of Sciences begged Pasteur to become its Life Secretary in Vulpian’s place. Pasteur did not reply at once to this offer, but went to see M. Berthelot: “This high position,” he said, “would be more suitable to you than to me.” M. Berthelot, much touched, refused unconditionally, and Pasteur accepted. He was elected on July 18. He said, in thanking his colleagues, “I would now spend what time remains before me, on the one hand in encouraging to research and in training for scientific studies,—the future of which seems to me most promising,—pupils worthy of French science; and, on the other hand, in following attentively the work incited and encouraged by this Academy.