Nisard, the Director of the school, could not very well tolerate this breach of discipline. In spite of the entreaties of Sainte Beuve, the student who had signed the letter was provisionally sent back to his family. His comrades revolted at this and imperiously demanded his immediate restoration. Pasteur attempted to pacify them by speaking to them, but failed utterly; his influence was very great over his own pupils, the students on the scientific side, but the others, the “littéraires,” were the most violent on this question, and he was not diplomatic and conciliating enough to bring them round. They rose in a body, marched to the door, and the whole school was soon parading the streets. “Before such disorder,” concluded the Moniteur, relating the incident (July 10), “the authorities were obliged to order an immediate closure. The school will be reconstituted and the classes will reopen on October 15.”
Both the literary and the political world were temporarily agitated; the Minister was interviewed. M. Thiers wrote to Pasteur on July 10: “My dear M. Pasteur,—I have been talking with some members of the Left, and I am certain or almost certain, that the Ecole Normale affair will be smoothed over in the interest of the students. M. Jules Simon intends to work in that direction; keep this information for yourself, and do the best you can on your side.”
At the idea that the Ecole was about to be reconstituted, that is, that the three great chiefs, Nisard, Pasteur and Jacquinet, would be changed, deep regret was manifested by Pasteur’s scientific students. One of them, named Didon, expressed it in these terms: “If your departure from the school is not definitely settled, if it is yet possible to prevent it, all the students of the Ecole will be only too happy to do everything in their power.... As for me, it is impossible to express my gratitude towards you. No one has ever shown me so much interest, and never in my life shall I forget what you have done for me.”
Pasteur’s interest in young men, his desire to excite in them scientific curiosity and enthusiasm, were now so well known that Didon and several others who had successfully passed the entrance examinations both for the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Normale, had chosen to enter the latter in order to be under him; by the Normaliens of the scientific section, he was not only understood and admired, but beloved, almost worshipped.
Sainte Beuve, who continued to be much troubled at the consequences of his speech, wrote to the Minister of Public Instruction in favour of the rusticated student. Duruy thought so much of Sainte Beuve that the student, instead of being exiled to some insignificant country school, was made professor of seconde in the college of Sens. But it was specified that in the future no letter should be written, no public responsibility taken in the name of the Ecole without the authorization of the Director.
Nisard left; Dumas had just been made President of the Monetary Commission, thus leaving vacant a place as Inspector-General of Higher Education. Duruy, anxious to do Pasteur justice, thought this post most suitable to him as it would allow him to continue his researches. The decree was about to be signed, when Balard, professor of chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences, applied for the post. Pasteur wrote respectfully to the Minister of Public Instruction (July 31): “Your Excellency must know that twenty years ago, when I left the Ecole Normale, I was made a curator, thanks to M. Balard, who was then a professor at the Ecole Normale. A grateful pupil cannot enter into competition with a revered master, especially for a post where considerations of age and experience should have great weight.”
When Pasteur spoke of his masters, dead or living, Biot or Senarmont, Dumas or Balard, it might indeed have been thought that to them alone he owed it that he was what he was. He was heard on this occasion, and Balard obtained the appointment.
Nisard was succeeded by M. F. Bouillier, whose place as Inspector-General of Secondary Education devolved on M. Jacquinet. The directorship of scientific studies was given to Pasteur’s old and excellent friend, the faithful Bertin. After teaching in Alsace for eighteen years, he had become maître des conférences at the Ecole Normale in 1866, and also assistant of Regnault at the Collège de France. It had only been by dint of much persuasion that Pasteur had enticed him to Paris. “What is the good?” said the unambitious Bertin; “beer is not so good in Paris as in Strasburg.... Pasteur does not understand life; he is a genius, that is all!” But, under this apparent indolence, Bertin was possessed of the taste for and the art of teaching; Pasteur knew this, and, when Bertin was appointed, Pasteur’s fears for the scientific future of his beloved Ecole were abated. Duruy, much regretting the break of Pasteur’s connection with the great school, offered him the post of maître des conférences, besides the chair of chemistry which Balard’s appointment had left vacant at the Sorbonne. But Pasteur declined the tempting offer; he knew the care and trouble that his public lectures cost him, and felt that the two posts would be beyond his strength; if his time were taken up by that double task it would be almost impossible for him to pursue his private researches, which under no circumstances would he abandon.
He carried his scruples so far as to give up his chemistry professorship at the School of Fine Arts, where he had been lecturing since 1863. He had endeavoured in his lessons to draw the attention of his artist pupils, who came from so many distant places, to the actual principles of Science. “Let us always make application our object,” he said, “but resting on the stern and solid basis of scientific principles. Without those principles, application is nothing more than a series of recipes and constitutes what is called routine. Progress with routine is possible, but desperately slow.”
Another reason prevented him from accepting the post offered him at the Ecole Normale; this was that the tiny pavilion which he had made his laboratory was much too small and too inconvenient to accommodate the pupils he would have to teach. The only suitable laboratory at the Ecole was that of his friend, Henri Sainte Claire Deville, and Pasteur was reluctant to invade it. He had a great affection for his brilliant colleague, who was indeed a particularly charming man, still youthful in spite of his forty-nine summers, active, energetic, witty. “I have no wit,” Pasteur would say quite simply. Deville was a great contrast to his two great friends, Pasteur and Claude Bernard, with their grave meditative manner. He enjoyed boarding at the Ecole and having his meals at the students’ table, where his gaiety brightened and amused everybody, effacing the distance between masters and pupils and yet never losing by this familiar attitude a particle of the respect he inspired.