The experiments were successful. Pasteur’s life was now over full. He returned to Paris at the beginning of October, and threw himself into his work, his classes at the Sorbonne, the organization of his laboratory, some further polemics on the subject of silkworm disease, and projected experiments for the following year. This accumulation of mental work brought about extreme cerebral tension.
As soon as he saw M. Gernez, he spoke to him of the coming campaign of sericiculture, of his desire to reduce his adversaries to silence by heaping proof upon proof. Nothing could relieve him from that absorbing preoccupation, not even the gaiety of Bertin, who, living on the same floor at the Ecole Normale, often used to come in after dinner and try to amuse him.
On Monday, October 19, Pasteur, though suffering from a strange tingling sensation of the left side, had a great desire to go and read to the Academié des Sciences a treatise by Salimbeni, an Italian, who, having studied and verified Pasteur’s results, declared that the best means of regenerating the culture of silkworms was due to the French scientist. This treatise, the diploma of the Bonn University, the Rumford medal offered by the English, all those testimonials from neighbouring nations were infinitely agreeable to Pasteur, who was proud to lay such homage before the shrine of France. On that day, October 19, 1868, a date which became a bitter memory to his family and friends—in spite of an alarming shivering fit which had caused him to lie down immediately after lunch instead of working as usual—he insisted on going to the Academy sitting at half past two.
Mme. Pasteur, vaguely uneasy, made a pretext of some shopping beyond the Quai Conti and accompanied him as far as the vestibule of the Institute. As she was turning back, she met Balard, who was coming up with the quick step of a young man, stopped him and asked him to walk back with Pasteur, and not to leave him before reaching his own door, though indeed it seemed a curious exchange of parts to ask Balard at sixty years of age to watch over Pasteur still so young. Pasteur read Salimbeni’s paper in his usual steady voice, remained until the end of the sitting and walked back with Balard and Sainte Claire Deville. He dined very lightly and went to bed at nine o’clock; he had hardly got into bed when he felt himself attacked by the strange symptoms of the afternoon. He tried to speak, but in vain; after a few moments he was able to call for assistance. Mme. Pasteur sent at once for Dr. Godélier, an intimate friend of the family, an army surgeon, Clinical Professor at the Ecole du Val-de-Grâce[27]; and Pasteur, paralysed one moment and free again the next, explained his own symptoms during the intervals of the dark struggle which endangered his life.
The cerebral hæmorrhage gradually brought about absence of movement along the entire left side. When the next morning Dr. Noël Gueneau de Mussy, going his regulation round of the Ecole Normale students, came into his room and said, so as not to alarm him, “I heard you were unwell, and thought I would come to see you,” Pasteur smiled the sad smile of a patient with no illusions. Drs. Godélier and Gueneau de Mussy decided to call Dr. Andral in consultation, and went to fetch him at three o’clock at the Académie de Médecine. Somewhat disconcerted by the singular character of this attack of hemiplegia, Andral prescribed the application of sixteen leeches behind the ears; blood flowed abundantly, and Dr. Godélier wrote in the evening bulletin (Tuesday): “Speech clearer, some movements of the paralysed limbs; intelligence perfect.” Later, at ten o’clock: “Complains of his paralysed arm.” “It is like lead; if it could only be cut off!” groaned Pasteur. About 2 a.m. Mme Pasteur thought all hope was gone. The hastily written bulletin reads thus: “Intense cold, anxious agitation, features depressed, eyes languid.” The sleep which followed was as the sleep of death.
At dawn Pasteur awoke from this drowsiness. “Mental faculties still absolutely intact,” wrote M. Godélier at 12.30 on Wednesday, October 21. “The cerebral lesion, whatever it may be, is not worse; there is an evident pause.” Two hours later the words, “Mind active,” were followed by the startling statement, “Would willingly talk science.”
While these periods of calm, agitation, renewed hopes, and despair were succeeding each other in the course of those thirty-six hours, Pasteur’s friends hastened to his bedside. He said to Henri Sainte Claire Deville, one of the first to come: “I am sorry to die; I wanted to do much more for my country.” Sainte Claire Deville, trying to hide his grief under apparent confidence, answered, “Never fear; you will recover, you will make many more marvellous discoveries, you will live happy days; I am your senior, you will survive me. Promise me that you will pronounce my funeral oration.... I wish you would; you would say nice things of me,” he added between tears and smiles.
Bertin, Gernez, Duclaux, Baulin, Didon, then a curator at the Ecole Normale, Professor Auguste Lamy, the geologist Marcou (the two latter being Franche-comté friends), all claimed the privilege of helping Mme. Pasteur and M. Godélier in nursing one who inspired them all, not merely with an admiring and devoted affection, but with a feeling of tenderness amounting almost to a cult.
A private letter from a cousin, Mme. Cribier, gives an idea of those dark days (October 26, 1868): “The news is rather good this morning; the patient was able to sleep for a few hours last night, which he had not yet done. He had been so restless all day that M. Godélier felt uneasy about him and ordered complete silence in the whole flat; it was only in the study which is farthest away from the bedroom, and which has padded doors, that one was allowed to talk. That room is full from morning till night. All scientific Paris comes to inquire anxiously after the patient; intimate friends take it in turns to watch by him. Dumas, the great chemist, was affectionately insisting on taking his turn yesterday. Every morning the Emperor and Empress send a footman for news, which M. Godélier gives him in a sealed envelope. In fact, every mark of sympathy is given to poor Marie, and I hope that the worst may be spared her in spite of the alarming beginning. His mind seems so absolutely untouched, and he is still so young, that with rest and care he might yet be able to do some work. His stroke is accompanied by symptoms which are now occupying the attention of the whole Academy of Medicine. Paralysis always comes abruptly, whilst for M. Pasteur, it came in little successive fits, twenty or thirty perhaps, and was only complete at the end of twenty-four hours, which completely disconcerted the doctors who watched him, and delayed their having recourse to an active treatment. It seems that this fact is observed for the first time, and is puzzling the whole Faculty.”
M. Pasteur’s mind remained clear, luminous, dominating his prostrate body; he was evidently afraid that he should die before having thoroughly settled the question of silkworm diseases. “One night that I was alone with him,” relates M. Gernez, who hardly left his bedside during that terrible week, “after endeavouring in vain to distract his thoughts, I despairingly gave up the attempt and allowed him to express the ideas which were on his mind; finding, to my surprise, that they had his accustomed clearness and conciseness, I wrote what he dictated without altering a word, and the next day I brought to his illustrious colleague, Dumas—who hardly credited his senses—the memorandum which appeared in the report of the Académie on October 26, 1868, a week after the stroke which nearly killed him! It was a note on a very ingenious process for discovering in the earlier tests those eggs which are predisposed to flachery.”