Louis Pasteur’s earliest recollections dated from that time; he could remember running joyously along the Aiglepierre road. The Pasteur family did not remain long at Marnoz. A tannery was to let in the neighbourhood by the town of Arbois, near the bridge which crosses the Cuisance, and only a few kilometres from the source of the river. The house, behind its modest frontage, presented the advantage of a yard where pits had been dug for the preparation of the skins. Joseph Pasteur took this little house and settled there with his wife and children.
Louis Pasteur was sent at first to the “Ecole Primaire” attached to the college of Arbois. Mutual teaching was then the fashion; scholars were divided into groups: one child taught the rudiments of reading to others, who then spelt aloud in a sort of sing-song. The master, M. Renaud, went from group to group designating the monitors. Louis soon desired to possess this title, perhaps all the more so because he was the smallest scholar. But those who would decorate the early years of Louis Pasteur with wonderful legends would be disappointed: when a little later he attended the daily classes at the Arbois college he belonged merely to the category of good average pupils. He took several prizes without much difficulty; he rather liked buying new lesson books, on the first page of which he proudly wrote his name. His father, who wished to instruct himself as well as to help his son, helped him with his home preparation. During holidays, the boy enjoyed his liberty. Some of his schoolfellows—Vercel, Charrière, Guillemin, Coulon—called for him to come out with them and he followed them with pleasure. He delighted in fishing parties on the Cuisance, and much admired the net throwing of his comrade Jules Vercel. But he avoided bird trapping; the sight of a wounded lark was painful to him.
The doors of Louis Pasteur’s home were not usually open except to his schoolboy friends, who, when they did not fetch him away, used to come and play in the tannery yard with remnants of bark, stray bits of iron, etc. Joseph Pasteur, though not considered a proud man, did not easily make friends. His language and manners were not those of a retired sergeant; he never spoke of his campaigns and never entered a café. On Sundays, wearing a military-looking frock coat, spotlessly clean and adorned with the showy ribbon of the Legion of Honour (worn very large at that time), he invariably walked out towards the road from Arbois to Besançon. This road passes between vine-planted hills. On the left, on a wooded height above the wide plain towards Dôle, the ruins of the Vadans tower invest the whole landscape with a lingering glamour of heroic times. In these solitary meditations, he dwelt more anxiously on the future than on present difficulties, the latter being of little account in this hard-working family. What would become of this son of his, conscientious and studious, but, though already thirteen years old, with no apparent preference for anything but drawing? The epithet of artist given to Louis Pasteur by his Arboisian friends only half pleased the paternal vanity. And yet it is impossible not to be struck by the realism of his first original effort, a very bold pastel drawing. This pastel represents Louis’ mother, one morning that she was going to market, with a white cap and a blue and green tartan shawl. Her son insisted on painting her just as she was. The portrait is full of sincerity and not unlike the work of a conscientious pre-Raphaelite. The powerful face is illumined by a pair of clear straightforward eyes.
Though they did not entertain mere acquaintances, the husband and wife were happy to receive those who seemed to them worthy of affection or esteem by reason of some superiority of the mind or of the heart. In this way they formed a friendship with an old army doctor then practising in the Arbois hospital, Dr. Dumont, a man who studied for the sake of learning and who did a great deal of good while avoiding popularity.
Another familiar friend was a philosopher named Bousson de Mairet. An indefatigable reader, he never went out without a book or pamphlet in his pocket. He spent his life in compiling from isolated facts annals in which the characteristics of the Francs-Comtois, and especially the Arboisians, were reproduced in detail, with labour worthy of a Benedictine monk. He often came to spend a quiet evening with the Pasteur family, who used to question him and to listen to his interesting records of that strange Arboisian race, difficult to understand, presenting as it does a mixture of heroic courage and that slightly ironical good humour which Parisians and Southerners mistake for naïveness. Arboisians never distrust themselves, but are sceptical where others are concerned. They are proud of their local history, and even of their rodomontades.
For instance, on August 4, 1830, they sent an address to the Parisians to express their indignation against the “Ordonnances”[2] and to assure them that all the available population of Arbois was ready to fly to the assistance of Paris. In April, 1834, a lawyer’s clerk, passing one evening through Arbois by the coach, announced to a few gardes nationaux who were standing about that the Republic was proclaimed at Lyons. Arbois immediately rose in arms; the insurgents armed themselves with guns from the Hôtel de Ville. Louis Pasteur watched the arrival from Besançon of 200 grenadiers, four squadrons of light cavalry, and a small battery of artillery sent to reduce the rebels. The sous-préfet of Poligny having asked the rioters who were their leaders, they answered with one voice, “We are all leaders.” A few days later the great, the good news was published in all the newspapers: “Arbois, Lyons, and Paris are pacified.” The Arboisians called their neighbours “the Braggarts of Salins,” probably with the ingenious intention of turning such a well-deserved accusation from themselves.
Louis Pasteur, whose mind already had a serious bent, preferred to these recent anecdotes such historical records as that of the siege of Arbois under Henry IV, when the Arboisians held out for three whole days against a besieging army of 25,000 men. His childish imagination, after being worked upon by these stories of local patriotism, eagerly seized upon ideals of a higher patriotism, and fed upon the glory of the French people as represented by the conquests of the Empire.
He watched his parents, day by day working under dire necessity and ennobling their weary task by considering their children’s education almost as essential as their daily bread; and, as in all things the father and mother took an interest in noble motives and principles, their material life was lightened and illumined by their moral life.
One more friend, the headmaster of Arbois college, M. Romanet, exerted a decisive influence on Louis Pasteur’s career. This master, who was constantly trying to elevate the mind and heart of his pupils, inspired Louis with great admiration as well as with respect and gratitude. Romanet considered that whilst instruction doubled a man’s value, education, in the highest sense of the word, increased it tenfold. He was the first to discover in Louis Pasteur the hidden spark that had not yet revealed itself by any brilliant success in the hardworking schoolboy. Louis’ mind worked so carefully that he was considered slow; he never affirmed anything of which he was not absolutely sure; but with all his strength and caution he also had vivid imaginative faculties.
Romanet, during their strolls round the college playground, took pleasure in awakening with an educator’s interest the leading qualities of this young nature—circumspection and enthusiasm. The boy, who had been sitting over his desk with all-absorbing attention, now listened with sparkling eyes to the kind teacher talking to him of his future and opening to him the prospect of the great Ecole Normale.[3]