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15 - Louis Pasteur by Albert Keim, Louis Lumet · Louis Pasteur

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  Speaker 1: Section fifteen of Louis Pasteur by Albert Kheim and Louis Lumat,
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  Speaker 1: translated by Frederick Taber Cooper. This LibriVox recording is in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain recording by Pamela Nagami, Chapter eleven, The
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  Speaker 1: Last Days of a Great Man. Ever since his first
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  Speaker 1: attacks of paralysis, Pasteur had retained a certain heaviness in
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  Speaker 1: his movements, and while his brain was intact, experiments demanding
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  Speaker 1: a supreme manual dexterity had become difficult for him. He
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  Speaker 1: was forced regretfully to abandon his labors. Still unsatisfied with
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  Speaker 1: what he had achieved, and with his imagination still active
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  Speaker 1: and dreaming of discoveries that still evaded him. Pastor continued
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  Speaker 1: to follow the experiments of his disciples, which were born
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  Speaker 1: of his methods, But what he wanted was the power
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  Speaker 1: to push onward by himself to the extreme limits of
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  Speaker 1: a new path which his genius had laid open. However,
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  Speaker 1: he accepted his destiny without bitterness. He was able to
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  Speaker 1: share the delight of doctor Rue when the latter's labors
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  Speaker 1: resulted in the discovery of a vaccine for diphtheria, which
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  Speaker 1: had previously decimated the lives of children. Then krup was vanquished,
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  Speaker 1: just as rabies and antras had been before it. Thousands
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  Speaker 1: of existences, and those of the most precious sort for
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  Speaker 1: the future of the race slumbered in them, had thus
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  Speaker 1: been saved. Doctor Yersin, for his part, discovered the microbe
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  Speaker 1: of the plague, while the whole band of workers, who
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  Speaker 1: had come to be known as Pasturians, each following his
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  Speaker 1: individual aptitudes and tastes, rivaled one another in zealous service
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  Speaker 1: of science and humanity. It was at this period of
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  Speaker 1: researches and discoveries, based on his doctrines and his process
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  Speaker 1: cesses as an experimenter, that Louis Pasteur was attacked by
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  Speaker 1: the malady from which he was destined to die. On
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  Speaker 1: the first of November eighteen ninety four, he had an
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  Speaker 1: attack of euremia, and there followed a long, slow agony,
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  Speaker 1: lasting for months, with alternations of hope and despair. Pasteur
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  Speaker 1: endured it with Christian resignation, for science, in his case,
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  Speaker 1: had in no way destroyed faith, and throughout his life
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  Speaker 1: he had remained a practical Catholic. His pupils took turns
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  Speaker 1: in watching beside him, thus showing that he had not
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  Speaker 1: only been able to arouse their scientific enthusiasm, but had
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  Speaker 1: also attached them to him by his kindliness and bigness
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  Speaker 1: of heart. At the end of December, writes Monsieur vale Riradau,
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  Speaker 1: we began to have hope. On the first of January,
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  Speaker 1: after receiving all of his collaborators, down to the youngest
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  Speaker 1: of the laboratory attendants, Pasteur saw one of his colleagues
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  Speaker 1: of the Academie Francise enter the room. It was Alexandre
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  Speaker 1: duma He had a bouquet of roses with him and
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  Speaker 1: was accompanied by one of his daughters. I wanted to
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  Speaker 1: begin the year well, he said, I bring you all
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  Speaker 1: my best wishes. Ever since they first met twelve years
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  Speaker 1: before on a certain Thursday at the Academie Francaise, Alexandre
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  Speaker 1: Dumas and Pasteur had felt themselves mutually drawn toward each other. Pasteur,
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  Speaker 1: charmed at first by the swift deductions of his brilliant mind,
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  Speaker 1: had been surprised, touched, deeply moved by the courtesies and
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  Speaker 1: delicate attentions that were prompted by a heart which opened
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  Speaker 1: to friendship, all the more widely because it opened only
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  Speaker 1: in deep earnest Dumas, who had a wide experience of
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  Speaker 1: men loved and admired Pastor as a genius without pride
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  Speaker 1: and full of kindliness. On this new Year's afternoon, he
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  Speaker 1: fell to chatting with a cordiality that contained something of
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  Speaker 1: the unquenchable gaiety of his father. In this little chamber
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  Speaker 1: adjoining the laboratory, how remote he was from all the
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  Speaker 1: worlds that he had studied, the worlds inhabited by the
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  Speaker 1: class of beings. He had studied microbes in human form,
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  Speaker 1: as he called them, creatures that were either dangerous, ridiculous,
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  Speaker 1: or vile. Occasionally, however, he had shown upon the stage
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  Speaker 1: man as he might be, and as he ought to be,
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  Speaker 1: a montenlin, a clothed, poor, well meaning man out of
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  Speaker 1: place in our times. For back of this dramatic author
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  Speaker 1: was a man eager to exert a moral influence, back
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  Speaker 1: of the realist, a symbolist, back of the satirist, a mystic.
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  Speaker 1: After having hungered for glory, he placed higher than all
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  Speaker 1: else the desired to be useful, and the glance of
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  Speaker 1: his his blue eyes ordinarily cold and keen, seeming to
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  Speaker 1: penetrate one's most secret thoughts. This glance always on guard,
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  Speaker 1: always ironic, took on an expression of affectionate veneration for him,
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  Speaker 1: whom he called our dear and great Pastor. It is
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  Speaker 1: only those who are accustomed to tend the sick can
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  Speaker 1: know how much pleasure certain visits give them. That of
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  Speaker 1: Alexandre duma Pastor compared to a ray of sunshine. VI
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  Speaker 1: de Pasteur, the illustrious old man, still had a few
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  Speaker 1: more happy hours before him. But although he was removed
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  Speaker 1: to Villeneuve Letante, the change to the country brought no
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  Speaker 1: improvement to his condition, which had now become hopeless. Pasteur
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  Speaker 1: resigned himself to die, and nevertheless he took great care
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  Speaker 1: to hide his sufferings in order to spare the feelings
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  Speaker 1: of his family and his disciples. He was not, however,
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  Speaker 1: always master of his own emotions. Happening one evening to
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  Speaker 1: be alone with his grandchildren, the son and daughter of
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  Speaker 1: Monsieur and Madame val Rada, he took them in his
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  Speaker 1: arms and kissed them lingeringly, while heavy tears rolled slowly
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  Speaker 1: down the length of his pain racked face. When the
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  Speaker 1: startled children questioned him, the great man answered sorrowfully, I
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  Speaker 1: am weeping, my children, because I am so soon to
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  Speaker 1: leave you. It was during the afternoon of Wednesday, September
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  Speaker 1: twenty seventh, that the curee of gharsh was summoned to
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  Speaker 1: the side of pastor, whose end was felt to be
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  Speaker 1: very near. He received extreme unction. After having made confession
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  Speaker 1: to R. P. Boulange of the Dominican Order. He died
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  Speaker 1: the following morning at twenty minutes to five, after a
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  Speaker 1: brief agony. It was a universal calamity. Telegrams poured into
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  Speaker 1: the institute, and there is one of them when which
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  Speaker 1: must be cited in full, and which came from the
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  Speaker 1: establishment in Berlin, directed by doctor Koch, who had so
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  Speaker 1: often had occasion to combat him. Profoundly moved by the
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  Speaker 1: loss which is universally felt and which the pastor Institute
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  Speaker 1: has just sustained in the person of its gifted founder,
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  Speaker 1: the Berlin Institute of Infectious Diseases expresses its heartfelt participation
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  Speaker 1: in the general sorrow. The government decided that the obsequies
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  Speaker 1: of Louis Pasteur should be national and that this state
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  Speaker 1: should bear the expense. They were conducted with full official
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  Speaker 1: pomp and before an immense public gathering. On October fifth,
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  Speaker 1: eighteen ninety five, the religious ceremony presided over by Monseigneur Richard,
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  Speaker 1: was conducted at Notre Dame in the presence of the
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  Speaker 1: President of the Republic Feliksfort, the Great Duke Constantine of Russia,
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  Speaker 1: and Prince Nicholas of Greece. At its conclusion, Monsieur point
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  Speaker 1: Garrey delivered an admirable address in the name of the government,
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  Speaker 1: beside the bier, where it rested before the threshold of
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  Speaker 1: Notre Dame. Science, he said, will never weary, Messieur of
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  Speaker 1: admiring in the genius of Pasteur, the combined force of
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  Speaker 1: a creative imagination and the most rigorous experimental method. He
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  Speaker 1: had sudden inspirations which bore him on toward unexpected discoveries.
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  Speaker 1: He had instincts of divination which pushed him forward along
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  Speaker 1: unexplored paths. He had swift, headlong rushes of thought that
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  Speaker 1: overleaped and anticipated the establishment of the truth, prepared the
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  Speaker 1: way for it, made its attainment more rapid and more sure.
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  Speaker 1: But when a scientific problem had taken shape before him
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  Speaker 1: in one of those general lashes of illumination, he never
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  Speaker 1: considered it as solved until he had questioned all nature,
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  Speaker 1: until he had classified or eliminated all of the facts.
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  Speaker 1: Until he had forced them each and every one to
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  Speaker 1: give him an answer. He was careful to guard against
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  Speaker 1: any philosophical prejudice that might hamper the sincerity of his observations.
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  Speaker 1: The experimental method, he declared in his address at the
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  Speaker 1: time of his reception at the Academie, should be detached
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  Speaker 1: from all metaphysical speculation, and while claiming for his conscience
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  Speaker 1: the right to assert loudly its spiritual and religious convictions,
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  Speaker 1: he claimed no less energetically the prerogatives of liberty on
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  Speaker 1: behalf of science, and it was really the unrestrained curiosity
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  Speaker 1: of his searching mind, spurred on by his inventive powers,
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  Speaker 1: and seconded by his scrupulous research for objective truths, that
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  Speaker 1: guided him through the long and brilliant evolution of his
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  Speaker 1: scientific labors. Happy is he said pasteur Happy is he
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  Speaker 1: who carries within him his own ideal and lives in
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  Speaker 1: obedience to it throughout his life. Pastor himself lived in
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  Speaker 1: obedience to the highest and purest of ideals in science
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  Speaker 1: and virtue in charity. All his thoughts and all his
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  Speaker 1: actions were illumined by the reflected rays of that inner flame.
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  Speaker 1: He owed his greatness to his sensibilities and posterity will
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  Speaker 1: assign him a place in the radiant line of apostles
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  Speaker 1: of goodness and of truth. The body of Louis Pasteur
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  Speaker 1: was interred in the Institute, and there he lies in
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  Speaker 1: the cold and austere crypt, while men of learning, inspired
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  Speaker 1: by his genius, continue and carry toward completion his work
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  Speaker 1: that was so prolific for the advance of science and
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  Speaker 1: for the good of humanity. The illustrious Savant was one
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  Speaker 1: of the greatest of modern heroes, and we may well conclude,
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  Speaker 1: with the words of Emil Duclos, there is no other
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  Speaker 1: example in science of a savant who has been privileged
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  Speaker 1: to see the domain which he discovered expand and bear
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  Speaker 1: fruit to such an extent. Perhaps Lavoisier, whose name comes
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  Speaker 1: naturally to mind and speaking of Pastor, might have had
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  Speaker 1: the joy of seeing himself equally great if he had
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  Speaker 1: been able to keep on to the end of his career.
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  Speaker 1: The only exact comparison is that of a Napoleon, dying
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  Speaker 1: triumphant in the midst of Europe, permanently conquered and pacified.
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  Speaker 1: Even that vision, magnificent as it is, is incomplete. Pastor
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  Speaker 1: conquered the world, yet his glory did not cost a
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  Speaker 1: single tear. End end of section fifteen recording by Pamela
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  Speaker 1: and Agami in Encino, California, February two thousand and seventeen,
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  Speaker 1: and of Louis Pasteur by Alberkaim and Louis Lumet, translated
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  Speaker 1: by Frederick Taber Cooper