This is the seventh month that I have been ill and it brings my thoughts back to the gravity of my condition. I therefore continually realise how much satisfaction I have derived from life during my long years. The gradual disappearance of my "life-instinct," which already began a few years ago, is now more marked, more precise. I no longer feel that degree of pleasure which I felt only a few years ago. My affection for my nearest and dearest shows itself much more by the anxiety and suffering provoked by their diseases and sorrows than by the pleasure I derive from their joys or normal health. Those to whom I describe my feelings tell me that satiety with living is not normal at my age. To that I oppose the following: Longevity, at least to a certain point, is hereditary. Now I have already mentioned, on the occasion of my 70th anniversary, that my parents, sister, and brothers died before reaching my present age. I knew neither of my grandparents, which shows that they could not have been very old when they died. Let us now turn to the profession, since it is an established fact that it has an influence on the duration of life. Pasteur died at 72, but for a long time he had been unable to do scientific work. Koch did not reach the age of 67. Other bacteriologists died at a much earlier age than I (Duclaux, Nocard, Chamberland, Ehrlich, Büchner, Loeffler, Pfeiffer, Carl Fraenkel, Emmerich, Escherich). Among those bacteriologists of my generation who are still living the majority have already ceased from working. All that should indicate that my scientific life is over and confirm at the same time the fact that my "orthobiosis" has actually reached the desirable limit. He was anxious to prove that his end, which seemed premature at first sight, did not contradict his theories, but had deep causes such as heredity and the belated introduction of a rational diet. He had only begun to follow it at fifty-three. Facts corroborated him after his death, for the post-mortem examination showed that the heart lesions were of long standing. He himself thought they went back at least to 1881, when he had had a very grave relapsing fever. The doctors even wondered how he had lived with his heart in such a state, and only accounted for it by the strict régime which he had followed during the latter part of his life. And indeed when it is remembered how pugnacious, how vehement he was--always, so to speak, in a state of ebullition, feverishly active, intensely sensitive--it must be admitted that his life really held more than an ordinary life of longer duration. He was very desirous that the example of his serenity in the face of death should be encouraging and comforting. It should prove that, at the end of his vital cycle, man fears death no longer; it has lost its sting for him.