Louis Pasteur: His Life and LaboursVallery-Radot, René
Science
Louis Pasteur: His Life and Labours
Vallery-Radot, René
Pasteur, Louis, 1822-1895; Scientists -- France -- Biography
But opposition still continued. The French Government, shaken by the
violence and tenacity of the opponents, hesitated to decide upon this
process of culture. The Emperor interposed; he instructed Marshal
Vaillant to propose to Pasteur to go into Austria to the Villa
Vicentina, which belonged to the Prince Imperial. For ten years the
silk harvest at this place had not sufficed to pay the cost of eggs.
Pasteur accepted with joy the prospect of a great decisive experiment.
He traversed France and Italy, reclining in a railway carriage or in
an arm-chair, and at last arrived at the Imperial villa near Trieste.
Pasteur succeeded in a marvellous manner. The sale of the cocoons gave
to the villa a net profit of twenty-six million francs. The Emperor,
impressed with the practical value of the system, nominated Pasteur
a Senator, in the month of July 1870. But this nomination, like so
many other things, was swept away before it had time to appear in the
'Journal Officiel.' Pasteur, however, cared little for the title of
Senator. He returned to France on the eve of the declaration of war.
A patriot to the heart's core, he learned with poignant grief the news
of his country's disasters. The bulletins of defeat, which succeeded
each other with mournful monotony, threw him into deep despair. For the
first time in his life he had not the strength to work. He lived at his
little house in Arbois as one completely vanquished. Those who went
into his room found him often bathed in tears. On January 18, 1871,
he wrote, to the Dean of the Academy of Medicine at the University of
Bonn, a letter in which all his grief and all his pride as a Frenchman
were displayed, requesting him to withdraw the diploma of German doctor
which the Faculty of Medicine of the University had conferred upon him
in 1868. Whilst he wrote this letter, which was a cry of patriotism,
his son, enrolled as a volunteer, though hardly eighteen years of age,
was gallantly doing his duty in the Army of the East.
_STUDIES ON BEER._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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