"The department of original work is in the third story, and is under Doctor Metchnikoff, who is, you know, a Russian who has established himself here in order to devote himself to scientific investigation. Doctor Metchnikoff is aided by his wife, who acts as _preparateur_. She is an assistant of great skill and delicacy. He receives no salary for his labor. There are, in fact, three of the leading members of our faculty who receive no salary--M. Pasteur himself, M. Ducloux, and M. Metchnikoff. They have resigned the award they deserve because of our insufficient income." "But the common opinion is that you are rich here." "I know, but it is a mistake. The Pasteur Institute is very poorly endowed. Its yearly income is only about twenty-four thousand dollars. This revenue comes from three sources: the small appropriations made by the government, the income from the remnant of the private subscription with which it was built, and the product of the sales of vaccine. The fact that we can partly support ourselves," added the doctor, laughingly, "is the best proof one can have of the practicability of bacteriology. "The most surprising feature about it is, that in the case of almost every institution copied after us, and there are some eighteen or twenty of them in various parts of the world, the income is much larger than ours. At Berlin and St. Petersburg the incomes are four or five times as large as ours, and, excepting Berlin, we are the only Pasteur Institute doing practical work. It is the old story," said the doctor resignedly, "one sows and another reaps." [Illustration: M. ROUX.] There is certainly injustice and short-sightedness in such a state of things. The investigations of Pasteur have taken too heavy a bundle from the load of horrors which humanity carries, to be allowed to be limited for lack of money: Immunity from infectious diseases, and nothing else is the logical outcome of the Pasteur doctrines, means too much to make economy on the part of purse-holders excusable, when it is a question of funds for the investigations. When men like Doctor Roux and his associates, men trained in the severe Pasteur spirit and passionate for truth, are ready to sacrifice their lives to this work, overcoming the earth's plagues, money is the last thing they should be wanting. Especially is this true now, when the work on two of the most terrible scourges of humanity--diphtheria and cholera--stands at critical stages. There is something harshly ironical, too, in the idea that the institution of Louis Pasteur, whose discoveries have, declares Professor Huxley, made good the war indemnity of five thousand million francs paid by France to Germany, should be crippled for funds. The doctor's confidences were cut short by an imperative summons from without. I rose to go. "Take a stroll through the building," advised he as he said good-by. I followed his advice. [Illustration: DOSING THE VIRUS.]