The laboratory was built, but Pasteur’s own work was done; his triumph was too much for him; it was a kind of trigger, perhaps, that snapped the strain of forty years of never before heard-of ceaseless searching. He died in 1895 in a little house near the kennels where they now kept his rabid dogs, at Villeneuve l’Etang, just outside of Paris. His end was that of the devout Catholic, the mystic he had always been. In one hand he held a crucifix and in the other lay the hand of the most patient, obscure and important of his collaborators--Madame Pasteur. Around him, too, were Roux and Chamberland and those other searchers he had worn to tatters with his restless energy, those faithful ones he had abused, whom he had above all inspired; and these men who had risked their lives in the carrying out of his wild forays against death would now have died to save him, if they could. That was the perfect end of this so human, so passionately imperfect hunter of microbes and saver of lives. But there is another end of his career that I like to think of more--and that was the day, in 1892, of Pasteur’s seventieth birthday--when a medal was given to him at a great meeting held to honor him, at the Sorbonne in Paris. Lister was there, and many other famous men from other nations, and in tier upon tier, above these magnificoes who sat in the seats of honor, were the young men of France--the students of the Sorbonne and the colleges and the high schools. There was a great buzz of young voices--all at once a hush, as Pasteur limped up the aisle, leaning on the arm of the President of the French Republic. And then--it is the kind of business that is usually pulled off to welcome generals and that kind of hero who has directed the futile butchering of thousands of enemies--the band of the Republican Guard blared out into a triumphal march. Lister, the prince of surgeons, rose from his seat and hugged Pasteur and the gray-bearded important men and the boys in the top galleries cried and shook the walls with the roar of their cheering. At last the old microbe hunter gave his speech--the voice of the fierce arguments was gone and his son had to speak it for him--and his last words were a hymn of hope, not so much for the saving of life as a kind of religious cry for a new way of life for men. It was to the students, to the boys of the high schools he was calling: “... Do not let yourselves be tainted by a deprecating and barren skepticism, do not let yourselves be discouraged by the sadness of certain hours which pass over nations. Live in the serene peace of laboratories and libraries. Say to yourselves first: What have I done for my instruction? and, as you gradually advance, What have I done for my country? until the time comes when you may have the immense happiness of thinking that you have contributed in some way to the progress and good of humanity....” CHAPTER VI ROUX AND BEHRING