But away in Berlin there toiled another Émile--the Germans leave off the last “e”--Emil August Behring. He worked in Koch’s laboratory, in the dilapidated building called the “Triangel” in the Schumann street. Here great things were stirring. Koch was there, no longer plain Doctor Koch of Wollstein, but now a Herr Professor, an eminent Privy Councilor. But his hat still fitted him; he peered through his spectacles, saying little; he was enormously respected, and against his own judgment he was trying to convince himself he had discovered a cure for tuberculosis. The authorities (scientists have reason occasionally to curse all authorities no matter how benevolent) were putting pressure on him. At least so it is whispered now by veteran microbe hunters who were there and remember those brave times. “We have showered you with medals and microscopes and guinea-pigs--take a chance now, and give us a big cure, for the glory of the Fatherland, as Pasteur has done for the glory of France!” It was ominous stuff like this Koch was always hearing. He listened at last, and who can blame him, for what man can remain at his proper business of finding out the ways of microbes with Governments bawling for a place in the sun--or with mothers calling? So Koch listened and prepared his own disaster by telling the world about his “Tuberculin.” But at the same time he guided his youngsters in fine jobs they were doing--and among these young men was Emil August Behring. How Koch pointed the gun of his cold marvelous criticism at that poet’s searchings! And what a house of microbe hunters it was, that dingy Triangel! Its walls shook under the arguments and guttural cries and incessant experiments of Koch’s young men. Paul Ehrlich was there, smoking myriads of cigars, smearing his clothes and his hands and even his face with a prismatic array of dyes, making bold experiments to find out how baby mice inherit immunity to certain vegetable poisons from their mothers.... Kitasato, the round-faced Japanese, was shooting lock-jaw bacilli into the tails of mice and solemnly amputating these infected tails--to see whether the creatures would perish from the poisons the microbes had made while the tails were still attached.... And there were many others there, some forgotten and some whose names are now famous. With a vengeance the Germans were setting out to beat the French, to bury them under a vast confusion of experiments, to save mankind first.