Then Pasteur was made Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Sciences in Lille and there he settled down in the Street of the Flowers, and it was here that he ran, or rather stumbled for the first time, upon microbes; it was in this good solid town of distillers and sugar-beet raisers and farm implement dealers that he began his great campaign, part science, part drama and romance, part religion and politics, to put microbes on the map. It was from this not too interesting middle sized city--never noted for learning--that he splashed up a great wave of excitement about microbes that rocked the boat of science for thirty years. He showed the world how important microbes were to it, and in doing this he made enemies and worshipers; his name filled the front pages of newspapers and he received challenges to duels; the public made vast jokes about his precious microbes while his discoveries were saving the lives of countless women in childbirth. In short it was here he hopped off in his flight to immortality. When he left Strasbourg truth was tricking him and he was confused. He came to Lille and fairly stumbled on to the road to fame--by offering help to a beet-sugar distiller. When Pasteur settled in Lille he was told by the authorities that highbrow science was all right-- “But what we want, what this enterprising city of Lille wants most of all, professor,” you can hear the Committee of business men telling him, “is a close coöperation between your science and our industries. What we want to know is--does science pay? Raise our sugar yield from our beets and give us a bigger alcohol output, and we’ll see you and your laboratory are taken care of.” Pasteur listened politely and then proceeded to show them the stuff he was made of. He was much more than a man of science! Think of a committee of business men asking Isaac Newton to show them how his laws of motion were going to help their iron works! That shy thinker would have thrown up his hands and set himself to studying the meaning of the prophecies of the Book of Daniel at once. Faraday would have gone back to his first job as a bookbinder’s apprentice. But Pasteur was no shrinking flower. A child of the nineteenth century, he understood that science had to earn its bread and butter, and he started to make himself popular with everybody by giving thrilling lectures to the townspeople on science: