“Why, it makes a noise!” he said, quite surprised. “There’s something inside!” “Of course there is.” “What is it?” “The chrysalis.” “How do you mean, the chrysalis?” “I mean the sort of mummy into which the caterpillar changes before becoming a moth.” “And has every cocoon one of those things inside it?” “Obviously. It is to protect the chrysalis that the caterpillar spins.” “Really!” And, without more words, the cocoons passed into the pocket of the savant, who was to instruct himself at his leisure touching that great novelty, the chrysalis. I was struck by this magnificent assurance. Pasteur had come to regenerate the silk-worm, while knowing nothing about caterpillars, cocoons, chrysalises or metamorphoses. The ancient gymnasts came naked to the fight. The talented combatant of the plague of our silk-worm nurseries hastened to the battle likewise naked, that is to say, destitute of the simplest notions about the insect which he was to deliver from danger. I was staggered; nay, more, I was wonderstruck. I was not so much amazed by what followed. Pasteur was occupied at the time with another question, that of the improvement of wine by heating. Suddenly changing the conversation: “Show me your cellar,” he said. I! I show my cellar, my private cellar, poor I, who, in those days, with my pitiful teacher’s salary, could not indulge in the luxury of a little wine and brewed myself a sort of small cider by setting a handful of moist sugar and some apples already steeped in spoilt cider to ferment in a cask! My cellar! Show my cellar! Why not my barrels, my cobwebbed bottles, each labelled with its age and vintage! My cellar! Full of confusion, I avoided the request and tried to turn the conversation. But he persisted: “Show me your cellar, please.” There was no resisting such firmness. I pointed with my finger to a corner in the kitchen where stood a chair with no seat to it; and, on that chair, a demi-john containing two or three gallons: “That’s my cellar, sir.” “Is that your cellar?” “I have no other.” “Is that all?” “Yes, that is all, alas!” “Really!” Not a word more; nothing further from the savant. Pasteur, that was evident, had never tasted the highly-spiced dish which the vulgar call la vache enragée. Though my cellar—the dilapidated chair and the more than half-empty demi-john—said nothing about the fermentation to be combated by heating, it spoke eloquently of another thing which my illustrious visitor seemed not to understand. A microbe escaped from it and a very terrible microbe: that of ill-fortune strangling good-will.