To show him my cellar! My private cellar! And I, poor wretch, but a while ago, with my preposterous professor’s salary, could not even permit myself the expense of a drop of wine, so that I used to make myself a sort of rough cider, by placing a jar, to ferment, a handful of brown sugar and some grated apples! My cellar! Show him my cellar! Why not my tuns of wine, my dusty bottles, labelled according to age and vintage! My cellar! Completely confused, I tried to evade his request, to change the subject. But he was tenacious. “Show me your cellar, I beg you.” There was no possibility of resisting such insistence. With my finger I pointed to a corner of the kitchen where there was a chair without a seat, and on the chair a demijohn holding a couple of gallons. “There’s my cellar, monsieur!” “Your cellar? That?” “I have no other.” “That’s all?” “Alas, yes. That’s all!” “Ah!” “Not a word more from the scientist. Pasteur, it was easy to see, knew nothing of those highly-flavoured dishes which the common people call la vache enragée. If my cellar, that is the old chair and the hollow-sounding demijohn, had nothing to tell concerning the ferments to be fought by means of heat, it spoke very eloquently of another subject, which my illustrious visitor did not appear to understand. One microbe evaded him, and it was one of the most terrible; the microbe of misfortune strangling good will.” [75] It is told of one of our most famous dramatists who, like Fabre, is a self-made man, having raised himself by persistent effort from the workshop to the Academy, that when he was struggling against the difficulties of the first steps upward, he had also to contend against the impassive coldness of eminent colleagues from whom he might have expected some support. “Young man,” said one of these—and he was not one of the least illustrious—“young man, la vache enragée is excellent; to help you would be to spoil you.” No doubt the vache enragée, like the method d’ignorance, may have its virtues. The story of Fabre’s career, and of Brieux’, goes to prove as much. But of this sort of discipline, like that which extols the advantages of ignorance, we may remark that one may have too much of it; that it succeeds only on condition of being applied with moderation and discretion. A robust child of the Rouergat peasantry, such as Fabre, is capable of enduring an abnormal dose with unusual results. But under too great strain steel of the toughest temper is in danger of being broken or fatigued. In hours of difficulty and suffering, if they are unduly prolonged, the most resolute and courageous feel the need of an encouraging voice, and a hand outstretched to give the moral or even the material help with which one cannot always dispense with impunity.