I have now followed, I questioned my memory and endeavoured to revive their advice, and it seemed to me that they would not have disowned me.” M. Duclaux said about this meeting: “Pasteur has since then won many oratorical victories. I do not know of a greater one than that deserved by that acute and penetrating improvisation. He was still much heated as we were walking back to the Rue d’Ulm, and I remember making him laugh by asking him why, in the state of mind he was in, he had not concluded by hurling his wooden crystals at his adversaries’ heads.” On December 8, 1862, Pasteur was elected a member of the Académie des Sciences; out of sixty voters he received thirty-six suffrages. The next morning, when the gates of the Montparnasse cemetery were opened, a woman walked towards Biot’s grave with her hands full of flowers. It was Mme. Pasteur who was bringing them to him who lay there since February 5, 1862, and who had loved Pasteur with so deep an affection. A letter picked up at a sale of autographs, one of the last Biot wrote, gives a finishing touch to his moral portrait. It is addressed to an unknown person discouraged with this life. “Sir,--The confidence you honour me with touches me. But I am not a physician of souls. However, in my opinion, you could not do better than seek remedies to your moral suffering in work, religion, and charity. A useful work taken up with energy and persevered in will revive by occupation the forces of your mind. Religious feelings will console you by inspiring you with patience. Charity manifested to others will soften your sorrows and teach you that you are not alone to suffer in this life. Look around you, and you will see afflicted ones more to be pitied than yourself. Try to ease their sufferings; the good you will do to them will fall back upon yourself and will show you that a life which can thus be employed is not a burden which cannot, which must not be borne.”