One of Raulin’s fellow students at the Ecole Normale, M. Gernez, was now a professor at the Collège Louis le Grand. His mind was eminently congenial to Pasteur’s. Duruy, then Minister of Public Instruction, was ever anxious to smooth down all difficulties in the path of science: he gave a long leave of absence to M. Gernez, in order that he might take Raulin’s place. Another young _Normalien_, Maillot, prepared to join the scientific party, much to his delight. The three men left Paris at the beginning of February. They began by spending a few days in an hotel at Alais, trying to find a suitable house where they would set up their temporary laboratory. After a week or two in a house within the town, too far, to be convenient, from the restaurant where they had their meals, Maillot discovered a lonely house at the foot of the Mount of the Hermitage, a mountain once covered with flourishing mulberry trees, but now abandoned, and growing but a few olive trees. This house, at Pont Gisquet, not quite a mile from Alais, was large enough to hold Pasteur, his family and his pupils; a laboratory was soon arranged in an empty orangery. “Then began a period of intense work,” writes M. Gernez. “Pasteur undertook a great number of trials, which he himself followed in their minutest details; he only required our help over similar operations by which he tested his own. The result was that above the fatigues of the day, easily borne by us strong young men, he had to bear the additional burden of special researches, importunate visitors, and an equally importunate correspondence, chiefly dealing out criticisms....” Madame Pasteur, who had been detained in Paris for her children’s education, set out for Alais with her two daughters. Her mother being then on a visit to the rector of the Chambéry Academy, M. Zevort, she arranged to spend a day or two in that town. But hardly had she arrived when her daughter Cécile, then twelve years old, became ill with typhoid fever. Madame Pasteur had the courage not to ask her husband to leave his work and come to her; but her letters alarmed him, and the anxious father gave up his studies for a few days and arrived at Chambéry. The danger at that time seemed averted, and he only remained three days at Chambéry. Cécile, apparently convalescent, had recovered her smile, that sweet, indefinable smile which gave so much charm to her serious, almost melancholy face. She smiled thus for the last time at her little sister Marie-Louise, about the middle of May, lying on a sofa by a sunny window.