The building of the laboratory had been begun, and hoardings erected around the site. Pasteur, from his bed, asked day by day, “How are they getting on?” But his wife and daughter, going to the window of the dining-room which overlooked the Ecole Normale garden, only brought him back vague answers, for, as a matter of fact, the workmen had disappeared from the very first day of Pasteur’s illness. All that could be seen was a solitary labourer wheeling a barrow aimlessly about, probably under the orders of some official who feared to alarm the patient. As Pasteur was not expected to recover, the trouble and expense were deemed unnecessary. Pasteur soon became aware of this, and one day that General Favé had come to see him he gave vent to some bitter feelings as to this cautious interruption of the building works, saying that it would have been simpler and more straightforward to state from the beginning that the work was suspended in the expectation of a probable demise. Napoleon was informed of this excess of zeal, not only by General Favé, but by Sainte Claire Deville, who was a guest at Compiègne at the beginning of November, 1868. He wrote to the Minister of Public Instruction-- “My dear M. Duruy,--I have heard that--unknown to you probably--the men who were working at M. Pasteur’s laboratory were kept away from the very day he became ill; he has been much affected by this circumstance, which seemed to point to his non-recovery. I beg you will issue orders that the work begun should be continued. Believe in my sincere friendship.--Napoleon.” Duruy immediately sent on this note to M. du Mesnil, whose somewhat long title was that of “Chief of the Division of Academic Administration of Scientific Establishments and of Higher Education.” M. du Mesnil evidently repudiated the charge for himself or for his Minister, for he wrote in a large hand, on the very margin of the Imperial autograph-- “M. Duruy gave no orders and had to give none. It is at his solicitation that the works were undertaken, but it is the _Direction of Civic Buildings_ alone which _can_ have interrupted them; the fact should be verified.” M. de Cardaillac, head of the Direction of Civic Buildings, made an inquiry and the building was resumed. It was only on November 30 that Pasteur left his bed for the first time and spent an hour in his armchair. He clearly analyzed to himself his melancholy condition, stricken down as he was by hemiplegia in his forty-sixth year; but having noticed that his remarks saddened his wife and daughter, he spoke no more about his illness, and only expressed his anxiety not to be a trouble, a burden, he said, to his wife, his son and daughter, and the devoted friends who helped to watch him at night.