But such comparisons had no weight with Pasteur; he was henceforth sure of his method and longed to see it adopted, unable to understand why there should be further discussions now that the silkworm industry was saved and the bread of so many poor families assured. He was learning to know all the bitterness of sterile polemics, and the obstacles placed one by one in the way of those who attempt to give humanity anything new and useful. Fortunately he had what so many men of research have lacked, the active and zealous collaboration of pupils imbued with his principles, and the rarer and priceless blessing of a home life mingling with his laboratory life. His wife and his daughter, a mere child, shared his sericiculture labours; they had become _magnanarelles_ equal to the most capable in Alais. Another privilege was the advocacy of some champions quite unknown to him. Those who loved science and who understood that it would now become, thanks to Pasteur, an important factor in agricultural and sericicultural matters hailed his achievements with joy. For instance, a letter was published on July 8, 1869, in the _Journal of Practical Agriculture_ by a cultivator who had obtained excellent results by applying Pasteur’s method; the letter concluded as follows: “We should be obliged, if, through the columns of your paper, you would express to M. Pasteur our feelings of gratitude for his laborious and valuable researches. We firmly hope that he will one day reap the fruit of his arduous labours, and be amply compensated for the passionate attacks of which he is now the object.” “Monsieur Pasteur,” once said the Mayor of Alais, Dr. Pagès, “if what you are showing me becomes verified in current practice, nothing can repay you for your work, but the town of Alais will raise a golden statue to you.” Marshal Vaillant began to take more and more interest in this question, which was not darkened, in his eyes at least, by the dust of polemics. The old soldier, always scrupulously punctual at the meetings of the Institute and of the Imperial and Central Society of Agriculture, had amused himself by organizing a little silkworm nursery on the Pasteur system, in his own study, in the very centre of Paris. These experiments, in the Imperial palace might have reminded an erudite reader of Olivier de Serres’ _Théâtre d’Agriculture_ of the time when the said Olivier de Serres planted mulberry trees in the Tuileries gardens at Henry IV’s request, and when, according to the old agricultural writer, a house was arranged at the end of the gardens “accommodated with all things necessary as well for the feeding of the worms as for the preparation of silk.”