M. Duclaux was then professor of chemistry at the Faculty of Clermont Ferrand, a short distance from Royat, and Pasteur intended to walk every day to the laboratory of his former pupil. But M. Duclaux did not countenance this plan; he meant to entertain his master and his master’s family in his own house, 25, Rue Montlosier, where he could even have one room arranged as a silkworm nursery. He succeeded in persuading Pasteur, and they organized a delightful home life which recalled the days at Pont Gisquet before the war. Pasteur was seeking the means of making his seed-selecting process applicable to small private nurseries as well as to large industrial establishments. The only difficulty was the cost of the indispensable microscope; but Pasteur thought that each village might possess its microscope, and that the village schoolmaster might be entrusted with the examination of the moths. In a letter written in April, 1871, to M. Bellotti, of the Milan Civic Museum, Pasteur, after describing in a few lines the simple process he had taken five years to study, added-- “If I dared to quote myself, I would recall those words from my book-- “‘If I were a silkworm cultivator I never would raise seed from worms I had not observed during the last days of their life, so as to satisfy myself as to their vigour and agility just before spinning. The seed chosen should be that which comes from worms who climbed the twigs with agility, who showed no mortality from flachery between the fourth moulting and climbing time, and whose freedom from corpuscles will have been demonstrated by the microscope. If that is done, any one with the slightest knowledge of silkworm culture will succeed in every case.’” Italy and Austria vied with each other in adopting the seed selected by the Pasteur system. But it was only when Pasteur was on the eve of receiving from the Austrian Government the great prize offered in 1868 to “whoever should discover a preventive and curative remedy against pébrine” that French sericicultors began to be convinced. The French character offers this strange contrast, that France is often willing to risk her fortune and her blood for causes which may be unworthy, whilst at another moment, in everyday life, she shrinks at the least innovation before accepting a benefit originated on her own soil. The French often wait until other nations have adopted and approved a French discovery before venturing to adopt it in their turn. Pasteur did not stop to look back and delight in his success, but hastened to turn his mind to another kind of study. His choice of a subject was influenced by patriotic motives. Germany was incontestably superior to France in the manufacture of beer, and he conceived the thought of making France a successful rival in that respect; in order to enable himself to do so, he undertook to study the scientific mechanism of beer manufacture.