Everything was subordinate to the laboratory; Pasteur never accepted an invitation to those large social gatherings which are a tax laid by those who have nothing to do on the time of those who are busy, especially if they be celebrated. Pasteur’s name, known throughout the world, was never mentioned in fashionable journals; he did not even go to theatres. In the evening, after dinner, he usually perambulated the hall and corridor of his rooms at the Ecole Normale, cogitating over various details of his work. At ten o’clock, he went to bed, and at eight the next morning, whether he had had a good night or a bad one, he resumed his work in the laboratory. That regular life, preserving its even tenor through so many polemics and discussions, was momentarily perturbed by politics in January, 1876. Pasteur, who, in his extraordinary, almost disconcerting modesty, believed that a medical diploma would have facilitated his scientific revolution, imagined--after the pressing overtures made to him by some of his proud compatriots--that he would be able to serve more usefully the cause of higher education if he were to obtain a seat at the Senate. He addressed from Paris a letter to the senatorial electors of the department of Jura. “I am not a political man,” he said, “I am bound to no party; not having studied politics I am ignorant of many things, but I do know this, that I love my country and have served her with all my strength.” Like many good citizens, he thought that a renewal of the national grandeur and prosperity might be sought in a serious experimental trial of the Republic. If honoured with the suffrages of his countrymen, he would “represent in the Senate, Science in all its purity, dignity and independence.” Two Jura newspapers, of different opinions, agreed in regretting that Pasteur should leave “the peaceful altitudes of science,” and come down into the Jura to solicit the electors’ suffrages. In his answers to such articles, letters dictated to his son--who acted as his secretary during that electoral campaign and accompanied him to Lons-le-Saulnier, where they spent a week, published addresses, posters, etc.--Pasteur invoked the following motto, “_Science et Patrie_.” Why had France been victorious in 1792? “Because Science had given to our fathers the material means of fighting.” And he recalled the names of Monge, of Carnot, of Fourcroy, of Guyton de Morveau, of Berthollet, that concourse of men of science, thanks to whom it had been possible--during that grandiose epoch--to hasten the working of steel and the preparation of leather for soldiers’ boots, and to find means of extracting saltpetre for gunpowder from plaster rubbish, of making use of reconnoitring balloons and of perfecting telegraphy.