The senatorial electors numbered 650. Jules Grévy came to Lons-le-Saulnier to support the candidature of MM. Tamisier and Thurel. In a meeting which took place the day before the election he said, “You will give them your suffrage to-morrow, and in so doing you will have deserved well of the Republic and of France.” He mentioned, incidentally, that “M. Pasteur’s character and scientific work entitle him to universal respect and esteem; but Science has its natural place at the Institute,” he added, insisting on the Senate’s political attributes. Grévy’s intervention in favour of his two candidates was decisive. M. Tamisier obtained 446 votes, M. Thurel 445, General Picard 113, M. Besson, a monarchist, 153, Pasteur 62 only. He had received on that very morning a letter from his daughter, wishing him a failure--a bright, girlish letter, frankly expressing the opinion that her father could be most useful to his country by confining himself to laboratory work, and that politics would necessarily hinder such work. It was easy to be absolutely frank with Pasteur, who willingly accepted every truthful statement. No man was ever more beloved, more admired and less flattered in his own home than he was. “What a wise judge you are, my dearest girl!” answered Pasteur the same evening; “you are perfectly right. But I am not sorry to have seen all this, and that your brother should have seen it; all knowledge is useful.” That little incursion into the domain of politics was rendered insignificant in Pasteur’s life by the fact that his long-desired object was almost reached. Three months later, at the distribution of prizes of the _Concours Général_, the Minister of Public Instruction pronounced a speech, of which Pasteur preserved the text, underlining with his own hand the following passages: “Soon, I hope, we shall see the Schools of Medicine and of Pharmacy reconstructed; the Collège de France provided with new laboratories; the Faculty of Medicine transferred and enlarged, and the ancient Sorbonne itself restored and extended.” And while the Minister spoke of “those higher studies of Philosophy, of History, of disinterested Science which are the glory of a nation and an honour to the human mind ... which must retain the first rank to shed their serene light over inferior studies, and to remind men of the true goal and the true grandeur of human intelligence....” Pasteur could say to himself that the great cause which he had pleaded since he was made Dean of Faculty at Lille in 1854, which he had supported in 1868 and again on the morrow of the war, was at last about to be won in 1876.