There lived at that time in Franche Comté an elderly writer, whom Sainte Beuve considered as the ideal of the upright man and of the man of letters. His name was Joseph Droz, and his moral doctrine was that vanity is the cause of many wrecked and aimless lives, that moderation is a form of wisdom and an element of happiness, and that most men sadden and trouble their lives by causeless worry and agitation. His own life was an example of his precepts of kindliness and patience, and was filled to the utmost with all the good that a pure literary conscience can bestow; he was all benevolence and cordiality. It seemed natural that he should publish one after another numberless editions of his _Essay on the Art of being Happy_. “I have still,” wrote Pasteur to his parents, “that little volume of M. Droz which he was kind enough to lend me. I have never read anything wiser, more moral or more virtuous. I have also another of his works; nothing was ever better written. At the end of the year I shall bring you back these books. One feels in reading them an irresistible charm which penetrates the soul and fills it with the most exalted and generous feelings. There is not a word of exaggeration in what I am writing. Indeed I take his books with me to the services on Sundays to read them, and I believe that in so acting, in spite of all that thoughtless bigotry might say, I am conforming to the very highest religious ideas.” Those ideas Droz might have summarized simply by Christ’s words, “Love ye one another.” But this was a time of circumlocution. Young people demanded of books, of discourses, of poetry, a sonorous echo of their own secret feelings. In the writings of the Besançon moralist, Pasteur saw a religion such as he himself dreamed of, a religion free from all controversy and all intolerance, a religion of peace, love and devotion. A little later, Silvio Pellico’s _Miei Prigioni_ developed in him an emotion which answered to his instinctive sympathy for the sorrows of others. He wrote advising his sisters to read “that interesting work, where you breathe with every page a religious perfume which exalts and ennobles the soul.” In reading _Miei Prigioni_ his sisters would light upon a passage on fraternal love and all the deep feelings which it represents. “For my sisters,” he wrote in another letter, “I bought, a few days ago, a very pretty book; I mean by very pretty something very interesting. It is a little volume which took the Montyon[6] prize a few years ago, and it is called, _Picciola_. How could it have deserved the Montyon prize,” he added, with an edifying respect for the decisions of the Academy, “if the reading of it were not of great value?”