After being reproved for excessive work, Louis was reprimanded for too much affection (January 1, 1848). “The presents you sent have just arrived; I shall leave it to your sisters to write their thanks. For my part, I should prefer a thousand times that this money should still be in your purse, and thence to a good restaurant, spent in some good meals that you might have enjoyed with your friends. There are not many parents, my dearest boy, who have to write such things to their son; my satisfaction in you is indeed deeper than I can express.” At the end of this same letter, the mother adds in her turn: “My darling boy, I wish you a happy new year. Take great care of your health.... Think what a worry it is to me that I cannot be with you to look after you. Sometimes I try to console myself for your absence by thinking how fortunate I am in having a child able to raise himself to such a position as yours is--such a happy position, as it seems to be from your last letter but one.” And in a strange sentence, where it would seem that a presentiment of her approaching death made worldly things appear at their true value: “Whatever happens to you, do not grieve; nothing in life is more than a chimera. Farewell, my son.” On March 20, 1848, Pasteur read to the Académie des Sciences a portion of his treatise on “_Researches on Dimorphism_.” There are some substances which crystallize in two different ways. Sulphur, for instance, gives quite dissimilar crystals according to whether it is melted in a crucible or dissolved in sulphide of carbon. Those substances are called dimorphous. Pasteur, kindly aided by the learned M. Delafosse (with his usual gratefulness he mentions this in the very first pages) had made out a list--as complete as possible--of all dimorphous substances. When M. Romanet, of Arbois College, received this paper he was quite overwhelmed. “It is much too stiff for you,” he said with an infectious modesty to Vercel, Charrière, and Coulon, Pasteur’s former comrades. Perhaps the head master desired to palliate his own incompetence in the eyes of coming generations, for on the title page of the copy of Pasteur’s booklet still to be found in the Arbois library, he wrote this remark, which he signed with his initial R.:--“_Dimorphisme_; this word is not even to be found in the _Dictionnaire de l’Académie_”!! The approbation of several members of the Académie des Sciences compensated for the somewhat summary judgment of M. Romanet, whose good wishes continued to follow the rapid course of his old pupil.