Biot, who had entered the Académie des Sciences fifty-four years earlier, and was now the oldest member of the Institute, took advantage of his great age to distribute, in the course of his speech, a good deal of wise counsel, much applauded by Pasteur from the ranks of the audience. Biot, with his calm irony, aimed this epigram at men of science who disdained letters: “Their science was not the more apparent through their want of literary culture.” He ended by remarks which formed a continuation of his last letter to Pasteur’s father. Making an appeal to those whose high ambition is to consecrate themselves to pure science, he proudly said: “Perhaps your name, your existence will be unknown to the crowd. But you will be known, esteemed, sought after by a small number of eminent men scattered over the face of the earth, your rivals, your peers in the intellectual Senate of minds; they alone have the right to appreciate you and to assign to you your rank, a well-merited rank, which no princely will, no popular caprice can give or take away, and which will remain yours as long as you remain faithful to Science, which bestows it upon you.” Guizot, to whom it fell to welcome Biot to the Académie, rendered homage to his independence, to his worship of disinterested research, to his ready counsels. “The events which have overturned everything around you,” he said, “have never turned the course of your free and firm judgment, or of your peaceful labours.” On that occasion the decline of Biot’s life seemed like a beautiful summer evening in the north, before nightfall, when a soft light still envelops all things. No disciple ever felt more emotion than Pasteur when participating in that last joy of his aged master. In Regnault’s laboratory, a photograph had been taken of Biot seated with bent head and a weary attitude, but with the old sparkle in his eyes. Biot offered it to Pasteur, saying: “If you place this proof near a portrait of your father, you will unite the pictures of two men who have loved you very much in the same way.” Pasteur, between two canvassing visits, gave himself the pleasure of going to hear a young professor that every one was then speaking of. “I have just been to a lecture by Rigault, at the Collège de France,” he wrote on March 6, 1857. “The room is too small, it is a struggle to get in. I have come away delighted; it is a splendid success for the Université, there is nothing to add, nothing to retrench. Fancy a professor in one of the Paris _lycées_ making such a début at the Collège de France!”