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your brilliant researches, and for having given me the single principle which has made the antiseptic system a success. If you ever come to Edinburgh it will be a real recompense to you, I believe, to see in our hospital in how large a measure humanity has profited from your work."
Like a boy who has just built a steam engine all by himself Pasteur was proud; he showed the letter to all his friends; he inserted it with all its praise in his scientific papers; he published it—of all places—in his book on beer! Then he took a final smash at poor old Frémy, who you would have thought was already sufficiently crushed by the gorgeous experiments; he smashed Frémy not by damning Frémy, but by praising himself! He spoke of his own "remarkable discoveries," he called his own theories the true ones and ended: "In a word, the mark of true theories is their fruitfulness. This is the characteristic which Mr. Balard, with an entirely fatherly friendliness, has made stand out in speaking of my researches." Frémy had no more to say.
All Europe by now was in a furor about microbes, and he knew it was himself that had changed microbes from playthings into useful helpers of mankind—and perhaps, the world would soon be astounded by it—into dread infinitesimal ogres and murdering marauders, the worst enemies of the race. He had become the first citizen of France and even in Denmark prominent brewers were having his bust put in their laboratories. When suddenly Claude Bernard died, and some of Bernard's friends published this great man's unfinished work. Horrible to tell, this unfinished work had for its subject fermentation of grape juice into wine, and it ended by showing that the whole theory of Pasteur was destroyed because . . . and Bernard closed by giving a series of reasons.
Pasteur could not believe his eyes. Bernard had done this, the great Bernard who had been his seatmate in the Academy and had always praised his work; Bernard who had exchanged sly sarcastic remarks with him at the Academy of Medicine about those blue-coated pompous brass-buttoned doctors whose