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to take the rabbit out of the hat, to astonish the world, he was absolutely sincere about it; he was a magnificent showman and not below some small occasional hocus-pocus, but he was no designing mountebank. And the public test was set for May and June, that year.

Roux and Chamberland—who had begun to see animals that were strange combinations of chickens and guinea-pigs in their dreams, to drop important flasks, to lie awake injecting millions of imaginary guinea-pigs, these fagged-out boys had just started off on a vacation to the country—when they received telegrams that brought them back to their exciting treadmill:

COME BACK PARIS AT ONCE ABOUT TO MAKE PUBLIC DEMONSTRATION THAT OUR VACCINE WILL PROTECT SHEEP AGAINST ANTHRAX—L. PASTEUR.

Something like that read these wires.

They hurried back. Pasteur said to them: "Before the Agricultural Society of Melun, at the farm of Pouilly-le-Fort, I am going to vaccinate twenty-four sheep, one goat and several cattle—twenty-four other sheep, one goat and several other cattle are going to be left without inoculation—then, at the appointed time, I am going to inject all of the beasts with the most deadly virulent culture of anthrax bacilli that we have. The vaccinated animals will be perfectly protected—the not-vaccinated ones will die in two days of course." Pasteur sounded as confident as an astronomer predicting an eclipse of the sun. . . .

"But, master, you know this work is so delicate—we cannot be absolutely sure of our vaccines—they may kill some of the sheep we try to protect——"

"WHAT WORKED WITH FOURTEEN SHEEP IN OUR LABORATORY WILL WORK WITH FIFTY AT MELUN!" Pasteur roared at them. For him just then, there was no such thing as a mysterious, tricky nature, an unknown full of failures and surprises—the misty Infinite was as simple as two plus two makes four to him just then. So there was