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at him and believed in him, and she wrote to his father: “You know that the experiments he is undertaking this year will give us, if they succeed, a Newton or a Galileo!" It is not clear whether good Madame Pasteur formed this so high opinion of her young husband by herself. . . . At any rate, truth, that will o' the wisp, failed him this time—his experiments didn't come off.

Then Pasteur was made Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Sciences in Lille and there he settled down in the Street of the Flowers, and it was here that he ran, or rather stumbled for the first time, upon microbes; it was in this good solid town of distillers and sugar-beet raisers and farm implement dealers that he began his great campaign, part science, part drama and romance, part religion and politics, to put microbes on the map. It was from this not too interesting middle sized city—never noted for learning—that he splashed up a great wave of excitement about microbes that rocked the boat of science for thirty years. He showed the world how important microbes were to it, and in doing this he made enemies and worshipers; his name filled the front pages of newspapers and he received challenges to duels; the public made vast jokes about his precious microbes while his discoveries were saving the lives of countless women in childbirth. In short it was here he hopped off in his flight to immortality.

When he left Strasbourg truth was tricking him and he was confused. He came to Lille and fairly stumbled on to the road to fame—by offering help to a beet-sugar distiller.

When Pasteur settled in Lille he was told by the authorities that highbrow science was all right—

"But what we want, what this enterprising city of Lille wants most of all, professor," you can hear the Committee of business men telling him, "is a close coöperation between your science and our industries. What we want to know is—does science pay? Raise our sugar yield from our beets and give us a bigger alcohol output, and we'll see you and your laboratory are taken care of."