Part 4

"----when all of a sudden I heard a shot close by on the other side. Then I started over at once. I've been across the ford a dozen times, but before I had taken three steps I found the stream was too strong for me. I tried to turn back, but the current seemed to whirl me right off my feet; I went sliding over the slippery stones, and in two seconds I was soused well over my head into the pool below, and spinning round like a troll in a brook. I tried to grasp hold of something on the bank, but that was the only result"--showing his lacerated hands--"and I think I must have been very close to kingdom come, when something or another flapped in my face. I clutched it and hung on like grim death; it was Jenny's plaid, which she had the presence of mind to fling me and the pluck and strength to hold on to till you came to help. God bless her, I say"--Tom's voice faltered a little--"she's a wife to be proud of; and the next time she has a dream and wants me to stay at home, she shan't have to ask me twice."

"Oh, by the by, the dream!" broke in Sir Alan. "Is this accident to Tom to be regarded as the fulfilment of his wife's dream or not?"

"Mrs. Everton's dream was a warning," said the colonel. "I should say that, having profited by the warning----"

"But stay," I argued, "did she profit by the warning? She persuaded her husband to stay at home. Now, if he had gone with us he would have crossed by the bridge and been as safe as any of us. The dream did not save him. On the contrary, it very nearly drowned him."

"She acted for the best, and all's well that ends well," replied the colonel. "Look at my dream, now. If I had not gone to my wife's help and shot that tiger I should never have seen her again. No, no, as I said before, you can't expect these warnings to be printed out in big type. You must just take them as they come, and chance your reading them aright."

"And come within an ace of drowning yourself, or some one else," interjected Jones.

"It only bears out the old saying that 'Dreams go by contraries,'" I remarked. "Still, these are a very remarkable pair of coincidences."

"Here's my view," said Sir Alan. "Eat light suppers, go to bed healthily tired, and you won't dream at all; or, if you must, forget all about it as soon as possible. You can torture a warning out of almost anything, and make yourself wretched trying to find out where the hidden danger is, and very likely rush right into it, as Everton did, trying to avoid it. Half the time dreams do go by contraries, and it's dangerous meddling with what we don't understand."

And by the time the spirit case had completed its next round, we all agreed with Sir Alan.

THE TABLES TURNED.

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Up! up, my friend! and quit your books, Or surely you'll grow double; Up! up, my friend! and clear your looks; Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain's head, A freshening lustre mellow Through all the long, green fields has spread, His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife; Come, hear the woodland linnet-- How sweet his music! on my life, There's more of wisdom in it!

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! He, too, is no mean preacher; Come forth into the light of things-- Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth, Our minds and hearts to bless; Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things-- We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art; Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives.

PASTEUR AT HOME.

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE WORK DONE AT THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE IN PARIS.

BY IDA M. TARBELL.

"Institut Pasteur." The coachman nodded. The cab door slammed. The vehicle rattled across the Seine, left the grand boulevards, passed the garden of the Luxembourg, and fell into a long, narrow street running off into the southwestern corner of Paris. The high, dignified house-fronts and the stately portals were soon passed; busy little shops took their place. We were in an industrial quarter whose commonplace was only varied here and there by a fine old _hotel_, the country house of some rich proprietor, probably, in the days, not so very long ago, when all this portion of the city was without the walls, and when an industrial invasion was undreamed of.

The cab left the Rue Vaugirard, crossed a superb boulevard, entered the Rue Dutot, and stopped. Behind a long, high, black _grille_, and separated from it by a hedge of shrubbery, a grass plot, and a broad gravelled drive-way, rose a red-brick, stone-trimmed facade. Across the front, above the handsome doorway, one read _Institut Pasteur_; and, still higher, _Subscription Publique, MDCCCLXXXVIII_.

On the grass plot in front of the stately marble steps stood a small bronze statue mounted on a high granite pedestal. It represented a boy of twelve or fourteen years in a life-and-death struggle with a mad dog. He has succeeded in fastening about the neck of the furious animal the thong of a long whip. He is strangling him. Beside the boy, or the ground, is a wooden shoe. With it he will beat the beast to death. The statue tells the story of one of the earliest subjects treated by M. Pasteur for hydrophobia, Jean-Baptiste Jupille, a shepherd lad, who, seeing a group of children attacked by a mad dog, throttled the animal and beat it dead with his _sabot_. He carried away a dozen or more bites from the conflict, was sent to Paris, inoculated, and cured. A fitting subject to place before the doorway of the Pasteur Institute!

Statue, facade and lawn are new. The bricks have not yet lost their glare. One can almost see the dust still on the stone. The bronze has not lost its fresh lustre. Even the lawn has the unevenness of new sod, the horse-chestnut trees are small, the ivy has not had time to climb far up the walls.

Everything is still and sealed in front, but to the right, from the _concierge's_ lodge back to a solid, practical, dark stone building in the rear of the main hall, is a throng of idle people, chatting in clusters, sunning themselves on the benches, walking up and down. It is a strikingly cosmopolitan company. There are Arabs in red, brown, blue, or white; Italian women in aprons and lace head-dresses; Spanish peasants in dark cloaks and broad-brimmed hats; Yankees, Zouaves, Russians. The low babel of a multitude of tongues fills the air.

One only brushes the edge of this crowd as he makes his way to the doorway in the end of the main building, the entrance to the private apartment of M. Pasteur.

Narrow winding stairs lead up to a suite of lofty rooms, furnished with solid, dignified woods, carpeted with soft, dark rugs, windows and doors hung with heavy stuffs. The immediate impression is one of comfort, warmth and quiet. The impression deepens as one enters the library, where, before a desk, sits the great French savant, Madame Pasteur near by. There is something home-like here. This might be the sitting-room of some well-to-do New England squire or judge. Involuntarily one searches in the face of the eminent savant, eying him so keenly and so kindly, for traces of relationship with the Puritan type. There is the same square determination, the same obstinacy of purpose, the same direct sincerity; but it is mellowed by Latin tenderness, kindled by French brilliancy.

This is a great man, one feels instinctively--a man so great that he despises notoriety--and a journalist. It is reassuring.

The great master does not look to be seventy years of age as he sits behind his desk, his elbow on the table, his hand supporting his head. His hair and beard are still iron-gray; the hair is concealed largely by the silk skullcap he always wears, but the beard is abundant. The eyes are as penetrating, as full of ardor, as ever. It is only when he speaks or moves that one sees the ravages of the paralysis which overtook him twenty-five years ago, after his terrible three years of labor in the little house at Alais, investigating the disease of the silk-worm. The whole left side has been since then nearly useless. His speech is hesitating, his motion difficult, but in spite of his feebleness he spares no pains to interest his guest. One talks with M. Pasteur with the ease and naturalness of the fireside.

"Look at my birthplace," he says, rising, and taking from the mantel a photograph of the humble home at Dole, Jura, where he was born. "My village gave it to me at my _fete_."

I happen to know the story of the picture, and examine it with pleasure. There was, indeed, no more touching feature in the great Pasteur jubilee of last December than the presentation of this photograph by the Mayor of Dole.

The little village has always had a loyal pride in the fact that M. Pasteur was born there. Ten years ago it celebrated the French Fourth of July (July 14) by placing a plaque on the facade of the house, bearing the inscription:

ICI EST NE LOUIS PASTEUR, LE 22 DEC., 1822.

M. Pasteur was present and made a speech. In the course of it he referred to his parents, their ambition for him, their self-sacrifice, their faith in him. He recalled his father's words: "Louis, if I see you one day a professor in the college of Arbois I shall be the happiest man on earth." Overpowered by his recollections, he broke down, sobbing.

The villagers of Dole have never forgotten the scene. When the great Pasteur jubilee was celebrated they sent up their mayor, commissioned to present the picture of the early home, together with a facsimile of the register of M. Pasteur's birth. That they were not mistaken in thinking that he would be pleased, it is easy to see as he stands before me, eying the humble house with tender pride.

"Have you no picture of yourself taken in your boyhood at Dole?"

"No," he answered. "The earliest picture I have is much later. Let me see, I must have been decorated then. Where is the old album?"

The album is brought, a small square book, looking as if it had just come off the table in the best room of a New England farm-house. There is the same high-relief decoration, the same gilt lines edging the photograph apertures. And these people? Verily, they might have lived in New England forty years ago!

M. Pasteur turns the leaves. Madame Pasteur leans over his shoulder. They stop now and then and exchange a smile as they come upon an old friend. At last the sought-for photograph is found. M. Pasteur at thirty--a great man already, for already he has made discoveries in crystallography which have won him a name among scientists.

The plans for investigation which filled the head of the young man who sits up so straight in the old photograph were never completed. The enthusiastic student of crystallography was forced to change the subject of his studies. Even now the great savant laments the change.

"If I have a regret," he says, "it is that I did not follow that route, less rude, it seems to me, and which would have led, I am convinced, to wonderful discoveries. A sudden turn threw me into the study of fermentations, fermentations set me at diseases, but I am still inconsolable to think that I have never had time to go back to my old subject."

Beside the hero of the studies in crystallography M. Pasteur places his latest picture. It lacks in youthfulness, but it has gained in ripeness. This photograph has much of the vigor and the alertness one sees in the splendid bust by Paul Dubois displayed in the Salon of 1880, and now in a gallery at Copenhagen. This bust is the most satisfactory portrait of M. Pasteur ever made, unless it be the painting by Edelfelt displayed in the Salon of 1886. In the same Salon appeared Bonnat's portrait of M. Pasteur and his granddaughter.

As I look at M. Pasteur in his library, however, I see only the old model of Bonnat. I have difficulty in believing, indeed, as I watch him bending smilingly over the old album, now and then laughing aloud at the discovery of some forgotten picture, that this man, over fifty years ago, for the sake of an education, made himself a jack-of-all-trades in the college of Besancon, and was aroused every morning at four o'clock with the night-watchman's cry: "_Come, Pasteur, chase the demon of laziness._" It is difficult to picture him in the intoxication of scientific enthusiasm and discovery, sacrificing health, leisure, pleasure, to the passion of learning which had taken possession of him.

He is so gentle, it seems incredible that he has had to meet coldness, contempt, opposition of every species, in his life; that, when he asked the most modest of appropriations from the government, he met the contemptuous reply that "there was no rubric in the budget for allowing three hundred dollars a year for experiments;" that for every step in his discoveries he has had literally to fight, contending with Pouchet and Joly on the subject of spontaneous generation, with Liebig on fermentations, with the Germans and Italians on the attenuation of virus, with the popular opinion of his own compatriots when he dared vaccinate for hydrophobia, and when his supporters dared erect the present Institute to facilitate his work.

One cannot picture him _tete-a-tete_ with mad dogs. It is hard to believe him capable of that astonishing self-mastery which made him withhold for months, and sometimes even years, the results of incomplete investigations, and of the equal hardihood which, when he was convinced of a truth, led him to accept the most severe and most public tests of its exactness.

I make an attempt to find the scientist and venture a question.

"Oh," says M. Pasteur, "if you want to know that, you must go and see M. Roux. You will find him in the laboratory."

We rise and go into the long hall. At the opposite end from the library two large doors open into the spacious vestibule which occupies the centre of the main building.

"You can go out by the main hall and directly into the laboratory, or down the private stairs." I hesitated. No, I would not spoil my impression of M. Pasteur at home. I would keep laboratory and home separate. I descended to the private entrance, and, as I went down, two kindly faces looked over at me, and the gentle, hesitating voice of the great savant said:

"Take care, it is dark. Don't slip. Take care." On the last step I stopped and looked up. The two friendly faces were still looking down.

I had come to see the destroyer of the theory of spontaneous generation, the demonstrator of the microbe origin of disease, the conqueror of hydrophobia. I had found something greater, perhaps, than them all--a perfectly gentle soul.

IN M. PASTEUR'S WORKSHOP.

I crossed the lawn and entered a large waiting-room occupying the middle of the building devoted to laboratory work. The room is flooded with light, seated with benches, and decorated with no other ornaments than a series of photographs of the Pasteur Institute at Rio Janeiro, two great maps on which are marked the cities where institutions similar to this at Paris are to be found, and cards containing certain rules applicable to patients coming for treatment against hydrophobia. Among these latter the important ones are that the treatment is gratuitous, that each patient must bathe before coming for inoculation, that board and lodging are not furnished, and that the grateful may, if they wish, leave a gift at the end of their term of treatment.

There were sixty or seventy persons in the room. They had come to be vaccinated against hydrophobia. They were of the greatest contrast in age, in condition, in culture. Beside a shrivelled, leather-brown Arab woman from the desert was a pink and white little miss from London. A young man with the refined face, correct dress and distinguished manners of a gentleman sat beside a huge and none-too-clean German laborer. As a rule, it was a friendly, cheerful company. It was only here and there that one saw a person who seemed conscious that in his veins a hideous poison was at work. Most of them took it for granted that their cure was certain. Some of them scoffed at the nonsense of going to the trouble of being vaccinated.

A dignified liveried servant entered, calling "Attention." The company bestirred itself and disappeared. I made my way to the inoculating room.

The operation of inoculating for hydrophobia is founded on the theory that if an "attenuated" microbe, that is a microbe so treated that its power of doing harm has been reduced to a low degree, is introduced into a body, it will produce an indisposition which is not itself serious, but which is sufficient to render the body proof against attacks of the original microbe.

Now M. Pasteur has discovered that it is possible to so treat a microbe that its power of evil is of any degree; that is, to "exalt" as well as to "attenuate" it. Having these microbes of varying strengths he invented a method of graduated vaccination; that is, by beginning with a virus of low degree, and increasing each day the strength of the virus, an operator arrives at a point where he can vaccinate a body with a virus stronger than there is any danger of its ever being exposed to in nature. He thus secures lasting immunity.

Thus, in vaccinating against rabies, the patient is treated first with a weak virus; this is followed by one more powerful, and so on, until at the end a highly "exalted" one is injected safely.

It is this treatment which is practised daily at the Pasteur Institute, in the inoculation room where I found myself.

Gathered in a kind of pen formed by a little fence were three members of the institution: a secretary, whose business it is to keep track of the number of persons to be treated with each particular virus; an assistant, who has prepared the virus for the day's use; twelve small wine glasses of cloudy liquid protected by small paper funnels; and, by a table, the inoculator. The roll was called and a half dozen men entered the room. They were to be inoculated with a virus of the lowest strength, most of them for the first time. They showed a bewildered and comic embarrassment as the attendant directed them to bare the hypogastrium. The embarrassment changed to a momentary look of distress as they felt their arms pinned behind their backs, and the sharp needle injected a syringeful of virus into the delicate flesh. The first class of men and boys passed out, and the women and little children entered. They were succeeded by a second class, and so on until all had been treated.

The simplicity of the operation seemed out of proportion to the horror of the disease. I remembered the shrugs I had seen and the doubts I had heard expressed over the treatment. "It is not sure yet." "It does not always work; such-a-one died, you know." "They have not found the microbe either." My faith was shaking. Evidently I must see Doctor Roux.

On the second floor of the building I found the office and private laboratory of the under-director of the Pasteur Institute, a man whose researches in connection with Pasteur, whose devotion in the cholera mission in Egypt in 1883, and whose independent investigations on diphtheria, have made him famous in the medical world. The office was small, and it had something of the attraction of a curio shop. There was none of the precision of the man of small affairs here. It was the confusion of the man of big affairs, who cannot endure to have his things meddled with. Over a table where culture tubes, blow-pipes, virus glasses and bottles filled with suspicious-looking fluids were scattered promiscuously around a valuable microscope, hung a gem of a painting--a dashing charge of cavalry. Beside a case of books, and partly concealing a fine portrait of Pasteur, hung the gray-white laboratory blouses of M. Roux. Under an exquisite etching askew in a corner stood a cage of brown-and-white guinea-pigs, martyrs to science, probably.

Curiosity was cut short, for a quick step was heard in the outer room, and Doctor Roux entered. A slight figure, bent a little from a life spent over books, tubes and microscopes, but tingling to the finger-tips with nervous energy; a face a little pale, but fresh in color; brown hair and beard, glowing brown eyes, perhaps forty years--such is this eminent associate of Pasteur. As he runs over the pile of letters cut and awaiting him, he talks.

"So you have just seen the inoculation? Do I believe it a sure cure?" The doctor lays down his letters as he repeats the latter question in an astonished tone. "Of course I do. There is nothing surer in medical science. Look at these figures." He rises and draws out from the midst of a pile of papers a big black _serviette_, fumbles for a moment among the documents it contains, and pulls out the latest report made by the Institute on the results of vaccination for hydrophobia, that for 1891.

"Now listen to these figures. In 1886 the Pasteur made its first report: 2,671 persons were vaccinated that year against hydrophobia; 25 of them died--.94 of one per cent. In 1887, 1,770 persons were treated; 13 died--.73 of one per cent. In 1888, 1,622 were treated; 9 died--.55 of one per cent. In 1889, 1,830 were treated; 7 died--.38 of one per cent. In 1890, 1,540 were treated; 5 died--.32 of one per cent. In 1891, 1,559 were treated; 3 died--.19 of one per cent. You notice each year the per cent. of deaths has been lower. In the six years the treatment has been reported, we average just about one-half of one per cent of loss. Tell me where you find a treatment surer?"

"But you have not found the microbe?"

"Humph! that does not prevent the method working. It is aggravating not to have found him. It prevents, possibly, the simplification of the inoculation process. Nevertheless it works. So does vaccination for small-pox. We do not know the microbe of small-pox. There is much we do not know yet. Remember, too, that it was only in 1880 that M. Pasteur made up his mind to begin an exhaustive study of hydrophobia, and that all he foresaw at first was the possibility of vaccinating dogs against rabies, and that it was only in 1885 that the first person, little Joseph Meister, was inoculated, after a council of physicians had decided that his death was certain, and that his life was saved."

PORTRAITS OF M. PASTEUR.

The newness of the Pasteur doctrines and treatment is, indeed, one of the most striking things about the Institute. One rubs his eyes to remember that, thirteen years ago, very few people admitted the _role_ of bacteria in the world, and that those who did admit their existence were very much at sea about what to do with them.

The doctrine of microbe, the theory that ferments and virus are living beings, that a vaccine is an attenuated virus, that medicine is based on the artificial attenuation of virus--all this is now so widely received, is so thoroughly a part of popular belief, that one is bewildered in remembering that twelve years ago the general theory of disease was that it is "in us, from us, by us." Especially is all this astonishing, standing in the Pasteur Institute, the crystallization of the microbe doctrine.