Oho! This is a very different business!'

The speech was alive and vigorous and full of images; indifferent to
scholastic commonplaces, the ideas soared, hovering gently in the serene
heights of a kindly philosophy. This time, I listened with pleasure;
I even felt stirred. Here was no official homily: it was full of
impassioned zeal, of words that carried you with them, uttered by an
honest man accomplished in the art of speaking, an orator in the true
sense of the word. In all my school experience, I had never had such a
treat.

When the meeting broke up, my heart beat faster than usual: 'What a
pity,' I thought, 'that my side, the science side, cannot bring me into
contact, some day, with that inspector! It seems to me that we should
become great friends.'

I inquired his name of my colleagues, who were always better informed
than I. They told me it was Victor Duruy.

Well, one day, two years later, as I was looking after my Saint Martial
laboratory in the midst of the steam from my vats, with my hands the
color of boiled lobster claws from constant dipping in the indelible
red of my dyes, there walked in, unexpectedly, a person whose features
straightway seemed familiar. I was right, it was the very man, the chief
inspector whose speech had once stirred me. M. Duruy was now minister
of public instruction. He was styled, 'Your excellency;' and this style,
usually an empty formula, was well deserved in the present case, for our
new minister excelled in his exalted functions. We all held him in high
esteem. He was the workers' minister, the man for the humble toiler.

'I want to spend my last half-hour at Avignon with you,' said my
visitor, with a smile. 'That will be a relief from the official bowing
and scraping.'

Overcome by the honor paid me, I apologized for my costume--I was in my
shirt sleeves--and especially for my lobster claws, which I had tried,
for a moment, to hide behind my back.

'You have nothing to apologize for. I came to see the worker. The
working man never looks better than in his overall, with the marks of
his trade on him. Let us have a talk. What are you doing just now?'

I explained, in a few words, the object of my researches; I showed
my product; I executed under the minister's eyes a little attempt at
printing in madder red. The success of the experiment and the simplicity
of my apparatus, in which an evaporating dish, maintained at boiling
point under a glass funnel, took the place