nd then it is
only every four years that there is a 'concours' for admission. In four
years what will be my moral and intellectual condition? How should I
support this exile of four years? Imagine the effect that four years of
isolation in the mountains will produce. But this is not all. Besides
this ostensible end that I have pursued since I left my village, I
have my special work that I can carry out only in Paris. Without having
overwhelmed you with the details of medicine, you know that it is about
to undergo a revolution that will transform it. Until now it has been
taught officially, in pathology, that the human organism carries within
itself the germ of a great many infectious diseases which develop
spontaneously in certain conditions; for instance, that tuberculosis
is the result of fatigue, privations, and physiological miseries. Well,
recently it has been admitted, that is to say, the revolutionists admit,
a parasitical origin for these diseases, and in France and Germany there
is an army looking for these parasites. I am a soldier in this army,
and to help me in these researches I established a laboratory in the
dining-room. It is to the parasites of tuberculosis and cancers that I
devote myself, and for seven years, that is, since I was house-surgeon,
my comrades have called me the cancer topic. I have discovered the
parasite of the tuberculosis, but I have not yet been able to free it
from all its impurities by the process of culture. I am still at it.
That is to say, I am very near it, and to-morrow, perhaps, or in a few
days, I may make a discovery that will be a revolution, and cover
its discoverer with glory. The same with the cancer. I have found its
microbe. But all is not done. See what I must give up in leaving Paris."

"Why give all this up? Could you not continue your researches in
Auvergne?"

"It is impossible, for many reasons that are too long to explain, but
one will suffice. The culture of these parasites can be done only in
certain temperatures rigorously maintained at the necessary degree, and
these temperatures can be obtained only by stoves, like the one in my
laboratory, fed by gas, the entrance of which is automatically regulated
by the temperature of the water. How could I use this stove in a country
where there is no gas? No, no! If I leave Paris, everything is at an end
my position, as well as my work. I shall become a country doctor, and
nothing but a country doctor. Let the sherif