This is such an intimate gathering that I may be allowed to say quite openly that it is so painful to you not to give that you prefer being exploited rather than close your hand.
The Pasteur Institute owes you much; you have brought to it the prestige of your renown, and by your work and that of your pupils you have greatly contributed to its glory. You have given a noble example of disinterestedness by refusing any salary in those years when the budget was balanced with difficulty and by preferring to the glorious and lucrative situations that were offered to you the modest life of this house. Still a Russian by nationality, you have become French by your choice, and you contracted a Franco-Russian alliance with the Pasteur Institute long before the diplomats thought of it.
At the beginning the members of the Pasteur Institute were few, and the association bore a quasi-family character, Pasteurians often being compared with a monastic order, united by the worship of science. The progressive growth of the Institute inevitably destroyed its character of intimacy, but it remained a precious scientific focus, and this is what Metchnikoff said of it in 1913, _à propos_ of the twenty-fifth anniversary of its foundation:
If we weigh the for and against of the Pasteur Institute, it is indisputable that the first surpasses the second by a great deal. I do not think another institution exists that is equally favourable to work. Innumerable proofs have been adduced to attest this in the twenty-five years that our House has existed.
It was especially the development of pure scientific research in the Institute which interested Metchnikoff; he continually considered means of contributing towards it; he thought it necessary to attract active scientific forces regardless of their origin, to institute generous scientific "scholarships," and to stimulate by every means scientific activity and spirit.
As the rapid development of bacteriology necessitated having recourse to chemistry, physics, and physiology, he considered it indispensable to organise collective work in which specialists in these divers branches should take part, thus collaborating to the solution of the same problem. Later he was able to realise this project, up to a certain point, in his own laboratory, when studying intestinal flora.