When Louis Pasteur reached Paris he did not feel like Balzac’s student hero, confidently defying the great city. In spite of the strong will already visible in his pensive features, his grief was too deep to be reasoned away. No one at first suspected this; he was a reserved youth, with none of the desire to talk which leads weak natures to ease their sorrows by pouring them out; but, when all was quiet in the Impasse des Feuillantines and his sleeping comrades could not break in upon his regrets, he would lie awake for hours thinking of his home and repeating the mournful line--
How endless unto watchful anguish Night doth seem.
The students of the Barbet school attended the classes of the Lycée St. Louis. In spite of his willingness and his passionate love of study, Louis was overcome with despair at being away from home. Never was homesickness more acute. “If I could only get a whiff of the tannery yard,” he would say to Jules Vercel, “I feel I should be cured.” M. Barbet endeavoured in vain to amuse and turn the thoughts of this lad of fifteen so absorbed in his sorrow. At last he thought it his duty to warn the parents of this state of mind, which threatened to become morbid.
One morning in November Louis Pasteur was told with an air of mystery that he was wanted. “They are waiting for you close by,” said the messenger, indicating a small café at the corner of the street. Louis entered and found a man sitting at a small table at the back of the shop, his face in his hands. It was his father. “I have come to fetch you,” he said simply. No explanations were necessary; the father and son understood each other’s longings.
What took place in Pasteur’s mind when he found himself again at Arbois? After the first few days of relief and joy, did he feel, when he went back to Arbois college, any regret, not to say remorse, at not having overcome his homesickness? Was he discouraged by the prospect of a restricted career in that small town? Little is known of that period when his will had been mastered by his feelings; but from the indecision of his daily life we may hazard a guess at the disquieted state of his mind at this time. At the beginning of that year (1839) he returned for a time to his early tastes; he went back to his coloured chalks, left aside for the last eighteen months, ever since one holiday time when he had drawn Captain Barbier, proudly wearing his uniform, and with the high colour of excellent health.