Michelet, in his recollections, tells of his hours of intimacy with a college friend named Poinsat, and thus expresses himself: “It was an immense, an insatiable longing for confidences, for mutual revelations.” Pasteur felt something of the sort for Charles Chappuis, a _philosophie_ student at Besançon college. He was the son of a notary at St. Vit, one of those old-fashioned provincial notaries, who, by the dignity of their lives, their spirit of wisdom, the perpetual preoccupation of their duty, inspired their children with a sense of responsibility. His son had even surpassed his father’s hopes. Of this generous, gentle-faced youth there exists a lithograph signed “Louis Pasteur.” A book entitled _Les Graveurs du XIXᵐᵉ Siècle_ mentions this portrait, giving Pasteur an unexpected form of celebrity. Before the _Graveurs_, the _Guide de l’Amateur des Œuvres d’Art_ had already spoken of a pastel drawing discovered in the United States near Boston. It represents another schoolfellow of Pasteur’s, who, far from his native land, carefully preserved the portrait of Chappuis as well as his own. Everything that friendship can give in strength and disinterestedness, everything that, according to Montaigne--who knew more about it even that Michelet--“makes souls merge into each other so that the seam which originally joined them disappears,” was experienced by Pasteur and Chappuis. Filial piety, brotherly solicitude, friendly confidences--Pasteur knew the sweetness of all these early human joys; the whole of his life was permeated with them. The books he loved added to this flow of generous emotions. Chappuis watched and admired this original nature, which, with a rigid mind made for scientific research and always seeking the proof of everything, yet read Lamartine’s _Meditations_ with enthusiasm. Differing in this from many science students, who are indifferent to literature--just as some literature students affect to disdain science--Pasteur kept for literature a place apart. He looked upon it as a guide for general ideas. Sometimes he would praise to excess some writer or orator merely because he had found in one page or in one sentence the expression of an exalted sentiment. It was with Chappuis that he exchanged his thoughts, and together they mapped out a life in common. When Chappuis went to Paris, the better to prepare himself for the Ecole Normale, Pasteur felt an ardent desire to go with him. Chappuis wrote to him with that open spontaneity which is such a charm in youth, “I shall feel as if I had all my Franche Comté with me when you are here.” Pasteur’s father feared a crisis like that of 1838, and, after hesitating, refused his consent to an immediate departure. “Next year,” he said.