Pasteur Institute

The Pasteur Institute is mentioned in two distinct contexts: as the destination for guinea pigs sold by a retired businesswoman, and as an institution invoked when a speaker denies that rabies exists. The novel supplies no further account of its work or response, leaving its significance tied to these brief encounters with animal commerce and contested scientific authority.

Guinea Pigs Sold to the Institute

After her husband’s death, his widow raises guinea pigs and sells them to the Pasteur Institute. She says she keeps them partly for occupation and partly for the small profit they bring. The narrator adds that she does not falsify them. The reference places the Institute within a local economy in which animals are bred and sold, though the text does not specify their use after purchase.

A Reference in the Rabies Dispute

In a separate conversation, a man insists that rabies does not exist and dismisses belief in it as a bluff. The narrator responds by bringing up the Pasteur Institute, making it an immediate counterpoint to the man’s sweeping denial. The supplied passage ends before the exchange resolves; it establishes the Institute as a recognizable scientific reference in the argument, but does not state what answer the man gives or offer an independent judgment of the dispute.