, devotion, the
prodigies which love may work, ah! for my part I do not go so far as
that. And now that you have shown me your sore, why should I not tell you
my dream, the wild hope which keeps me alive! It is strange; but, are
_savants_ to be the last childish dreamers, and is faith only to spring
up nowadays in chemical laboratories?"

Intense emotion was stirring Guillaume; there was battle waging in both
his brain and his heart. And at last, yielding to the deep compassion
which filled him, vanquished by his ardent affection for his unhappy
brother, he spoke out. But he had drawn yet closer to Pierre, even passed
one arm around him; and it was thus embracing him that he, in his turn,
made his confession, lowering his voice as if he feared that someone
might overhear his secret. "Why should you not know it?" he said. "My own
sons are ignorant of it. But you are a man and my brother, and since
there is nothing of the priest left in you, it is to the brother I will
confide it. This will make me love you the more, and perhaps it may do
you good."

Then he told him of his invention, a new explosive, a powder of such
extraordinary force that its effects were incalculable. And he had found
employment for this powder in an engine of warfare, a special cannon,
hurling bombs which would assure the most overwhelming victory to the
army using them. The enemy's forces would be destroyed in a few hours,
and besieged cities would fall into dust at the slightest bombardment. He
had long searched and doubted, calculated, recalculated and experimented;
but everything was now ready: the precise formula of the powder, the
drawings for the cannon and the bombs, a whole packet of precious papers
stored in a safe spot. And after months of anxious reflection he had
resolved to give his invention to France, so as to ensure her a certainty
of victory in her coming, inevitable war with Germany!

At the same time, he was not a man of narrow patriotism; on the contrary
he had a very broad, international conception of the future liberative
civilisation. Only he believed in the initiatory mission of France, and
particularly in that of Paris, which, even as it is to-day, was destined
to be the world's brain to-morrow, whence all science and justice would
proceed. The great idea of liberty and equality had already soared from
it at the prodigious blast of the Revolution; and from its genius and
valour the final emancipation of man would also tak