filled
with alchohol, which focussed the light coming through one of the
compartments of the rose-window of the garret. The shelf of the receiver
communicated with the wire of an immense galvanic battery. Lemulquinier,
busy at the moment in moving the pedestal of the machine, which was
placed on a movable axle so as to keep the lens in a perpendicular
direction to the rays of the sun, turned round, his face black with
dust, and called out,--

"Ha! mademoiselle, don't come in."

The aspect of her father, half-kneeling beside the instrument,
and receiving the full strength of the sunlight upon his head, the
protuberances of his skull, its scanty hairs resembling threads
of silver, his face contracted by the agonies of expectation, the
strangeness of the objects that surrounded him, the obscurity of parts
of the vast garret from which fantastic engines seemed about to spring,
all contributed to startle Marguerite, who said to herself, in terror,--

"He is mad!"

Then she went up to him and whispered in his ear, "Send away
Lemulquinier."

"No, no, my child; I want him: I am in the midst of an experiment no one
has yet thought of. For the last three days we have been watching
for every ray of sun. I now have the means of submitting metals, in a
complete vacuum, to concentrated solar fires and to electric currents.
At this very moment the most powerful action a chemist can employ is
about to show results which I alone--"

"My father, instead of vaporizing metals you should employ them in
paying your notes of hand--"

"Wait, wait!"

"Monsieur Merkstus has been here, father; and he must have ten thousand
francs by four o'clock."

"Yes, yes, presently. True, I did sign a little note which is payable
this month. I felt sure I should have found the Absolute. Good God! If I
could only have a July sun the experiment would be successful."

He grasped his head and sat down on an old cane chair; a few tears
rolled from his eyes.

"Monsieur is quite right," said Lemulquinier; "it is all the fault of
that rascally sun which is too feeble,--the coward, the lazy thing!"

Master and valet paid no further attention to Marguerite.

"Leave us, Mulquinier," she said.

"Ah! I see a new experiment!" cried Claes.

"Father, lay aside your experiments," said his daughter, when they were
alone. "You have one hundred thousand francs to pay, and we have not
a penny. Leave your laboratory; your honor is in question. What will
becom