inspect it and not learn much," he went on, with the
same pride; "but I thought it frightened you!"

"It did--it does, but I ought to overcome such a ridiculous feeling! I,
above all women, being a gun-inventor's wife! Is it loaded?" she asked,
while hesitatingly holding out her hand to take it.

Hedwig had prudently backed over to the window which she held a little
open to make a leap out for escape in case of accident. Her mistress
took the rifle and turned it over and over; certainly, it resembled no
gun she had ever handled before. Its simplicity daunted her and
irritated her.

"It seems to have two barrels," she remarked, "although one is closed as
if not to be used. Is it double-barrelled?"

"There are two barrels, or, more accurately speaking, a barrel for
discharge of the projectile and a chamber for the explosive substance,
which is the secret."

"Then you load by the muzzle, like the old-fashioned guns?"

"Oh, no; there is no load, no cartridge, as you understand it; only the
missiles, and they are inserted by the quantity in the breach."

"And there is no trigger or hammer!" exclaimed Cesarine, not yet at the
end of her wonder.

"Obsolete contrivances, always catching in the clothes or in the
brambles, and causing the death or maiming of many an excellent man. We
have changed all that by doing away with appendages altogether. This
disc, when pressed, allows so much of the explosive matter to enter the
barrel and it expels the missile by repeated expansions."

"How very, very curious!" exclaimed Madame Clemenceau, returning the
piece to Antonino with the vexed air of one reluctantly giving up a
puzzle to the solution of which a prize was attached. "I should like you
to make it clear to me--"

"The government forbids!" said the Italian, smiling, and assuming a look
of preternatural solemnity to make the lady smile and Hedwig laugh
respectfully. "And, then, the company we are getting up, lays a farther
prohibition on us. However, you are in the arcana--you are one of the
privileged, I suppose, and if M. Clemenceau does not expressly bar my
lessons, you shall learn how to knock over sparrows for your cat."

"You will instruct me?"

"Most gladly!"

"That is nice of you, and I am so sorry at having interrupted your
experiments."

"Thanks; but we have long since gone beyond the experimental stage. I
was only trying a new bullet that I fancy the shape of. I ask your
pardon for having given you a fr