of you to take me as a sweeper in your
laboratory."

He departed, enthused by the interview. Henceforth he could say that,
he, the ignorant one, had, by his seemingly foolish conviction, proved
the leader of an experiment which had been abandoned for some years; and
the humble police officer had reopened the nearly closed door to
criminal instruction.

A scruple, moreover, came to him; a doubt, an agony, and he wished to
share it with M. Ginory.

All the same, with the admirable invention, he had caused an innocent
man to be arrested. This thought made him very uneasy. He had produced a
power which, instead of striking the guilty, had overthrown an unhappy
man, and it was this famous discovery of Dr. Bourion's, persisted in by
him, which had resulted in this mistake.

"It must be," he thought, "that man may be fallible even in the most
marvelous discoveries. It is frightful! It is perhaps done to make us
more prudent. Prudent and modest!"

Doubt now seized him. Must he stop there in these famous experiments
which ended in this lie? Ought he abandon all research on a road which
ended in a cul-de-sac? And he confided that unhappy scruple to the
Examining Magistrate, with whom the chances of the service had put him
in sympathy. M. Ginory not only was interested in strange discoveries,
but he was always indulgent toward the original, little Bernardet.

"Finally, M. le Juge," said the police officer, shaking his head, "I
have thought and thought about the discovery, our discovery--that of Dr.
Bourion. It is subject to errors, our discovery. It would have led us to
put in prison--Jacques Dantin, and Jacques Dantin was not guilty."

"Oh, yes! M. Bernardet," said the Magistrate, who seemed thoughtful, his
heavy chin resting on his hand. "It ought to make us modest. It is the
fate of all human discoveries. To err--to err, is human!"

"It is not the less true," responded Bernardet, "that all which has
passed opens to us the astonishing horizon of the unknown"----

"The unknowable!" murmured the Magistrate.

"A physician who sometimes asks me to his experiments invited me to his
house the other evening and I saw--yes saw, or what one calls seeing, in
a mirror placed before me, by the light of the X-rays--greenish rays
which traversed the body--yes, Monsieur, I saw my heart beat, and my
lungs perform their functions, and I am fat, and a thin person could
better see himself living and breathing. Is it not fantastic, Mons