doorway of the workshop which he used most often. I crossed the Yard.
"Come in," he said. "We must have a talk first. Only for a little while: just a few words."
The room was lofty and spacious and one corner of it was reserved for writing and resting, with a desk littered with papers and drawings, a couch and some old, upholstered easy-chairs. My uncle drew one of the chairs up for me. He seemed calmer, but his glance retained an unaccustomed brilliance.
"Yes," he said, "a few words of explanation beforehand will do no harm, a few words on the past, the wretched past which is that of every inventor who sees fortune slipping away from him. I have pursued it for so long! I have always pursued it. My brain had always seemed to me a vat in which a thousand incoherent ideas were fermenting, all contradicting one another and mutually destructive… And then there was one that gained strength. And thenceforward I lived for that one only and sacrificed everything for it. It was like a sink that swallowed up all my money and that of others.. and their happiness and peace of mind as well. Think of my poor wife, Victorien. You remember how unhappy she was and how anxious about the future of her son, of my poor Dominique! And yet I loved her so devotedly.."
He stopped at this recollection. And I seemed to see my aunt's face again and to hear her telling my mother of her fears and her forebodings:
"He will ruin us," she used to say. "He keeps on making me sell out. He considers nothing."
"She did not trust me," Noël Dorgeroux continued. "Oh, I had so many disappointments, so many lamentable failures! Do you remember, Victorien, do you remember my experiment on intensive germination by means of electric currents, my experiments with oxygen and all the rest, all the rest, not one of which succeeded? The pluck it called for! But I never lost faith for a minute!.. One idea in particular buoyed me up and I came back to it incessantly, as though I were able to penetrate the future. You know to what I refer, Victorien: it appeared and reappeared a score of times under different forms, but the principle remained the same. It was the idea of utilizing the solar heat. It's all there, you know, in the sun, in its action upon us, upon cells, organisms, atoms, upon all the more or less mysterious substances that nature has placed at our disposal. And I attacked the problem from every side. Plants, fertilizers, diseases of men and animals, photographs: for all these I wanted the collaboration of the solar rays, utilized by the aid of special processes which were mine alone, my secret and nobody else's."
My uncle Dorgeroux was talking with renewed eagerness; and his eyes shone feverishly. He now held forth without interrupting himself:
"I will not deny that there was an element of chance about my discovery. Chance plays its part in everything. There never was a discovery that did not exceed our inventive effort; and I can confess to you, Victorien, that I do not even now understand what has happened. No, I can't explain it by a long way; and I can only just believe it. But, all the same, if I had not sought in that direction, the thing would not have occurred. It was due to me that the incomprehensible miracle took place. The picture is outlined in the very frame which I constructed, on the very canvas which I prepared; and, as you will perceive, Victorien, it is my will that makes the phantom which you are about to see emerge from the darkness."
He expressed himself in a tone of pride with which was mingled a certain uneasiness, as though he doubted himself and as though his words overstepped the actual limits of truth.
"You're referring to those three – sort of eyes, aren't you?" I asked.
"What's that?" he exclaimed, with a start. "Who told you? Bérangère, I suppose! She shouldn't have. That's what we must avoid at all costs: indiscretions. One word too much and I am undone; my discovery is stolen. Only think, the first man that comes along."
I had risen from my chair. He pushed me towards his desk:
"Sit down here, Victorien," he said, "and write. You mustn't mind my taking this precaution. It is essential. You must realize what you are pledging yourself to do if you share in my work. Write, Victorien."
"What, uncle?"
"A declaration in which you acknowledge that.. But I'll dictate it to you. That'll be better."
I interrupted him:
"Uncle, you distrust me."
"I don't distrust you, my boy. I fear an imprudence, an indiscretion. And, generally speaking, I have plenty of reasons for being suspicious."
"What reasons, uncle?"
"Reasons," he replied, in a more serious voice, "which make me think that I am being spied upon and that somebody is trying to discover what my invention is. Yes, somebody came in here, the other night, and rummaged among my papers."
"Did they find anything?"
"No. I always carry the most important notes and formulae on me. Still, you can imagine what would happen if they succeeded. So you do admit, don't you, that I am obliged to be cautious? Write down that I have told you of my investigations and that you have seen what I obtain on the wall in the Yard, at the place covered by a black-serge curtain."
I took a sheet of paper and a pen. But he stopped me quickly:
"No, no," he said, "it's absurd. It wouldn't prevent.. Besides, you won't talk, I'm sure of that. Forgive me, Victorien. I am so horribly worried!"
"You needn't fear any indiscretion on my part," I declared. "But I must remind you that Bérangère also has seen what there was to see."
"Oh," he said, "she wouldn't understand!"
"She wanted to come with me just now."
"On no account, on no account! She's still a child and not fit to be trusted with a secret of this importance… Now come along."
But it so happened that, as we were leaving the workshop, we both of us at the same time saw Bérangère stealing along one of the walls of the Yard and stopping in front of a black curtain, which she suddenly pulled aside.
"Bérangère!" shouted my uncle, angrily.
The girl turned round and laughed.
"I won't have it! I will not have it!" cried Noël Dorgeroux, rushing in her direction. "I won't have it, I tell you! Get out, you mischief!"
Bérangère ran away, without, however, displaying any great perturbation. She leapt on a stack of bricks, scrambled on to a long plank which formed a bridge between two barrels and began to dance as she was wont to do, with her arms outstretched like a balancing-pole and her bust thrown slightly backwards.
"You'll lose your balance," I said, while my uncle drew the curtain.
"Never!" she replied, jumping up and down on her spring-board.
She did not lose her balance. But the plank shifted and the pretty dancer came tumbling down among a heap of old packing-cases.
I ran to her assistance and found her lying on the ground, looking very white.
"Have you hurt yourself, Bérangère?"
"No.. hardly.. just my ankle.. perhaps I've sprained it."
I lifted her, almost fainting, in my arms and carried her to a wooden bench a little farther away.
She let me have my way and even put one arm round my neck. Her eyes were closed. Her red lips opened and I inhaled the cool fragrance of her breath.
"Bérangère!" I whispered, trembling with emotion.
When I laid her on the bench, her arm held me more tightly, so that I had to bend my head with my face almost touching hers. I meant to draw back. But the temptation was too much for me and I kissed her on the lips, gently at first and then with a brutal violence which brought her to her senses.
She repelled me with an indignant movement and stammered, in a despairing, rebellious tone:
"Oh, it's abominable of you!.. It's shameful!"
In spite of the suffering caused by her sprain, she had managed to stand up, while I, stupefied by my thoughtless conduct, stood bowed before her, without daring to raise my head.
We remained for some seconds in this attitude, in an embarrassed silence through which I could catch