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.