She would be more pained than I am." He heaved a deep sigh and added, in a tone I shall never forget: "After all, what does it matter,--so long as she lives!" "She will live!" said Monsieur Darzac, in a voice strangely touching.
"And we will find the stolen articles," said Monsieur Dax.

"But what was in the cabinet ?" "Twenty years of my life," replied the illustrious professor sadly, "or rather of our lives--the lives of myself and my daughter! Yes, our most precious documents, the records of our secret experiments and our labours of twenty years were in that cabinet.

It is an irreparable loss to us and, I venture to say, to science.

All the processes by which I had been able to arrive at the precious proof of the destructibility of matter were there--all.

The man who came wished to take all from me,--my daughter and my work--my heart and my soul." And the great scientist wept like a child.
We stood around him in silence, deeply affected by his great distress.
Monsieur Darzac pressed closely to his side, and tried in vain to restrain his tears--a sight which, for the moment, almost made me like him, in spite of an instinctive repulsion which his strange demeanour and his inexplicable anxiety had inspired me.
Monsieur Rouletabille alone,--as if his precious time and mission on earth did not permit him to dwell in the contemplation on human suffering--had, very calmly, stepped up to the empty cabinet and, pointing at it, broke the almost solemn silence.