Eighteen months previously the Secretary of the Navy at Washington, had received a demand for an audience in regard to a communication that Thomas Roch desired to make to him.

As soon as he glanced at the name, the secretary perfectly understood the nature of the communication and the terms which would accompany it, and an immediate audience was unhesitatingly accorded.

Thomas Roch’s notoriety was indeed such that, out of solicitude for the interests confided to his keeping, and which he was bound to safeguard, he could not hesitate to receive the petitioner and listen to the proposals which the latter desired personally to submit to him.

Thomas Roch was an inventor—­an inventor of genius.  Several important discoveries had brought him prominently to the notice of the world.  Thanks to him, problems that had previously remained purely theoretical had received practical application.  He occupied a conspicuous place in the front rank of the army of science.  It will be seen how worry, deceptions, mortification, and the outrages with which he was overwhelmed by the cynical wits of the press combined to drive him to that degree of madness which necessitated his internment in Healthful House.

His latest invention in war-engines bore the name of Roch’s Fulgurator.  This apparatus possessed, if he was to be believed, such superiority over all others, that the State which acquired it would become absolute master of earth and ocean.

The deplorable difficulties inventors encounter in connection with their inventions are only too well known, especially when they endeavor to get them adopted by governmental commissions.  Several of the most celebrated examples are still fresh in everybody’s memory.  It is useless to insist upon this point, because there are sometimes circumstances underlying affairs of this kind upon which it is difficult to obtain any light.  In regard to Thomas Roch, however, it is only fair to say that, as in the case of the majority of his predecessors, his pretensions were excessive.  He placed such an exorbitant price upon his new engine that it was practicably impossible to treat with him.

This was due to the fact—­and it should not be lost sight of—­that in respect of previous inventions which had been most fruitful in result, he had been imposed upon with the greatest audacity.  Being unable to obtain therefrom the profits which he had a right to expect, his temper had become soured.  He became suspicious, would give up nothing without knowing just what he was doing, impose conditions that were perhaps unacceptable, wanted his mere assertions accepted as sufficient guarantee, and in any case asked for such a large sum of money on account before condescending to furnish the test of practical experiment that his overtures could not be entertained.

In the first place he had offered the fulgurator to France, and made known the nature of it to the commission appointed to pass upon his proposition.  The fulgurator was a sort of auto-propulsive engine, of peculiar construction, charged with an explosive composed of new substances and which only produced its effect under the action of a deflagrator that was also new.