Antonino looked on silently as his instructor took the gun and inserted the bullet, but when he was going over to the open window, with the evident intention to fire off into the garden, he followed and laid his hand on his arm, saying animatedly: 

“Do not fire!”

“Why not?” returned Clemenceau, but without astonishment.  “We live in a desert since we have frightened our neighbors away.  For two leagues around, nobody is about at this hour and everybody within our walls is accustomed to the noise of the gas exploding.”

“Not everybody,” remonstrated Antonino.  “Madame Clemenceau has returned home and the sound frightens her because so strange.”

“It is so.  That’s another matter,” replied the inventor, putting the rifle down in the corner without haste.

“Did you know it?  Have you seen her?” cried Antonino, struck by the remarkable unconcern of his master.

“I knew of it by seeing her, yes, as I was coming down stairs a while since—­she was going to her rooms from this one, with her maid.”

“It’s a lucky thing that Mademoiselle Daniels refused to occupy them!” exclaimed Antonino.  “Why did you not speak to your wife?”

“Because I can have nothing to say to her and she would speak to me nothing but lies,” said Clemenceau in so severe and convinced a tone that the young man remained silent, hurt at the judgment pronounced upon his idol by its own high-priest.  “What are you brooding over?” he inquired, after an embarrassing pause.

“My dear master, I think that I ought to ask leave of absence since I have finished the work of designing the bullet most fit for the gas-rifle.”

“Do you ask leave of me, at your age, as of a schoolmaster?”

The relations between the adopted son and the architect, who had mistaken his bent and become an innovator in artillery, had been affectionate, and on the younger man’s side respectful.  He had never taken any serious steps without asking his consent.

“Well, where did you think of going?” asked Clemenceau.

“To Paris.”

“To show the rifle and projectile complete?  No, we can test the latter at the new series of firing experiments before the Ordnance Committee.  The Minister of War and the Emperor will not thank you for disturbing them for so little.  It was the great gun they wanted.  They are wedded to the Chassepot for the soldier’s gun and, besides, the government musket factories are opposed to so great a novelty.”

“I need exercise—­action—­the open air,” persisted the Italian.

Clemenceau shook his head.  Only the day before, the young man had called himself the happiest soul in the world and did not wish to quit tranquil Montmorency.

“Well, after you have had your fling, would you hasten back?”

“I—­I fear not, master,” said he.  “I daresay if you and M. Daniels should approve, I might have a situation to travel for the Clemenceau Rifle Company, for some months, in England or America—­and explain the value of your invention.”