further by the accidents of my education, had led me to the study of physical sciences.  For several years, I had applied all I have of intelligence and energy to certain investigations in electricity.  To convert electricity into an incomparable motive-power which would supersede steam,—­such was the object I pursued without pause.  Already, as you know, although quite young, I had obtained results which had attracted some attention in the scientific world.  I thought I could see the last of a problem, the solution of which would change the face of the globe.  Ruin was the death of my hopes, the total loss of the fruits of my labors; for my experiments were costly, and it required money, much money, to purchase the products which were indispensable to me, and to construct the machines which I contrived.

“And I was about being compelled to earn my daily bread.

“I was on the verge of despair, when I met a man whom I had formerly seen at my father’s, and who had seemed to take some interest in my researches, a speculator named Marcolet.  But it is not at the bourse that he operates.  Industry is the field of his labors.  Ever on the lookout for those obstinate inventors who are starving to death in their garrets, he appears to them at the hour of supreme crisis:  he pities them, encourages them, consoles them, helps them, and almost always succeeds in becoming the owner of their discovery.  Sometimes he makes a mistake; and then all he has to do is to put a few thousand francs to the debit of profit or loss.  But, if he has judged right, then he counts his profits by hundreds of thousands; and how many patents does he work thus!  Of how many inventions does he reap the results which are a fortune, and the inventors of which have no shoes to wear!  Every thing is good to him; and he defends with the same avidity a cough-sirup, the formula of which he has purchased of some poor devil of a druggist, and an improvement to the steam-engine, the patent for which has been sold to him by an engineer of genius.  And yet Marcolet is not a bad man.  Seeing my situation, he offered me a certain yearly sum to undertake some studies of industrial chemistry which he indicated to me.  I accepted; and the very next day I hired a small basement in the Rue des Tournelles, where I set up my laboratory, and went to work at once.  That was a year ago.  Marcolet must be satisfied.  I have already found for him a new shade for dyeing silk, the cost price of which is almost nothing.  As to me, I have lived with the strictest economy, devoting all my surplus earnings to the prosecution of the problem, the solution of which would give me both glory and fortune.”

Palpitating with inexpressible emotion, Mlle. Gilberte was listening to this young man, unknown to her a few moments since, and whose whole history she now knew as well as if she had always lived near him; for it never occurred to her to suspect his sincerity.