“Oh, thank you, sir,” she replied, with the expression of the profoundest gratitude; and at the same moment she laid a purse on the table and rushed away.  I ordered my servant to follow her to her house, and obtain all the information he could about her, and I learned she had been a widow for a short time, and that the loss of an adored husband had disturbed her reason.  The next day I visited her relatives, and, returning them the purse, I told them the scene the details of which the reader has just perused.

This scene, with some others that preceded and followed it, compelled me to take measures to guard myself against bores of every description.  I could not dream, as formerly, of exiling myself in the country, but I employed a similar resource:  this was to shut myself up in my workroom, and organize around me a system of defense against those whom I called, in my ill-temper, thieves of time.

I daily received visits from persons who were utter strangers to me; some were worth knowing, but the majority, gaining an introduction under the most futile pretexts, only came to kill a portion of their leisure time with me.  It was necessary to distinguish the tares from the wheat, and this is the arrangement I made: 

When one of these gentlemen rang at my door, an electric communication struck a bell in my workroom; I was thus warned and put on my guard.  My servant opened the door, and, as is customary, inquired the visitor’s name, while I, for my part, laid my ear to a tube, arranged for the purpose, which conveyed to me every word.  If, according to his reply, I thought it as well not to receive him, I pressed a button, and a white mark that appeared in a certain part of the hall announced I was not at home to him.  My servant then stated I was out, and begged the visitor to apply to the manager.

Sometimes it happened that I erred in my judgment, and regretted having granted an audience; but I had another mode of shortening a bore’s visit.  I had placed behind the sofa on which I sat an electric spring, communicating with a bell my servant could hear.  In case of need, and while talking, I threw my arm carelessly over the back of the sofa, touching the spring, and the bell rang.  Then my servant, playing a little farce, opened the front door, rang the bell, which could be heard from the room where I sat, and came to tell me that M. X—–­ (a name invented for the occasion) wished to speak to me.  I ordered M. X—–­ to be shown into an adjoining room, and it was very rare that my bore did not raise the siege.  No one can form an idea how much time I gained by this happy arrangement, or how many times I blessed my imagination and the celebrated savant to whom the discovery of galvanism is due!

This feeling can be easily explained, for my time was of inestimable value.  I husbanded it like a treasure, and never sacrificed it, unless the sacrifice might help me to discover new experiments destined to stimulate public curiosity.