Zara looked meditative. "I do not know," she said, "why you should imagine--" "Stop!" I exclaimed; "there is no imagination in the case. I have reasoned it out. Here is a book I found in the library on electric organs as they are discovered to exist in certain fish. Listen: 'They are nervous apparatuses which in the arrangement of their parts may be compared to a Voltaic pile. They develop electricity and give electrical discharges.'" "Well!" said Zara. "You say 'Well!' as if you did not know!" I exclaimed half-angrily, half-laughingly. "These fish have helped me to understand a great deal, I assure you. Your brother must have discovered the seed or commencement of electrical organs like those described, in the human body; and he has cultivated them in you and in himself, and has brought them to a high state of perfection. He has cultivated them in Raffaello Cellini, and he is beginning to cultivate them in me, and I hope most sincerely he will succeed. I think his theory is a magnificent one!" Zara gazed seriously at me, and her large eyes seemed to grow darker with the intensity of her thought. "Supposing you had reasoned out the matter correctly," she said--"and I will not deny that you have done a great deal towards the comprehension of it--have you no fear? do you not include some drawbacks in even Casimir's learning such a secret, and being able to cultivate and educate such a deadly force as that of electricity in the human being?" "If it is deadly, it is also life-giving," I answered. "Remedies are also poisons. You laid the Prince senseless at your feet, but your brother raised him up again. Both these things were done by electricity. I can understand it all now; I see no obscurity, no mystery. And oh, what a superb discovery it is!" Zara smiled.