The train came in. When Lerne touched my shoulder, I was endeavoring, with a great show of effort to screw up a nut which was already perfectly tight. “Nicolas!” I turned towards my uncle a face like a coal-heaver’s, putting on as harsh an expression as I could. “I have just finished,” I muttered; “that was a nice trick of yours, getting people to work all for nothing.” “Does it work all right again?” “Oh, yes! I have just tried. You can see the engine is smoking.” “Do you want the bits I carried away put back into the carburetor?” “Oh, no! keep them as a remembrance of this happy day, uncle. Come, let us get in, I have had enough of standing about here.” Frédéric Lerne was annoyed. “You do not mind, Nicolas, do you?” “Oh no, uncle, I do not mind.” “I have my reasons, you know. Later on....” “All right, if you knew me, however, you would not have been so much on your guard, but our agreement justifies all you did. I should have had no right to complain.” He made a vague, evasive gesture. “You are not angry, that is the main point. You understand how things are, don’t you?” Evidently Lerne was afraid he had vexed me, and that, as a result of my annoyance, I might disclose the existence of important secrets at Fonval, even though I might not be able to inform the right people of their nature. Weighing all the facts of the case, I felt that my presence as a stranger, free to depart when I liked, must have been a subject for constant alarm for my uncle. It seemed to me that in his place, had I been obliged to receive a third party because of his relationship with me, I should assuredly have preferred to make him my accomplice as soon as possible, so as to insure his discretion. “After all,” thought I to myself, “why has my uncle not thought of it? Before the uncertain, and perhaps illusory date when Lerne is to initiate me, he will have to pass through a long period of torment while he exercises over me the double vigilance of an analyst and a police-officer. “Suppose I were to anticipate his project? He would doubtless gladly hasten to give the information which is as sacred as a secret of the confessional, and which would unite the master and the pupil in the same plot. “I do not see why he should take my advances badly, for in either of the two possible eventualities, that is, whether Lerne’s promises to initiate me into his enterprise are made in good faith or not, the situation to-day has only two issues--either my departure, with its threat of revelation, or my connivance. “Now, Emma and the mystery tie me to the _château_, so I shall not go; there remains, therefore, a pretended complicity which would, moreover, have the advantage of allowing me to solve the puzzle--and who except Lerne could reveal it to my eyes, since Emma knows nothing about it, and since each solved problem, if I investigated it by myself, would only leave another one to follow?