"One has said," he began, "that the word _impossible_ is not French. It would be more exact to affirm that it was not _human_! We attain a knowledge of the unknowable. The mysterious is approachable. One must deny nothing _a priori_; one must believe all things possible and not only a dream. Search for the truth, the _harsh_ truth, as your Stendhal said. Well! the word is wrong. One ought to say justly, the _exquisite_ truth, for it is a joy for those who search, that daily life where each movement marks a step advanced, where the heart beats at the thought of a rendezvous in the laboratory as at a rendezvous of love. Ah! he is happy who has given his life to science. He lives in a dream. It is the poetry, in our times of prose. The dream," continued the young doctor as in an ecstasy, while Bernardet listened, ravished, "the dream is everywhere. It is impossible to make it tangible. Thought, human thought, can sometime be deciphered like an open book. An American physician asked to be permitted to try an experiment upon the cranium of a condemned man, still living. Through the cranium he studied the man's brain. Has not Edison undertaken to give sight to the blind! But, in order to accomplish all these things, it is necessary, as in primitive times, to believe, to believe always. The twentieth century will see many others." "Ah! Doctor! Doctor!" cried poor little Bernardet, much moved. "I do not wish to be the ignoramus that I am, the father of a family, who has mouths to feed, and I beg of you to take me as a sweeper in your laboratory." He departed, enthused by the interview. Henceforth he could say that, he, the ignorant one, had, by his seemingly foolish conviction, proved the leader of an experiment which had been abandoned for some years; and the humble police officer had reopened the nearly closed door to criminal instruction. A scruple, moreover, came to him; a doubt, an agony, and he wished to share it with M. Ginory. All the same, with the admirable invention, he had caused an innocent man to be arrested. This thought made him very uneasy. He had produced a power which, instead of striking the guilty, had overthrown an unhappy man, and it was this famous discovery of Dr. Bourion's, persisted in by him, which had resulted in this mistake. "It must be," he thought, "that man may be fallible even in the most marvelous discoveries. It is frightful! It is perhaps done to make us more prudent. Prudent and modest!" Doubt now seized him. Must he stop there in these famous experiments which ended in this lie? Ought he abandon all research on a road which ended in a cul-de-sac? And he confided that unhappy scruple to the Examining Magistrate, with whom the chances of the service had put him in sympathy. M. Ginory not only was interested in strange discoveries, but he was always indulgent toward the original, little Bernardet.