But that extraordinary man, more deeply disgusted than ever, would not listen to the congratulatory world. Barbicane, Nicholl, Tom Hunter with the wooden leg, Colonel Bloomsberry, the brisk Bilsby, and their friends, would never forgive him. But at least there remained Mrs. Scorbitt! At first J. T. Maston refused to admit that he had made a mistake; and set to work to check his calculations. Sulphuric Alcide was, however, accurate. And that was why, when he found the error at the last moment, and had no time to reassure his fellow-men, he so calmly sipped his pleasant hot coffee while the spinal marrow was so unpleasantly cool in his fellow-men’s backs. There was no disguising the fact. Three noughts had slipped out of the terrestrial waist! Then it was that J. T. Maston remembered! It was at the beginning of his labours when he had shut himself up in Ballistic Cottage. He had written the number 40,000,000 on the blackboard. At that moment came a hurried tinkle from the telephone. He had gone to the instrument. He had exchanged a few words with Mrs. Scorbitt. There was a flash of lightning that upset him and his blackboard. He picked himself and his blackboard up. He began to write in the figures half rubbed out by the fall. He had just written 40,000—when the bell rang a second time. And when he returned to work he had forgotten the three last noughts in the measure of the Earth’s equator! Now all that was the fault of Mrs. Scorbitt. If she had not bothered him he would never have been knocked down by the return shock of that electrical discharge. And so the unhappy woman also received a shock when J. T. Maston told her how the mistake had been made. Yes! She was the cause of the disaster! It was her doing that J. T. Maston was now dishonoured for the many years he had to live, for it was the general custom to die as centenarians in the Gun Club. And after the interview J. T. Maston fled from the house in New Park. He went back to Ballistic Cottage. He strode about his workroom saying to himself,— “Now I am good for nothing in the world!” “Not even if you were to marry?” said a voice which emotion made heartrending. It was Mrs. Scorbitt. Tearful and distracted she had followed J. T. Maston. “Dear Maston!” said she. “Well! Yes!” said he; “on one condition—that I never again touch mathematics.” “I abominate them!” said the widow. And thus it was that Mrs. Scorbitt became Mrs. J. T. Maston. As to Alcide Pierdeux, what honour, what celebrity that letter brought both him and his old school! Translated into all languages, copied into all newspapers, it made his name known throughout the world.