"There are two barrels, or, more accurately speaking, a barrel for discharge of the projectile and a chamber for the explosive substance, which is the secret." "Then you load by the muzzle, like the old-fashioned guns?" "Oh, no; there is no load, no cartridge, as you understand it; only the missiles, and they are inserted by the quantity in the breach." "And there is no trigger or hammer!" exclaimed Césarine, not yet at the end of her wonder. "Obsolete contrivances, always catching in the clothes or in the brambles, and causing the death or maiming of many an excellent man. We have changed all that by doing away with appendages altogether. This disc, when pressed, allows so much of the explosive matter to enter the barrel and it expels the missile by repeated expansions." "How very, very curious!" exclaimed Madame Clemenceau, returning the piece to Antonino with the vexed air of one reluctantly giving up a puzzle to the solution of which a prize was attached. "I should like you to make it clear to me--" "The government forbids!" said the Italian, smiling, and assuming a look of preternatural solemnity to make the lady smile and Hedwig laugh respectfully. "And, then, the company we are getting up, lays a farther prohibition on us. However, you are in the arcana--you are one of the privileged, I suppose, and if M. Clemenceau does not expressly bar my lessons, you shall learn how to knock over sparrows for your cat." "You will instruct me?" "Most gladly!" "That is nice of you, and I am so sorry at having interrupted your experiments." "Thanks; but we have long since gone beyond the experimental stage. I was only trying a new bullet that I fancy the shape of. I ask your pardon for having given you a fright." He took her hand and kissed it. She beckoned to Hedwig as soon as it was released, and smiled kindly on him as she left the room with her servant to dress befittingly to show herself to Mademoiselle Rebecca. Had it been only her husband to face, she might have been content to look dusty with travel as she had to Antonino. "How you delight that poor gentleman," observed Hedwig, between pity and admiration. "You would witch an angel." "I am only practicing to enchant my husband, you dull creature!" said Césarine merrily. "He is a great man, and I have been proud of him from the first." CHAPTER XIV. TRULY A MAN. Long after Madame Clemenceau had left the room, the Italian stood in the same position as he had taken after kissing her hand. The mild voice from the pallid but little changed beauty thrilled him as formerly, and went far towards making him as mad as he had been ten days before when she had dropped, like an extinguished star, out of that small system. In her absence, he had regained quiet and some coolness, and believed he had conquered the treasonable passion which threatened his benefactor with disgrace. Had she not disgraced him as it was; had she not run away with another lover?