The _savant_ glanced at him, and divined that the hidden circumstances of the accident must be serious. And then, as Guillaume, smiling, though paling with weakness, consented to the suggestion, Bertheroy retorted that before anything else he must be put to bed. The servant just then returned to say the bed was ready, and so they all went into the adjoining room, where the injured man was soon undressed and helped between the sheets. “Light me, Pierre,” said Bertheroy, “take the lamp; and let Sophie give me a basin full of water and some cloths.” Then, having gently washed the wound, he resumed: “The devil! The wrist isn’t broken, but it’s a nasty injury. I am afraid there must be a lesion of the bone. Some nails passed through the flesh, did they not?” Receiving no reply, he relapsed into silence. But his surprise was increasing, and he closely examined the hand, which the flame of the explosion had scorched, and even sniffed the shirt cuff as if seeking to understand the affair better. He evidently recognised the effects of one of those new explosives which he himself had studied, almost created. In the present case, however, he must have been puzzled, for there were characteristic signs and traces the significance of which escaped him. “And so,” he at last made up his mind to ask, carried away by professional curiosity, “and so it was a laboratory explosion which put you in this nice condition? What devilish powder were you concocting then?” Guillaume, ever since he had seen Bertheroy thus studying his injury, had, in spite of his sufferings, given marked signs of annoyance and agitation. And as if the real secret which he wished to keep lay precisely in the question now put to him, in that powder, the first experiment with which had thus injured him, he replied with an air of restrained ardour, and a straight frank glance: “Pray do not question me, master. I cannot answer you. You have, I know, sufficient nobility of nature to nurse me and care for me without exacting a confession.” “Oh! certainly, my friend,” exclaimed Bertheroy; “keep your secret. Your discovery belongs to you if you have made one; and I know that you are capable of putting it to the most generous use. Besides, you must be aware that I have too great a passion for truth to judge the actions of others, whatever their nature, without knowing every circumstance and motive.” So saying, he waved his hand as if to indicate how broadly tolerant and free from error and superstition was that lofty sovereign mind of his, which in spite of all the orders that bedizened him, in spite of all the academical titles that he bore as an official _savant_, made him a man of the boldest and most independent views, one whose only passion was truth, as he himself said.