As the Minister of War spoke these few momentous words, accentuating them with his pen on the blotting-pad in front of him, Doctor Fargeau arose from his seat on the other side of the desk, and said, in a voice which would have been stronger had it not been broken by an uncontrollable emotion: "Monsieur le Ministre, you have spoken, and, officially, the matter is finished. Through you I have offered France the Empire of the World. Through you France has refused it. You ask me to bring my apparatus here to Paris, to prove that it is a question of practice, not of theory. I cannot do it, and why?--because, as I told you, I have spent every centime, or pfennige, if you like, in making this thing possible. "Everything is gone: the farms and vineyards that have been ours since the days of St Louis are mortgaged. We are homeless. I have no home to go back to. I have borrowed more than I can pay; I trusted everything to you, to the intelligence and patriotism of France. I have not even enough money to take me back to the home that I have ruined for the sake of France and her lost provinces. It was impossible to think that you would disbelieve me. A thousand francs, Monsieur le Ministre, would be enough--enough to save me from ruin, and to make France the mistress of the world. Even out of your own pocket, it would not be very much. Think, I implore you, of all that I have suffered and sacrificed; of all the hours that I have spent in making this great ideal a reality----" "And which, if you will excuse me saying so, monsieur," replied the Minister, rising rather sharply from his seat, "has yet to be proved to our satisfaction, to be a concrete reality instead of a dream--the dream of an enthusiast who does not even possess the credit of having remained a Frenchman. If, indeed, your personal necessities are so pressing, and a fifty-franc note would be of any use to you--well, seeing that you were once a Frenchman----" As he said this the Minister took his pocket-book out, and, as he did so, Doctor Fargeau sprang from his seat, and said, in quick, husky tones: