"I am only practicing to enchant my husband, you dull creature!" said Cesarine 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 pa.s.sion which threatened his benefactor with disgrace. Had she not disgraced him as it was; had she not run away with another lover?

Clemenceau had not said one word to his a.s.sociate about the telegram from Paris, which he seemed not to believe, or of the note beginning: "The faithless one," by which Von Sendlingen had been warned of Gratian's absconding and which he instructed Hedwig to place where her master must see it. Hence, the view by Clemenceau of the stamping out of the Viscount-baron, for his accomplices had not let the chance pa.s.s when he stumbled into their ambush, in order to see if the Frenchman in jealous spite would a.s.sail him.

Clemenceau had recognized his wife and he divined that the lonely man making for the same point was the villain, without understanding into what deathpit he had fallen.

At the juncture of his being about hurrying after his wife, he heard the half-strangled wretch's outcry and the low appeal of humanity overpowering the hoa.r.s.e summons of revenge in his bosom. But when he arrived at the broken footway bridge, all was over. A little farther, he fancied he saw a shadow in an osier bed, but when he waded to it, all was hushed. He called, but no sound responded. All seemed a vision--victim and a.s.sa.s.sins.

And his wife was flying, by the train which had merely stopped to take her up. As every resident is known at these suburban stations, he refrained from an inquiry which would have made him a laughing-stock.

Since Cesarine had returned, the conflict of duty and pa.s.sion would be resumed and he felt sure that he had been defeated before. Reflecting profoundly, he could come to no other conclusion than that he ought to shun the dangerous traitress.

As he lifted his head, less troubled after arriving at this resolution, he was not sorry to see that Clemenceau had silently entered the room.

"Oh, is it you, my dear master?" he exclaimed.

It was not easy on that placid brow to read whether he knew of Cesarine's return or not.

"Well, are you satisfied with your test this morning?" inquired he.

"Have you succeeded with the bullets of the new shape?"

"I believe so," answered Antonino, "for the modifications which you suggested, improved it in every point they dealt with. They go forth clean and the windage is much reduced."

"Is the range improved?"

"At fourteen hundred metres I put two elongated b.a.l.l.s into an oak so deeply that I could not dig them out with my knife. They struck very closely to one another. It is a hundred metres greater distance.

Inserting the bullets by the ma.s.s of twenty-five and firing the two took four seconds. I was less careful about marking where the others struck, and one that I discharged on my return near the house broke and went badly askew. With bullets made by regular moulders, such an accident should not happen."

"Have you any left? Let me see."

Antonino took two bullets from his waistcoat pocket; they were unlike the ordinary globules, and resembled the long, pointed cylinders of modern guns. With a pair of pocket plyers, he broke one to exhibit the interior to Clemenceau; it was composed of two metals in curiously shaped segments and a chamber in one end contained a loose ball of another and heavier metal, on the principle of the quick-silver enhancing the force of the blow of the "loaded" executioner's sword. All had a novel aspect, but the chief inventor was familiar with the arrangement.

"By the cavity in it I have reduced the weight of three to two," went on Antonino. "I am in hopes to put in fifty or sixty bullets at a time without making the arm too heavy, and that would suffice, considering that the replacement of the ma.s.s of projectiles requires no appreciable time, while the supply of explosive, liquefied air suffices for three hundred discharges. The repet.i.tion of the emissive force does not jar the gun, and the metal of our alloy does not show a strain although the gauge induces a pressure of fifty thousand pounds per square inch if it were acc.u.mulated."

"And the injection valve?"

"It works as easily by pressure on the disc, which replaces the trigger, perfectly."

"That was your idea."

"After you put me on the track," returned the Italian, gratefully. "Oh, I am still very ignorant in these matters."

"Not more than I, a few months ago. I had not handled a firearm until--"

he checked himself and frowned; then, tranquilly resuming, he said: "Labor, and you will reach the goal!"

Antonino looked on silently as his instructor took the gun and inserted the bullet, but when he was going over to the open window, with the evident intention to fire off into the garden, he followed and laid his hand on his arm, saying animatedly:

"Do not fire!"

"Why not?" returned Clemenceau, but without astonishment. "We live in a desert since we have frightened our neighbors away. For two leagues around, n.o.body is about at this hour and everybody within our walls is accustomed to the noise of the gas exploding."

"Not everybody," remonstrated Antonino. "Madame Clemenceau has returned home and the sound frightens her because so strange."

"It is so. That's another matter," replied the inventor, putting the rifle down in the corner without haste.

"Did you know it? Have you seen her?" cried Antonino, struck by the remarkable unconcern of his master.

"I knew of it by seeing her, yes, as I was coming down stairs a while since--she was going to her rooms from this one, with her maid."

"It's a lucky thing that Mademoiselle Daniels refused to occupy them!"

exclaimed Antonino. "Why did you not speak to your wife?"

"Because I can have nothing to say to her and she would speak to me nothing but lies," said Clemenceau in so severe and convinced a tone that the young man remained silent, hurt at the judgment p.r.o.nounced upon his idol by its own high-priest. "What are you brooding over?" he inquired, after an embarra.s.sing pause.

"My dear master, I think that I ought to ask leave of absence since I have finished the work of designing the bullet most fit for the gas-rifle."

"Do you ask leave of me, at your age, as of a schoolmaster?"

The relations between the adopted son and the architect, who had mistaken his bent and become an innovator in artillery, had been affectionate, and on the younger man's side respectful. He had never taken any serious steps without asking his consent.

"Well, where did you think of going?" asked Clemenceau.

"To Paris."

"To show the rifle and projectile complete? No, we can test the latter at the new series of firing experiments before the Ordnance Committee.

The Minister of War and the Emperor will not thank you for disturbing them for so little. It was the great gun they wanted. They are wedded to the Cha.s.sepot for the soldier's gun and, besides, the government musket factories are opposed to so great a novelty."

"I need exercise--action--the open air," persisted the Italian.

Clemenceau shook his head. Only the day before, the young man had called himself the happiest soul in the world and did not wish to quit tranquil Montmorency.

"Well, after you have had your fling, would you hasten back?"

"I--I fear not, master," said he. "I daresay if you and M. Daniels should approve, I might have a situation to travel for the Clemenceau Rifle Company, for some months, in England or America--and explain the value of your invention."

"You wish to be my trumpeter, eh?" said the Frenchman, sadly smiling.

"But what is to become of me during your absence and of M. Daniels?

Remember that I have n.o.body to understand me, sympathize with me, become endeared to me, and aid me!"