"And so, Monsieur le Ministre, I am to take that as your final word? I
have given you every proof that I can--saving the impossible--the
bringing of my apparatus from Strassburg to Paris, which, of course,
you know is an impossibility, since it would have to cross the
frontier, which was once a French high road. I have shown you the
facts, the figures, the drawings--everything. Can you not see that I
am honest, that I love my country, from which I have been torn away--I
who come from a family that has lived in Alsace since it was first
French territory--I who am a Frenchman through five generations--I who
have sold my son to the Prussians--I who have masqueraded for years in
the Prussian University of Strassburg, once the Queen of the Rhine
Province--I who have discovered a secret which has lain buried since
the days of the great Faraday--I who have discovered, or I should say
re-discovered, after him the true theory, and, what is more, the
actual working of the magnetic tides which flow north and south
through the two hemispheres to the pole--I who can give you, Monsieur
le Ministre, and through you France, the control of those tides, so
that you may make them ebb and flow as the tides of the sea
do--prosperity with the flow, adversity with the ebb, that is what it
comes to--ah, it is incredible!
"Once more, not as a scientist, not as an inventor, but only as a
loyal son of France, let me implore you, Monsieur le Ministre, not to
regard what I have told you as the dream of an enthusiast who has only
dreamt and not done."
"If you have done as much as you say, Monsieur," replied the French
Minister of War, leaning back in his chair and twisting up the left
point of his moustache as he looked coldly and incredulously across
his desk at Doctor Emil Fargeau, late Professor of Physical Science at
the University of Strassburg, "how comes it that you have not been
able to bring actual, tangible proofs to me here in Paris? Why, for
instance, could you not have performed the miracle that you have just
been telling me about in one of our laboratories in Paris? If you had
done that--well, we might have investigated the miracle, and, after
investigation, might have some conviction--a conviction, if you will
pardon me saying so, which might have enabled us to overcome the very
natural prejudice that the Government of the Republic may be expected
to have against a man of ancient family, whose ancestors had been
French subjects for, as you say, five generations, but who has become
himself a German subject, and has permitted his son, his only son, to
enter the Prussian service, and has endured the shame of seeing him
rise year after year, rank upon rank, in the favour of the man who is
destined to be to Germany what the Great Napoleon was to France.
"No, sir, I cannot believe you; I can understand what you have told me
about what you call your invention, but understanding without
conviction is like hunger without a good dinner. I am not satisfied.
Bring your apparatus here; let me see it work. Convince me that you
can do what you say, and all that you ask for is yours; but without
conviction I can guarantee you nothing.
"With every consideration that is due to the position that you have
occupied in what may be called the enemy's country, the stolen
provinces, I must take leave to say that very few days pass without an
interview of this kind. I assure you, my dear sir, that saviours of
our country and regainers of the Lost Provinces are to be counted by
hundreds, but we have not yet found one whose scheme is capable of
sustaining a practical test."
"But, Monsieur le Ministre, I can assure you with equal faith that
this is not a scheme, a theory, a something in the air. On the
contrary, it is a theory reduced to fact--solid fact; what I have said
to you I can do before you. I can convince you----"
"Exactly, my dear sir, exactly," said the Minister; "you will not
think me discourteous if I say that within the last six months I have
had visits from inventors of air-ships who could create aerial navies
which would assume the dominion of the air, annihilate armies and
fleets, and make fortifications useless because impotent. Others have
come to me with plans which, if the theory could only have been
translated into practice, would have given us a submarine navy which
in six months would have sunk every cruiser and battleship on the
ocean. In fact, in one of the drawers of this very bureau I have a
most exactly detailed scheme for diverting the Gulf Stream through the
much-lamented Panama Canal into the Pacific, and so reducing the
British Islands, the home of our ancient enemies, to the conditions--I
mean, of course, the climatic conditions, of Labrador. That is to say,
that nine months in the year London, Southampton, Plymouth, Liverpool,
Glasgow, to say nothing of the ports on the east and the south, would
be frozen up. The British Navy--that curse of the world--could not
operate; Britain's shipping trade would be paralysed, and after that
her industries. They are free-traders, and so they don't believe it;
but it would be if it could be done. But it could not be done,
Monsieur; and that is the objection which I have to this most
splendidly promising scheme of yours."
"But, Monsieur le Ministre, I assure that it is only a question
of--well, I will say a few thousand francs to convince you that I am
not one of those scientific adventurers who have perhaps imposed on
the credulity of the Government before. What I have described to you
is the truth--the truth as I have wrought it by my own labour, as I
have seen it with my own eyes, as I have finished it with my own
hand."
"Tres bien, Monsieur! Then all you have to do is, as I said before, to
bring your apparatus here, perform the same experiment before a
committee of experts, and if you break the piece of steel as you would
a piece of glass--voila, c'est fini! We are convinced, and what you
ask for will be granted."
"But, Monsieur le Ministre, nothing could be fairer than that; only
you have not remembered what I told you during our last interview. I
have spent hundreds of thousands of francs to bring this idea of mine
to perfection. I have spent every centime----"
"Pfennige I think you should call them, Professor," interrupted the
Minister, with a perceptible sneer. "I am afraid you are forgetting
your new nationality; and, since you are a German subject, living in
German territory, as it now is, it is permissible for me to ask why
this wonderful invention of yours was not offered first to
Germany--that is to say, if it has not already been offered and
refused."
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:
"Mais, non, Monsieur le Ministre! I came here not to ask for charity,
but to give France the dominion of the world. Those whom she has
chosen as her advisers have treated me either as a lunatic or a quack.
Very well, let it be so. Through you I have offered to France a
priceless gift; you have refused it for the sake of a paltry thousand
francs or so. Very well, you will see the end of this, though I shall
not. I have devoted my life to this ideal. I have dreamt the dream of
France the Mistress of the World, as she was in the days of la Grande
Monarque. I have found the means of realising the ideal. You and those
who with you rule the destinies of France have refused to accept my
statements as true. On your heads be it, as the Moslems say. I have
done. If this dream of mine should ever be heard of again, if it
should ever be realised, France may some day learn how much she has
lost through her official incredulity."
Emil Fargeau left the Minister of War a broken man--broken in mind and
heart as well as in means. In youth it is easy, in early manhood it is
possible, to survive the sudden destruction of a life's ideal; but
when the threescore years have been counted, and the dream and the
labours of half a lifetime are suddenly brought to nought, it is
another matter. It is ruin--utter and hopeless; and so it was with
Emil Fargeau.
He had risked everything on what he had honestly believed to be the
certainty of his marvellous discovery being taken up and developed by
the French Government. In fact, he was so certain of it, that, before
leaving his laboratory at Strassburg, he had taken the precaution to
destroy the essential parts of his accumulator, lest, during his
absence, his sanctum might be invaded and some one stumble by accident
on his discovery. In a word, he had staked everything and lost
everything. To go back was impossible. Everything he had was sold or
mortgaged. He had been kept by official delays more than a fortnight
in Paris, and he had barely a hundred francs left, and even of this
more than half would be necessary to pay his modest hotel bill for the
week.
And then, worse than all, there was that fatal indiscretion into which
he had permitted his enthusiasm to betray him--an indiscretion which
placed him absolutely at the mercy of a German Jew money-lender, who,
under the rigid laws of Germany, could send him to penal servitude for
the rest of his life.
No, there was no help for it; there was only one way out of the
terrible impasse into which his enthusiasm, and that moral weakness
which is so often associated with great intellectual power, had led
him, and that way he took.
He went back to his hotel, and spent about an hour in writing letters.
One of these was directed to Captain Victor Fargeau, German Embassy,
Petersburg. Another was directed to Reuss Weinthal, Judenstrasse,
Strassburg. The third, without date or signature, he placed in a
little air-tight tin case, with the complete specifications of his
discovery.
He took off his coat and waistcoat, and fastened this to his body so
that it just came in the small of his back. Then, when he had dressed
himself and put on a light overcoat, he took a small handbag, for
appearance's sake, walked to the Nord Station, and took a second-class
ticket to Southampton, _via_ le Havre.
At midnight the steamer was in mid-channel, and Emil Fargeau was
taking his last look on sea and sky from the fore-deck. For a moment
he looked back eastward over the dark waters towards the land of his
ruined hopes, and murmured brokenly:
"My beautiful France, I have offered you the Empire of the World, but
the dolts and idiots you have chosen to govern you have refused it.
'Tant pis pour toi'! Now I will give the secret to the Fates--to
reveal it or to keep it hidden for ever, as they please. For me it is
the end!"
As the last words left his lips he took a rapid glance round the
deserted deck, and slipped over the rail into the creaming water that
was swirling past the vessel's side. In another moment one of the
whirling screws had caught him and smashed him out of human shape, and
what was left of him, with the little tin box containing the secrets
of a world-empire lashed to it, went floating away in the broad wake
that the steamer left behind it.