--oh! no indeed! they are not a present for you, brother."
Guillaume spoke with outward calmness; and if he had started with
surprise at the first moment, it had been scarcely perceptible.

"So everything is ready?" Pierre resumed. "You will soon be handing your
engine of destruction over to the Minister of War, I presume?"

A gleam of hesitation appeared in the depths of Guillaume's eyes, and he
was for a moment about to tell a falsehood. However, he ended by replying
"No, I have renounced that intention. I have another idea."

He spoke these last words with so much energy and decision that Pierre
did not dare to question him further, to ask him, for instance, what that
other idea might be. From that moment, however, he quivered with anxious
expectancy. From hour to hour Mere-Grand's lofty silence and Guillaume's
rapt, energetic face seemed to tell him that some huge and terrifying
scheme had come into being, and was growing and threatening the whole of
Paris.

One afternoon, just as Thomas was about to repair to the Grandidier
works, some one came to Guillaume's with the news that old Toussaint, the
workman, had been stricken with a fresh attack of paralysis. Thomas
thereupon decided that he would call upon the poor fellow on his way, for
he held him in esteem and wished to ascertain if he could render him any
help. Pierre expressed a desire to accompany his nephew, and they started
off together about four o'clock.

On entering the one room which the Toussaints occupied, the room where
they ate and slept, the visitors found the mechanician seated on a low
chair near the table. He looked half dead, as if struck by lightning. It
was a case of hemiplegia, which had paralysed the whole of his right
side, his right leg and right arm, and had also spread to his face in
such wise that he could no longer speak. The only sound he could raise
was an incomprehensible guttural grunt. His mouth was drawn to the right,
and his once round, good-natured-looking face, with tanned skin and
bright eyes, had been twisted into a frightful mask of anguish. At fifty
years of age, the unhappy man was utterly done for. His unkempt beard was
as white as that of an octogenarian, and his knotty limbs, preyed upon by
toil, were henceforth dead. Only his eyes remained alive, and they
travelled around the room, going from one to another. By his side, eager
to do what she could for him, was his wife, who remained stout even when
she had little t