he would confide his secret only to the First Consul. But Bonaparte,
little disposed to occupy himself with such an affair, charged Delambre
to examine it and address a report to him. The illustrious astronomer,
despite the persistence with which Alexandre refused to give up his
secret to him, drew a report, the few following extracts from which
will, we think, suffice to edify the reader:

"The pieces that the First Consul charged me to examine did not contain
enough of detail to justify an opinion. Citizen Beauvais (friend and
associate of Alexandre) knows the inventor's secret, but has promised
him to communicate it to no one except the First Consul. This
circumstance might enable me to dispense with any report; for how judge
of a machine that one has not seen and does not know the agent of? All
that is known is that the _telegraphe intime_ consists of two like
boxes, each carrying a dial on whose circumference are marked the
letters of the alphabet. By means of a winch, the needle of one dial is
carried to all the letters that one has need to use, and at the same
instant the needle of the second box repeats, in the same order, all the
motions and indications of the first.

"When these two boxes are placed in two separate apartments, two persons
can write to and answer one another, without seeing or being seen by one
another, and without any one suspecting their correspondence. Neither
night nor fog can prevent the transmission of a dispatch.... The
inventor has made two experiments--one at Portiers and the other at
Tours--in the presence of the prefects and mayors, and the record shows
that they were fully successful. To-day, the inventor and his associate
ask that the First Consul be pleased to permit one of the boxes to be
placed in his apartment and the other at the house of Consul Cambaceres
in order to give the experiment all the _eclat_ and authenticity