On hearing these words Pierre could not restrain a heart-cry: "Yes, yes,
master! Look at the injury--I was very anxious, and to find you here is
unhoped-for good fortune!"

The /savant/ glanced at him, and divined that the hidden circumstances of
the accident must be serious. And then, as Guillaume, smiling, though
paling with weakness, consented to the suggestion, Bertheroy retorted
that before anything else he must be put to bed. The servant just then
returned to say the bed was ready, and so they all went into the
adjoining room, where the injured man was soon undressed and helped
between the sheets.

"Light me, Pierre," said Bertheroy, "take the lamp; and let Sophie give
me a basin full of water and some cloths." Then, having gently washed the
wound, he resumed: "The devil! The wrist isn't broken, but it's a nasty
injury. I am afraid there must be a lesion of the bone. Some nails passed
through the flesh, did they not?"

Receiving no reply, he relapsed into silence. But his surprise was
increasing, and he closely examined the hand, which the flame of the
explosion had scorched, and even sniffed the shirt cuff as if seeking to
understand the affair better. He evidently recognised the effects of one
of those new explosives which he himself had studied, almost created. In
the present case, however, he must have been puzzled, for there were
characteristic signs and traces the significance of which escaped him.

"And so," he at last made up his mind to ask, carried away by
professional curiosity, "and so it was a laboratory explosion which put
you in this nice condition? What devilish powder were you concocting