Maurice Leblanc

“ You succeeded in landing, in finding Velmot in the dark, in hitting him just as he was turning on me? It was you who stopped him? It was you who set Massignac free?”
I took her little hand and kissed it with emotion. The dear girl! She also had done all she could to protect Noel Dorgeroux's secret; and with what courage, with what undaunted pluck, risking death twenty times over and not recoiling, at the great hour of danger, from the terrible act of taking life!
“You must tell me all this in detail, Berangere. Go on with your story. Where did you take your father to?” ”

“ Looking down upon us, they follow our every action, they observe us, study us and pity us, they count our misfortunes and our wounds and perhaps also they envy us, when they witness our joys and when, in some secret place, they surprise a man and a maid, with love-laden eyes, whose lips unite in a kiss. ”

“ May we hope?” Alas, my answers leave him no illusions: “Berangere remembers nothing. You must not hope.”
He consoles himself by waging a fierce contest with those who still deny any value to his theory; and it must be confessed that, now that the screen has been destroyed and it has become impossible to support that theory by proofs which are in any way material, the number of his adversaries has increased and that they propound objections which Benjamin Prevotelle must find it extremely difficult to refute. But he has every sincere and unprejudiced person on his side. ”

“ While I was nursing my father, in this very lodge, he said to me one day, 'I can't tell what may happen, Berangere. It is possible that I shall destroy the screen at Meudon, out of revenge. It will be a mistake. In any case, I want to undo that act of madness beforehand.' He then made me learn the formula by heart. And this was a thing which no one except my father and myself could know, because I was alone with him and kept the secret. Velmot, consequently, was speaking the truth. ”

“ She murmured sadly:
“I am Massignac's daughter.”
“No more of that!” I cried. “You are the one who always sacrificed herself and who always took the risk. And you are also the girl I love, Berangere, the girl who gave me all her life and all her soul in a kiss. Remember Berangere... ”

“ CHAPTER XIX. THE FORMULA VELMOT dead, Berangere alive: the joy of it! The sudden sense of security! This time, the evil adventure was over, since the girl whom I loved had nothing more to fear. And my thoughts at once harked back to Noel Dorgeroux: the formula in which the great secret was summed up was saved. With the clues and the means of action which existed elsewhere, mankind was now in a position to continue my uncle's work. ”

“ It is a letter which Massignac wrote to me and which he handed to me as he lay dying. I read only the first few words to begin with and at once went off in search of you. Read it, Berangere, and have no doubts: it is the evidence of a dead man.”
She took the letter and read aloud:
“Berangere knows the formula and must not communicate it to any one except you alone, Victorien. ”

“ We all know, of our reasoned conviction, and we all believe, out of our impulse of ardent faith, that, though we now receive no communications from our brothers in Venus, they, those beings with the Three Eyes, are still interesting themselves in us with the same fervour, the same watchfulness, the same impassioned curiosity. ”

“ Is it not rather an essential law of our equilibrium that we should be obliged to live within the narrow confines of the present and to see before or behind us no more than lights which are still just glimmering and lights which are being faintly kindled? Our knowledge is adjusted to our strength ”

“ As it happened, Velmot had taken advantage of his call at the Lodge to steal one of the blue phials which my uncle used. I did not notice this before he had already poured part of the liquid on the improvised screen of the chapel. I was able to get hold of the phial and throw it into the well. Just then you called me. Velmot made a rush at me and carried me to his motor-car, where, after stunning me with his fist and binding me, he hid me under a rug. When I recovered from my swoon, I was in the garage at Batignolles. ”