His thoughts
turned towards other nations. He crossed the frontier, and forgetting
the ineffaceable past, offered the fulgurator to Germany.
There, as soon as his exorbitant demands were made known, the
government refused to receive his communication. Besides, it so
happened that the military authorities were just then absorbed by the
construction of a new ballistic engine, and imagined they could afford
to ignore that of the French inventor.
As the result of this second rebuff Roch's anger became coupled with
hatred--an instinctive hatred of humanity--especially after his
_pourparlers_ with the British Admiralty came to naught. The English
being practical people, did not at first repulse Thomas Roch. They
sounded him and tried to get round him; but Roch would listen to
nothing. His secret was worth millions, and these millions he would
have, or they would not have his secret. The Admiralty at last
declined to have anything more to do with him.
It was in these conditions, when his intellectual trouble was growing
daily worse, that he made a last effort by approaching the American
Government. That was about eighteen months before this story opens.
The Americans, being even more practical than the English, did not
attempt to bargain for Roch's fulgurator, to which, in view of the
French chemist's reputation, they attached exceptional importance.
They rightly esteemed him a man of genius, and took the measures
justified by his condition, prepared to indemnify him equitably later.
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