"In Paris? Mais oui; and in my own house--this very house, monsieur.
Come, you shall behold them with your own eyes!"

Her eyes were brilliant with excitement; impulsively she stretched out
her rosy hand. I took it; and she led me quickly back through the
drawing-room, through the dining-room, across the butler's pantry, and
into a long, dark hallway. We were almost running now--I keeping tight
hold of her soft little hand, she, raising her gown a trifle, hurrying
down the hallway, silken petticoats rustling like a silk banner in the
wind. A turn to the right brought us to the cellar-stairs; down we
hastened, and then across the cemented floor towards a long,
glass-fronted shelf, pierced with steam-pipes.

"A match," she whispered, breathlessly.

I struck a wax match and touched it to the gas-burner overhead.

Never, never can I forget what that flood of gas-light revealed. In a
row stood five large, glass-mounted incubators; behind the glass doors
lay, in dormant majesty, five enormous eggs. The eggs were
pale-green--lighter, somewhat, than robins' eggs, but not as pale as
herons' eggs. Each egg appeared to be larger than a large hogs-head,
and was partly embedded in bales of cotton-wool.

Five little silver thermometers inside the glass doors indicated a
temperature of 95° Fahrenheit. I noticed that there was an automatic
arrangement connected with the pipes which regulated the temperature.

I was too deeply moved for words. Speech seemed superfluous as we
stood there, hand in hand, contemplating those gigantic, pale-green
eggs.