collaborated with them gradually became too painful for me : the work 

 showed no progress : I had no rank : my situation was not easy. 



This is where I stood when an unforeseen event took place in the 

 beginning of 1952. A message came to me from Trieste asking me if 

 I would direct the construction of a new bathyscaphe, as physicist- 

 engineer in chief, should their plans come to a head. 



The prospect of working out plans and overseeing the building of 

 this second machine, myself being solely responsible, was tempting, 

 there is no doubt. It would- be like before the war, when the Fonds 

 National had granted funds to me alone. Moreover, if, instead of one 

 bathyscaphe, two were constructed at the same time, the explorations 

 of the great depths could only profit. 



Anyway, now that I had communicated my ideas to the French 

 arsenal, I had not much more to do at Toulon. They could henceforth 

 get along without my help. Without delay I let the French naval 

 authorities know about the proposal that had been made to me. 



The arsenal at Toulon remained in possession of the cabin of the 

 FNRS 2, which it could use just as it was, without making any 

 changes, and it had my instruments. 



From this time on, with my son Jacques, I devoted myself to the 

 building of the new bathyscaphe, the Trieste. 



I regret to have to refer here to a discussion which arose when the 

 Trieste was completed. In truth the reproaches made to me are not 

 worthy of being mentioned here : but if I were silent it might be mis- 

 interpreted. I was much criticized for leaving Toulon, and for having, 

 according to some, 'secretly' undertaken the building of the Trieste. 

 On this point I must make it clear: on the 23rd January 1952, before 

 going to Trieste, and long before anything had been decided in Italy, 

 I made the Direction Générale des Constructions et Armes Navales at 

 Paris conversant with the new situation. Following this, I had asked 

 the Fonds National to communicate to the French Navy that I was 

 withdrawing from Toulon, unless the French Navy asked me to do 

 further work. 



Certain newspapers wished to give the impression that the bathy- 

 scaphe was a French invention and that I had profited by my visits 

 to the arsenal at Toulon to copy the plans of the FNRS 3 ; according 

 to these newspapers, I had used them afterwards to build the Trieste. 

 The truth is much simpler : taking into account all the experience we 

 had acquired, we had one way and another thought it well to build a 



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